Norco college

hi guys. i’m a student at rcc and i’ve taken my classes here. i want to apply to the nursing school and i just need both anatomy and physiologies AND microbiology. there’s no more room in bio50A for the summer here at rcc. is it possible for me to take bio50A in the summer at either norco or moval and then bio 50B in the fall at rcc or do i need to take it in the college i took bio50A in?

Hello MtSAC reddit,
I am someone who is potentially looking to maybe enroll at MtSAC as I might be moving from the bay area to orange/riverside county. I've heard that this CC is ranked quite high academically and is generally well respected. I have however heard that this college is much more rigorous compared to it's neighbors Riverside City and Norco college. I come from a pretty academic school but have never taken any AP or Honors classes. My father and older brother went to a college called Foothill which is now the top rated schools for transfers and CC's in California. Obviously most responses will say it depends on effort and major but my main focus would likely be gen ed classes needed to transfer to a four year. I'm not sure what I'll be majoring in here but If I were to guess probably business or something idk. My simple question is whether the stereotypes about this school are true.

Title. Looking for something college-student friendly to strap on my Norco Storm 5. What do you guys recommend to a beginner in all this? Looking for easy commutes between work and campus as its 13k total.

Hi all,
I am a transfer student coming in this upcoming Fall semester. I just checked my Financial Aid>>Award Overview and it says that the cost of attendance is $73,142, of which, $49,516 is 'Tuition and Fees' by itself.
How accurate is this? I am a California resident for 20+ years and graduating with my associates for transfer from Norco College. Something doesn't seem right, plus, I do not see the Regent Scholarship that I accepted as part of the formula. This, plus the ridiculously high tuition and fees, leads me to believe that this information is not accurate.
Any insight?
Thanks!

guess the beginning of the story is as good as a place as any to start johnny grew up in a broken home he was a latchkey kid. his mother grew up a 7th day adventist in laments terms means church every saturday no dating going to the movies or drinking alcohol any time or watching tv or handling money on the sabbath which is on saturday . Before she met his father she dated guy named david who was a little older then her david had the worse childhood that anyone could imagine after witnessing the British soldiers murder his mother and his father died on the battlefields he was adopted by a gay british general as were several other German boys he repeatedly molested them and sent them to a private proper boy academy where they were also molested this makes johnnys childhood seem like a walk in the park but he will tell his story blemishes and all this was just for pretense purposes, after david slapped her she immediately broke up with him, if only she had that same instinct when she met his father but he will and so it begins she had met him in a bar while drinking this will become apparent momentarily, & were engaged w/in a year later. Soon after tying the knot she wanted to celebrate with some drinks to which he said no you are my wife now and its against our meaning "his" religion, He , began to show his true colors she had found out that he had illegitimate children w/ some other women before they were married or so she says. His father was a horrible husband to her not so much to the 2 other women he slept with during there marriage but after his constant bombardment of negativity. It all became normal for her . His father fed on any weakness she showed like a vulture and was quick to manipulate it.she told johnny that she had approached one of the women he was cheating on her with and told her that they were married Johnny fealt that she should have left him right then and there like any rational women would have and gotten a divorce while she was still young. But her mother with her old fashioned ideology forbade it i guess she after all those years her self esteem depleted very much so which johnny completely understands although the catch 22 how much irrationality it takes to listen to your mother who wasn't on the front lines so she couldn't possibly understand, saying you can't break up the family even b4 they had one even though his fathers ex-mistress was having one johnny resents his grandmother for that. His father just wasn't apt to fulfill those feelings of love or intimacy. Johnny was taught at a very young age that to burden people with your problems (feelings,emotions) is impolite Johnny feels as if he scammed her for citizenship as does she because once they were married his demeanor quickly changed over night. So to reiterate she found out he was having an affair years b4 she had kids and that she could have and should have walked away then but she did not & that johnnys parents really had nothing in common his father was an excellent con man they slept in different rooms johnny truly believes that he too could have had a better childhood assuming he wouldve been born to a different father but his mothers naivete borderlines crazy at times she married this man that she barely took the time to know. if only things were different. Things began to change for the worse. It became apparent that when you look at someone threw rose colored glasses all the red flags appear white. Every boy needs a father not a fucking mental case he remembered one time his mother gave him $20 to buy a video game crash bandicoot 2 for ps1 she worked that night so his father took them to best buy for his own reasons johnny bought the game the cashier wrung it up wrong so it made a bit of commotion when his father had scene what he had bought .He was upset that johnny didn't give him the money so he could deposit in his "make believe bank" He then proceeded to break the game into little pieces and beat johnny, johnny always wondered why his mother stood idly by watching the abuse maybe it was cause the focus wasnt on her just one example out of many more too come. It was obvious that to johnny his mother was incoherently unconfrontational and tried to ignore her problems til they went away unfortunately that is not how life works.She could trace her families lineage to the 1700's & belonged to a upscale group called daughters of the American revolution.meaning basically our family could trace our ancestral roots to the mayflower She was self-trapped in a loveless marriage, when you think about it its almost funny the difference in what you get and what you deserve like she deserved 2 retire not continue working threw her 70s but couldn't because she has a daughter that prides herself on her laziness and she will probably live with her mother til she dies probably for a few weeks after every house they had bought she obviously put the down payment on everytime she had 2 going on 3 foreclosures and a chapter 7 bankruptcy so far because his father was terrible w/ money so he never gambled with his own $ he had her for that so he wouldnt lose anything when the houses she put all the down payments on went tits up. He claimed no responsibility always making her the scape goat .His father was raised in a completely different culture and the culture clash really affected his children. Johnny was never really close to either of his syblings .Johnnys father opened up a convient store when johnny was little in Cabrini green which was another stupid investment , one night when the store was robbed he lost his business partner and best friend who had died from a fatal gunshot wound. Johnny came to realize that his fathers overwhelming sense of guilt and anger maybe was why he treated johnny the way he did which was as an astute observation as any child could make. johnny couldn't tell you how many times his father hit him with shit. But can recall anything resembling an attaboy or a love you which was never.This was his childhood. His family was messed up from the get go.so it's pretty much obvious that she probably wont ever retire, thanks to his deadbeat father and his lazy sister he guesses she feels bad for her daughter due to her weight problem which later manifested into graves disease and he knew that he wasnt going to have a mother for that long so he distanced himself from her it was selfish but he loved his mother so much and he knew when the day would come part of himself would also die. His best friend since he was 8 was al he sleptover at al's all the time als father had a serious colĺection of horror films .and they were horror film buffs whenever he could go over there he did, he saw what a loving family looked like. Then they both found music al liked metal but johnny liked punk the first cd he bought was the ramones live w/ cj & Marky he was 12 years old. He was never close with his syblings. The music saved his life he no longer cared about the abuse the first show he went too was the adicts at Logan square auditorium in 2005 His mother knew hed be gone for the weekend but when his father confronted her she just played stupid & when he came home the posters on johnnys wall were all ripped from his wall band shirts lit on fire and had a beating waiting for him but by this time he realized that everybody takes a beating ever so often he was not special he fell head over heels for the scene. at that particular show there was a 3 block line to get in at the adicts show he still remembers the first riot fest at the congress with actual punk music like the dickies dk w/ out jello the street brats b4 it became a commercialized mix of emo pop punk and rap pretty much over the next 15 yrs of his life he's pretty much scene every band worth seeing he went too and played at the congress grant park logan square auditorium the beat kitchen reggies basically every venue in chicago slowly but surely the scene died along w/ 77's cms pogo sick he was a son of erin basically just punk crews that party and engage in devious debauchery he would not engage in gangster shit til he was in his 20s and johnny was sad he guesses what they say is true that parting is such sweet sorrow but it just happens people grow up and in the words of death cab 4 cutie theres nothing righteous being 60 & punk. He missed the days when you could smoke indoors so the shows he went too when he was 14. were comical to him because there were always mosh pits for bands and the place was covered with a layer of smoke so you would see people passing out. This was a great way to blow off steam and his anger towards his life moshing and he also frequently got into fights it didnt even matter if his opponent was bigger then him or he was outnumbered he fought in order to feel anything he didnt fight to win he got into fights to feel anything he didnt care if he lost he loved the pain or the triumph. He'd later get into heroin because all his heroes were dope fiends johnny thunders DeeDee Ramone Richard hell anyways back to him. He knew there was something wrong him he never fealt normal he always so anxious & hyper he was diagnosed with adhd. but the pills had the opposite effect on him they made him more anxious and wild so he was eventually was diagnosed with G.A.D. all of his life his father also suffered from something anger problems mania and depression but never saw a dr. So johnny figured he was bipolar . skip ahead a few years and he joined a band and they got good fast they played several shows even were on the bill w/ the casualties and the briefs at logan square,til he met this girl, he regrets that so much because it wasnt her who saved him from his home it was his his band every weekend he truly loved his band and his band mates Were his brothers but he stupidly put his gf first and flipped out when one of his bandmates said something about her he didn't have any familiar brother's ill just leave it at that after meeting her they had sex an hour after meeting her they started dating so for the first 14.5 yrs of his life he was a virgin she was on her 10th 👦they went out for a couple months she got pregnant and he sent her a letter w/ 250 dollar check in the memo line it said "Johnny's half" & He ghosted her. he was broken hearted not because of the girl but because of the band his best friends his brothers that he left behind they went on to be truly amazing it still breaks his heart that his misprioritization of his life for a fling when he quit the band that had saved him from his home life. He still talks to his guitarist from time to time this isnt really vital to the story but johnny thought hed say it anyways when the guitar player went to a christian college and was brainwashed using military grade procedures to build a cult he was out of it for quite sometime but his spark is slowly coming back he still talks too him from time to time. But this happened much later in this story, so he coped with that pain of losing his band with weed and amphetamines also he forgot to mention that he grew up kinda fat which will become apparent momentarily he smoked weed the 1st time he worked sftrr weed he found solace in triple c's eventually working his way up to 32 of them daily.one day that severely scarred johnny in a way nobody could possibly know was he was out of his mind his friends chase and mal and they picked up al. Chase had an alterial motive robbed al johnnys confudant his childhood friend his best friend al ,johnny was out of his mind and didnt know what was happening and left him behind the toys r us while Johnny was blacked out it wasnt until he started to come down he realized what had happened the truly heinous thing his friend chase cooked up that he was apartied too his friend chase was jealous of al and johnnys friendship and all al had on him was him was 2 dollars not that that had mattered chase just wanted al out of the picture. johnny regrets his friendship with chase he was skinny by this time but had an anorexic mindset meaning that anytime he looked the mirror all he would see was fat he got up too taking 32 of those pills at any given time when he overdosed he was 6 feet tall and weighed 120 lbs after two stints in the psychward he agreed to go to rehab because when his grandmother told him about how his grandfather reacted he fealt sad not the outside but not on the inside as was taught too. he was taught to show any type of emotion was a weakness this would help him later in life but ultimately backfired because he has trouble showing affection when he got out he went right back to smoking weed and when that wasn't enough anymore Cocaine and alcohol were his thing now when he couldnt afford hed engage in check fraud to which he did a little time for in the lake county juvenile facility although he had tried dope years before this him and his little crew of misfit toys did it everyday practically when one of them stole his connect he was furious but that's neither here nor there. he was mandated to go to rehab again.you. need to know the depraved loved to share debauchery they basically dangled the drugs in front of him not that he had a choice our addictions never point guns at us and say use me or your dead but its a hard thing to understand same outcome went right back to booze and coke h johnny was a good theif he stole expensive clothes designer sunglasses and when his parents went out of town for the weekend johnny threw a party after him and his friend lee went to jewel and since Osco the part of jewel that had the pharmacy and the liquor. Was closed they kept filling their backpacks with bottles of whiskey and rum and vodka til the trunk was full they mustve gotten away with at least $5000 on the inside his adrenaline was pumping so fast finally after completely filling the car worth of booze seriously they had filled 3 big garbage bags w/ alcohol and hid it in johnnys basement the day before johnnys parents went away his one he threw the most epic party that 12 years later people still talk about 3 days of drinking gentlemen jack crown royal kraken jameson and uv blue, alize' and Moscato for the ladies he hired his friend Gary to be security and when this dumb fuck was drunk johnny asked him to leave but he fealt bad and let him stay which was a horrible decision because this kid puked all over and didn't clean up shit but he had a wonderful night he got to have sex with this absolutely beautiful popular girl when lee who loved to gossip told a guy she occasionally hooked up w Mike beat the shit out of lee he deserved it so now they hooked up in secret but after she told her friends about it he was in an endless thoroefare of sex damn how he misses really misses high school Backtracking just a little bit before all this johnny tried dope he was 15 he bought 2 bags i guess right place wrong time but he loved it, it would be several years til he got the chance to do it again he was doing it then at a fairly regular basis until it was an everyday thing when johnny od d in antwons car while waiting for his friend Pete to go with him to cop him an 8 ball for him antwon tried putting the bags in johnnys pocket or just ditching him on that day PETE WOULDNT LET HIM anyways fast forward several months he and mitch were bored and cold so they went to sit in Pete's car Pete was just sitting in the next car to the right he actually thought they were trying to rob him Pete saved johnnys life it hurt johnny that pete fealt so little of him and then misunderstood the whole situation and had one of his crew members punch mitch and johnny in the face he just took it cause he knew he would kill this guy if push came to shove Pete realized what he had in his car was worthless but he never apologized and johnny still feels bad about that . By this time he and his misfit toys were following johnny right off the bridge from just coke to sniffing dope to shooting speed balls. he met Elle several months before this and he really liked her she had this energy that johnny loved he truly loved her for her. her laugh was adorable she had the most incredible green eyes and pale but beautiful skin but its the small imperfections like her underbite that truly made her beautiful. It was his first relationship that wasn't about the sex he just loved her energy and being around her he didn't want to ruin her life he just wanted to share everything with her they were inseperable despite her parents hating johnny they would take the train most of the time. He remembers one time when they were on the train they announced michael jackson had died.He really did love her as much as someone like him could love someone ,and when he found out some guy shot her up he was so upset he wanted to kill this guy but didn't know him. this time his father confronted him they got into it he really hurt his father and still feels awful about it when he was 17. So he was kicked out and stayed in chicago for the time being he went to rehab again and cried to her on the phone til she went too but they both fucked up and went right back now he was living in Chicago part time and bg part time to sling to the kids in the burbs Knicks as dimesthough they didn't know any better he had a knack for making money and backtracking just a little the other times one time after they copped elle fell over right outside the Deerfield train stop he didnt know if she did it on purpose or what but the police were there within 30 seconds johnny ran and still remembers the officers yelling stop or well shoot he eventually got tired and they caught him they asked him if anything was going to stick them when they were searching of course he forgot about the rig in his pocket and they beat the shit out of him this was not the first run in with the law after 90 dats of juvy previously described in fact he was on pretrial probation in Lake County for possession of heroin once they were both apprehended at a little restaurant outside the train station in round lake that was probably the most sick johnny ever was his arms were absolutely covered in track marks thank god he had a celly who understood i guess track marks become very prominent if you reuse the same needle he was in lake county jail while elle was In McHenry cty jail she figured out a way to write to him w/ out her he probably wouldve given up which is a terrible thing to do while your in jail. He was their for about 50 days using a terrible public defender he copped to 1 count of possession and was given 2 yrs of 4/10 felony probation he then just stayed in chicago not that shithole of a town anymore they had let the house go into foreclosure so he left not looking back he lived in Chicago streeterville to be exact so everything he coped he would just walk a block catch the 66 to the west side just 2 Ukraine village or humboldt park he will always have the nostalgia of what chicago once was and the memmories remunissing his positive memmories greatly out weighed the negative like the 1 time johnny shot up bathsalts and ended up hiding in a dumpster from the invisable police. And another awful memory was the first time he did crystal meth he got some from his old roommate and after sniffing some went to Clark and division where he knew hed find a prostitute their this particular one costed johnny $15 so he was about to fuck her but the smell coming off her the homeless smell thats oh so distinguishable it was so awful that he immediately aborted and that incident will haunt johnny forever but when he got back to his future roommates house he was spun he washed a sink full of dishes and the smell of the rotting food immediately reminded him of that prostitutes odor so he immediately puked all night long his friend Eric stayed up with him he had some rocks so he wasn't tired at all johnny didn't stop puking til the next morning after filling his promethazine. .one memory that he will never forget is after walking to the west side from streeterville which he loved if he was sick hed obviously take the bus or swipe a bike from the bike room in his apt complex but just walking seeing all the beauty of chicago he didn't care it was 8 miles both ways he saw the blackhawks w/ Niemi stanley cup final game he watched where he watched at a bar called Tuman's on Leavitt because he was only 18, he had no idea how he could ever get threw probation PART 3 he knew how to play md's so he was got himself a prescription to xanax then when they cut him off he went to a different dr. And then the doctor that was referred to him by a rehab center prescribed johnny what ever he wanted at the peak he was getting max doses of soma, halcion, Restoril, prosom, baclofen, promethazine xanax subutex you see for the baclofen/ restoril soma/halcion he always had a refill but but kept switching while also getting 4 mg of k-pins and cialis from a different doctor so he was loving it he was always comfortably numb he finished his probation with ease not aware of the upcoming storm when he moved to McKinley Park to go school for audio arts but also learned how to a gangster let's back track just a little here he was locked up in cook county jail 3 times during his probation the second time he got popped this was where he met Eric they instantly clicked singing johnny rebel songs out load they should've been killed johnny was never convicted of anything because he had an amazing lawyer he has been arrested for 10 different felonies that his lawyer got him off he finally finished school but one day he went completely catatonic having several seizures his friends tried taking him to a detox center but they didn't know these symptoms so eventually he went the hospital and the Dr immediately knew what was going on so he detoxed him off all the other stuff And after about a week he was at a baseline of 20mg of valium this was when him and elle started drifting apart elle eventually realized that she was his love their relationship was the chicago river and he was the cinder blocks on her feet. he was an anchor around her neck. she knew she'd be better off without him i mean she was right So they split up...he was so heartbroken afraid hell never find love like that again She was some1 I knew in a past lifetime, she's moved on I wish her the best of luck she'll always be my 1st real love. obviously didn't listen to the hospital.md so he went back to his dr and even though the hospital dr called him he didn't care then he went right back to his array of medications he later ran into Eric on Belmont they hugged he was with his new gf Allie for their 2 week anniversary he got her a pair of $650 bvlgari sunglasses, she was sweet at first but just like his father quickly showed her true colors. you could tell she grew up spoiled because if she didn't get what she wanted she'd throw a huge tantrum he gave her a subutex once and deeply regrets it. and then she was just the worst type of person always throwing fits calling him names then once she got her sub from him just to get her to shut up it was all i love you it was a very unstable relationship after staying johnny abruptly ended after she was cheating on him that much was obvious to johnny that she was lieing because when she told him she had a very nonchalant tone, he wasnt stupid he knew she was cheating on him things ended with her digging her nails in johnnys wind pipe he moved to LA for a bit he moved back to Chicago he hooked up with Eric had an age of stagnation of someone in his teens you could tell because when he broke up with the 2 girlfriends he'd had in the 6 years they were chilling again he would rib them and demoralize them just that type of person he had tiny hands for a person of his stature. He often acted like a mean girl nice to your face chop you up to pieces when you were gone and his fucking crack tantrums were the worst but hhhe constantly clipped johnny wings because johnny was making serious money and he was broke by this time johnny was just using him for a place to live til johnny left and moved in the basement apt Eric threw a fit he got away with all of this because Johnny had no self esteem and eric took advantage of that .at this point johnny obviously didn't care if only johnny stood up to Eric but having such a low self worth he fealt as if he deserved this treatment And a normalized disposition to abuse from having a father that constantly put you down to having a friend it seemed normal he loved and hated Eric at the same time Eric was a ginger hungarian jew he liked the fact that his hair color was symmetrical with being of celtic ancestry he talked with an Irish accent sometimes it was just plain stupid he was extremely possessive he went threw Johnny's phone after going threw it and finding out he was playing guitar for erics friend he told him it was nothing personal what he should have said was you fucking suck at guitar you can't play for shit and he approached me he sees now that Eric was never really Johnny's friend he just liked to have someone around to make him feel better about himself the best of a bad situation if you will. They were smoking tons of crack threw their friendship but not even the phrase drug buddy could describe their relationship. but he more or less considered him to be his neighbor. Because they werent even buddies but, johnny was a no saint when his friend cal skimmed $200 off a $1200 debt johnny was supposed to collect but was busy so he sent his friend .He couldn't believe it cal said he only got the 1000 even though johnny told him if he did him this favour he could have $200 but he was just another shady piece of shit so he had to be made an example of him this wasn't about the $200 extra dollars that weasel conned it was the principal of the situation. Johnny laid out tarps in his apt menacing would have been the charge and wore rubber see threw gloves and combat boots on also he had his his high point c-9 mm strapped to him and was in plain view of course it wasn't loaded but cal didn't know that hed brought his psychotic friend who had a hachett with him for back up cal was never ....in any danger this On one hand idk why anyone would go inside a basement apt covered in tarps after knowingly decieving the owner of the apt.and johnny said they'd been camping this was a scare tactic that went off without a hitch and it worked johnny confronted cal and said that he gave him $200 just for picking up some money why would he lie and say that the guy only gave him $1000 he wanted answers cal said so what? I'm just gonna go out side to which johnnys soldier said you ain't going nowhere he ran as fast as he could leaving behind his gf nothing happened to her behind johnny didnt know cal was going to bring his gf he never met this girl before but i guess it was an added bonus so shed see what a pussy he was yelling rape up and down the street he soon left chicago saying it's too crazy there. But the lesson he should've learned was knowing your friends and family are all you got and you should never deceive them and this all came to fruition and that's all it was and all will ever be by the time Eric got evicted Johnny's md lost his license so he had to leave because he was catatonic seizuring this went on for months then started drinking heavily til he looked in the mirror and did not like what he saw an overweight disgusting person so he quit the drinking and worked out constantly everyday til he was in the single digits bodyfat he took it a little far 1000s crunches 1000 suicides 1000 push-ups and walking ten miles 5 minute planks this was his new addiction he didn't no the meaning of moderation. then just joined a gym he was once again dabbling with benzos when he rediscovered a black market for them in which you pay with btc or xmr not that much at first but he gradually increased his dose he went to see Eric same shit happened Eric grew tired of him and casted him out once again he always sought out erics approval. Even though it meant so little to him all he wanted was any version of an attaboy he went catatonic and ..seizured and ended up in a psychward. PART 4 once he was back on his feet he delved deeper into his addiction it got to the point where every other week he was buying 1000 clonazolam selling selling 200 to keep the cycle going clonazolam is a designer benzo approximately 4 times more powerful then xanax at any given time so he tried rehab one more time it was clear that this facility was not suitable for him he was put on a ativan taper 6 times always having the same out come seizures and after 50 days there he eventually had a stroke they didn't know he found out months later because he never stopped taking these benzos so on his way back home to Chicago his landlord had threw him out not because of money because he always paid his rent it was because he never signed a lease and his landlord knew he could get more for his apt he had several seizures on the way there so they stopped at a hospital in Springfield IL. And from the mri ekg they had discovered the stroke he had had. His story is not to glamorize drugs but to open people's eyes on the dangers of benzos he is not clean and doubts he will ever be because he has never truly gave sobriety a chance til he started going to na meetings at the hazelden on dearbourne he thought he was clean just because he quit heroin not realizing just because a doctor writes you a script it turns drugs into medication that he was not clean not even remotely hed use right after rehab everytime it was the thoughts in his head saying your a piece of shit you dont deserve love those thoughts tortured johnny so he self medicated but has grown as a person unlike his for mentioned friend who will never change his feathers he sees that now it seems to him that the people who cared about him were the ones he could always rely on the ones that dont care if you have money or not, like the harbor boys they were a group of homeless lincoln park kids that johnny looked after giving them money for food or cigs or beer because they looked out for him when he was homeless but never ran out of hustles hed remarket walmart supplements and sell them on ebay one time elias found a shitload of dilaudid and methadone in a dumpster johnny bought it for $20 but later gave him a stack because johnny fealt for elias he knows what homelessness looks like and the smile on his face was all payment he needed.his relationship with the as formentioned Eric was done when johnny gave Eric around $200 worth of pharmaceuticals just to see how eric was hed heard eric had cancer even though it was the same eric that had took johnnys roommate, stole his prescription glasses because they were raybans not knowing the lenses cost more then the frames themselves, and the topping on the cake stole johnnys grandfathers golf club that was all johnny had to remember him by invaded johnnys privacy eric just wanted more he stole johnnys guitar a guitar that paulie claimed he briefly played with styx with but that didnt matter when johnny made friends it wasnt about what he could get out of the relationship it was the soul that he looked into even though paulie played a small role in John's life johnny looked out for him on his death bed he gave johnny a Martin dcp4a just because he was sick and knew johnny would give it a proper home eric stole it thank god johnny had found the pawnshop where it was he showed the documents prooving it was his guitar and got it back. From here on out he. Johnny only TOLERATEd eric because Eric was johnnys quaalude supplier. After all of this johnny flipped out and shot eric in a spot he knew would go right threw so he stopped fuckin with him, he pittied eric because Eric was a sst army ranger and suffered from ptsd terribly after 2 tours in afghanistan and 1 in iraq.He lives his life now trying to get back to where he once was figuratively because he's so depressed and misery loves company and if he's going to make a he was always so very lonely even in a room full of people so he drank and popped pills on a daily basis to drown the pain of a life lost after hundreds of seizures and a stroke after being dope sick in jail countless times after so many overdoses and chances to stop without listening after being the chair person at a NA meeting at Hazelden for 6 months. when he stopped the dope he had finally come to realize that you can turn anything into heroin and while some people do hit their rock bottoms and change but to him all the friends he has lost the people that go in and out of your lives only to change it for the better or for the worse, threw all the hustles, all the seizures, the stroke the od's the stints in jail, being homeless when the winter the weather forecast said chicago would be colder then mars .He has come to realize that compared to some addicts he became quite successful . there is no bottom and his home has changed so much threw gentrification. All he has are memories. He gargles xanax down with a pint of rum daily no rehab facilities will accept him because he's so far gone all he lives for are his memories he doesn't suspect it will get any better so he put his high tech c- 9mm in his mouth pulled the trigger and it jammed it is a cheaply made gun that jams a lot he bought it at a pawnshop years ago. so much more depressed living by himself once apon a time his phone wouldn't stop ringing from friends to gf's to custys and his misfit toys now it's lucky if he gets a call from a creditor so far in debt bankruptcy is the option so decided enough was enough and started a taper he's trying to taper but it's so god damn difficult and he's scared hes more then scared at the person he's become no girl has ever scene him in benzo withdrawal exept in rehab while he was waiting in med line sat down in front of the nurses station let out a blood curdling scream and seized this is the formentioned stroke benzo withdrawal when you consider the amount johnny was taking is at least 100× worse then heroin withdrawal and it lasts for months to even years considering p.a.w.s. he added on subutex to his taper because he's always in a great deal of pain 2 herniated disks a shattered ankle that never fully recovered a stab wound etc. because he confronted one of the dealers he dealt with and instead of giving him bromazolam he gave him xylazine he immediately knew it was no benzo a) because he was still in a state of withdrawal and b) because he knew what this feeling was like it fealt like if youd taken too many clonidines and baclofen the staggering the uncertain footing johnny had high blood pressure his whole life so he takes the clonidine for this reason once he made it apparent he wouldn't deal with this vendor no more he didn't care he was scared of the future or the bleakness of it .not because he was living in LA or kc but because he was living with himself and no matter where he'd go on the vastness of the globe he would still be him and that's what kept him up at night. The fact that you can never run away from yourself. PART 5 you can go any where in the world but you are still you this is the story of johnny kinda rumbled out of order but you get it. He had one person in his life that would never gave up on johnny and that was Josh he met Josh when he was 14 over at als house they were playing guitar Johnny has always had a great deal of respect for josh and will always consider him a brother john now works as a crypto consultant and remote salesmen although watching everybody surpass you in every in chicago he worked as a audio engineer .it makes it hard to get out of bed. But johnny lives by himself and once he feels he's better then he'll return back to the world of the living johnny knew he was flawed but his anxiety was becoming far worse slowly turning into depression. addiction went rampant in johnnys family his great grandfather drank turpentine because he was so poor and died at the age of 32 from eshogeal vericies. Putting his grandmother in a horrible situation they grew up like pilgrims no heat electricity or running water she was ridiculed at school everyday because she was 100% German was poor had only 2 dresses the kids were awful to her calling her nazi and what ever the current mean things to say at the time but this toughned her up. she had her addictions aswell diet pills and norco they say it skips a generation that might be true his grandfather used to ride the trains like freight trains to get from point a to point b til one unlucky day he wore a brand new pair of leather dress shoes and slipped off and his feet were chopped off under the tracks he was a tall man 7ft and slim 160 lbs he met his wife at church and they fell in love he hooked her house up with running water heat and electricity. He made a career out of working on trains and once stopped a collision from happening if he could lose his feet doctors telling him hed never walk again and going back to work for the very thing that almost killed him his grandfather was a hero he was a wasnt even in the same ballpark as far as tenacity goes. Hes scared to ask for help from anybody but he did johnny does not believe that we are powerless over are addictions quite the contrary he believes we give our addictions the power he only holds himself responsible for his addictions doesnt blame genetics or how he was raised or the sycophants and succubus that push you into that direction. The stroke he had had at the previous rehab stint thankfully did not affect him with cognitively so hes writing what he remembers but thats just the tip of the ice berg,what was once blue was now black and this deeply saddened him he was the first to do coke and dope out of all his misfit toys and all the other lost souls that followed him into the abyss Thank God they never went down benzo st. With him he lost so many people he truly cared about and loved he obviously changed the names except for a few this story because like he said b4 some addicts do hit their rock bottoms but to johnny the several hundred seizure survivor the stroke survivor the 3 stints at cook county one at lake and one at DuPage and one in sedgwick. This once extrovert has become quite the opposite just like the guitar that his friend paulie gave him on his deathbed the guitar he loved so much the guitar that was stolen and went threw hell retrieving it that one of his exes stomped on in a fit of rage totalling it, while it was in its its case he feels forgotten out of tune worthless and irreparable for some of us there is no rock bottom just a Neverending well into darkness. those are the ones who hate themselves the most and don't believe in second chances. Those are the ones who watch life go by afraid of what's to come it's a very lonely way to live but once your sorrow turns to apathy as you watch your life pass you by & the Neverending sonat continues. He's lived his life to the fullest and although the regrets keep him up at night he's thankful to be alive and although he's got a lot of work to do before being in a relationship with any one he looks forward to finally putting himself first. After living this life he was diagnosed with ptsd. This is a painted portrait of a troubled soul not the b.s. that shows like shameless teach this generation. -the 66fallenangels

guess the beginning of the story is as good as a place as any to start johnny grew up in a broken home his father was a immigrant and his mother grew up a 7th day adventist in laments terms means church every saturday no dating going to the movies or drinking alcohol any time or watching tv or handling money on the sabbath which is on saturday . They had met in a bar while drinking this will become apparent momentarily, & were engaged w/in a year later. Soon after tying the knot she wanted to celebrate with some drinks to which he said no you are my wife now and its against our meaning "his" religion, He , began to show his true colors she had found out that he had illegitimate children w/ some other women before they were married or so she says. His father was a horrible husband to her not so much to the 2 other women he slept with during there marriage but after his constant bombardment of negativity. It all became normal for her . His father fed on any weakness she showed like a vulture and was quick to manipulate it.she told johnny that she had approached one of the women he was cheating on her with and told her that they were married Johnny fealt that she should have left him right then and there like any rational women would have and gotten a divorce while she was still young. But her mother with her old fashioned ideology forbade it i guess she after all those years her self esteem depleted very much so which johnny completely understands although the catch 22 how much irrationality it takes to listen to your mother who wasn't on the front lines so she couldn't possibly understand, saying you can't break up the family even b4 they had one even though his fathers ex-mistress was having one johnny resents his grandmother for that. His father just wasn't apt to fulfill those feelings of love or intimacy. Johnny was taught at a very young age that to burden people with your problems (feelings,emotions) is impolite Johnny feels as if he scammed her for citizenship as does she because once they were married his demeanor quickly changed over night. So to reiterate she found out he was having an affair years b4 she had kids and that she could have and should have walked away then but she did not & that johnnys parents really had nothing in common his father was an excellent con man they slept in different rooms johnny truly believes that he too could have had a better childhood assuming he wouldve been born to a different father but his mothers naivete borderlines crazy at times she married this man that she barely took the time to know. if only things were different. Things began to change for the worse. It became apparent that when you look at someone threw rose colored glasses all the red flags appear white. Every boy needs a father not a fucking mental case he remembered one time his mother gave him $20 to buy a video game crash bandicoot 2 for ps1 she worked that night so his father took them to best buy for his own reasons johnny bought the game the cashier wrung it up wrong so it made a bit of commotion when his father had scene what he had bought .He was upset that johnny didn't give him the money so he could deposit in his "make believe bank" He then proceeded to break the game into little pieces and beat johnny, johnny always wondered why his mother stood idly by watching the abuse maybe it was cause the focus wasnt on her just one example out of many more too come. It was obvious that to johnny his mother was incoherently unconfrontational and tried to ignore her problems til they went away unfortunately that is not how life works.She could trace her families lineage to the 1700's & belonged to a upscale group called daughters of the American revolution.meaning basically our family could trace our ancestral roots to the mayflower She was self-trapped in a loveless marriage, when you think about it its almost funny the difference in what you get and what you deserve like she deserved 2 retire not continue working threw her 70s but couldn't because she has a daughter that prides herself on her laziness and she will probably live with her mother til she dies probably for a few weeks after every house they had bought she obviously put the down payment on everytime she had 2 going on 3 foreclosures and a chapter 7 bankruptcy so far because his father was terrible w/ money so he never gambled with his own $ he had her for that so he wouldnt lose anything when the houses she put all the down payments on went tits up. He claimed no responsibility always making her the scape goat .His father was raised in a completely different culture and the culture clash really affected his children. Johnny was never really close to either of his syblings .Johnnys father opened up a convient store when johnny was little in Cabrini green which was another stupid investment , one night when the store was robbed he lost his business partner and best friend who had died from a fatal gunshot wound. Johnny came to realize that his fathers overwhelming sense of guilt and anger maybe was why he treated johnny the way he did which was as an astute observation as any child could make. johnny couldn't tell you how many times his father hit him with shit. But can recall anything resembling an attaboy or a love you which was never.This was his childhood. His family was messed up from the get go.so it's pretty much obvious that she probably wont ever retire, thanks to his deadbeat father and his lazy sister he guesses she feels bad for her daughter due to her weight problem which later manifested into graves disease and he knew that he wasnt going to have a mother for that long so he distanced himself from her it was selfish but he loved his mother so much and he knew when the day would come part of himself would also die. His best friend since he was 8 was al he sleptover at al's all the time als father had a serious colĺection of horror films .and they were horror film buffs whenever he could go over there he did, he saw what a loving family looked like. Then they both found music al liked metal but johnny liked punk the first cd he bought was the ramones live w/ cj & Marky he was 12 years old. He was never close with his syblings. The music saved his life he no longer cared about the abuse the first show he went too was the adicts at Logan square auditorium in 2005 His mother knew hed be gone for the weekend but when his father confronted her she just played stupid & when he came home the posters on johnnys wall were all ripped from his wall band shirts lit on fire and had a beating waiting for him but by this time he realized that everybody takes a beating ever so often he was not special he fell head over heels for the scene. at that particular show there was a 3 block line to get in at the adicts show he still remembers the first riot fest at the congress with actual punk music like the dickies dk w/ out jello the street brats b4 it became a commercialized mix of emo pop punk and rap pretty much over the next 15 yrs of his life he's pretty much scene every band worth seeing he went too and played at the congress grant park logan square auditorium the beat kitchen reggies basically every venue in chicago slowly but surely the scene died along w/ 77's cms pogo sick he was a son of erin basically just punk crews that party and engage in devious debauchery he would not engage in gangster shit til he was in his 20s and johnny was sad he guesses what they say is true that parting is such sweet sorrow but it just happens people grow up and in the words of death cab 4 cutie theres nothing righteous being 60 & punk. He missed the days when you could smoke indoors so the shows he went too when he was 14. were comical to him because there were always mosh pits for bands and the place was covered with a layer of smoke so you would see people passing out. This was a great way to blow off steam and his anger towards his life moshing and he also frequently got into fights it didnt even matter if his opponent was bigger then him or he was outnumbered he fought in order to feel anything he didnt fight to win he got into fights to feel anything he didnt care if he lost he loved the pain or the triumph. He'd later get into heroin because all his heroes were dope fiends johnny thunders DeeDee Ramone Richard hell anyways back to him. He knew there was something wrong him he never fealt normal he always so anxious & hyper he was diagnosed with adhd. but the pills had the opposite effect on him they made him more anxious and wild so he was eventually was diagnosed with G.A.D. all of his life his father also suffered from something anger problems mania and depression but never saw a dr. So johnny figured he was bipolar . skip ahead a few years and he joined a band and they got good fast they played several shows even were on the bill w/ the casualties and the briefs at logan square,til he met this girl, he regrets that so much because it wasnt her who saved him from his home it was his his band every weekend he truly loved his band and his band mates Were his brothers but he stupidly put his gf first and flipped out when one of his bandmates said something about her he didn't have any familiar brother's ill just leave it at that after meeting her they had sex an hour after meeting her they started dating so for the first 14.5 yrs of his life he was a virgin she was on her 10th 👦they went out for a couple months she got pregnant and he sent her a letter w/ 250 dollar check in the memo line it said "Johnny's half" & He ghosted her. he was broken hearted not because of the girl but because of the band his best friends his brothers that he left behind they went on to be truly amazing it still breaks his heart that his misprioritization of his life for a fling when he quit the band that had saved him from his home life. He still talks to his guitarist from time to time this isnt really vital to the story but johnny thought hed say it anyways when the guitar player went to a christian college and was brainwashed using military grade procedures to build a cult he was out of it for quite sometime but his spark is slowly coming back he still talks too him from time to time. But this happened much later in this story, so he coped with that pain of losing his band with weed and amphetamines also he forgot to mention that he grew up kinda fat which will become apparent momentarily he smoked weed the 1st time he worked his way up too 32 of them daily.one day that severely scarred johnny in a way nobody could possibly know was he was out of his mind his friends chase and mal and they picked up al. Chase had an alterial motive robbed al johnnys confudant his childhood friend his best friend al ,johnny was out of his mind and didnt know what was happening and left him behind the toys r us while Johnny was blacked out it wasnt until he started to come down he realized what had happened the truly heinous thing his friend chase cooked up that he was apartied too his friend chase was jealous of al and johnnys friendship and all al had on him was him was 2 dollars not that that had mattered chase just wanted al out of the picture. johnny regrets his friendship with chase he was skinny by this time but had an anorexic mindset meaning that anytime he looked the mirror all he would see was fat he got up too taking 32 of those pills at any given time when he overdosed he was 6 feet tall and weighed 120 lbs after two stints in the psychward he agreed to go to rehab because when his grandmother told him about how his grandfather reacted he fealt sad not the outside but not on the inside as was taught too. he was taught to show any type of emotion was a weakness this would help him later in life but ultimately backfired because he has trouble showing affection when he got out he went right back to smoking weed and when that wasn't enough anymore Cocaine and alcohol were his thing now when he couldnt afford hed engage in check fraud to which he did a little time for in the lake county juvenile facility although he had tried dope years before this him and his little crew of misfit toys did it everyday practically when one of them stole his connect he was furious but that's neither here nor there. he was mandated to go to rehab again.you. need to know the depraved loved to share debauchery they basically dangled the drugs in front of him not that he had a choice our addictions never point guns at us and say use me or your dead but its a hard thing to understand same outcome went right back to booze and coke h johnny was a good theif he stole expensive clothes designer sunglasses and when his parents went out of town for the weekend johnny threw a party after him and his friend lee went to jewel and since Osco the part of jewel that had the pharmacy and the liquor. Was closed they kept filling their backpacks with bottles of whiskey and rum and vodka til the trunk was full they mustve gotten away with at least $5000 on the inside his adrenaline was pumping so fast finally after completely filling the car worth of booze seriously they had filled 3 big garbage bags w/ alcohol and hid it in johnnys basement the day before johnnys parents went away his one he threw the most epic party that 12 years later people still talk about 3 days of drinking gentlemen jack crown royal kraken jameson and uv blue, alize' and Moscato for the ladies he hired his friend Gary to be security and when this dumb fuck was drunk johnny asked him to leave but he fealt bad and let him stay which was a horrible decision because this kid puked all over and didn't clean up shit but he had a wonderful night he got to have sex with this absolutely beautiful popular girl when lee who loved to gossip told a guy she occasionally hooked up w Mike beat the shit out of lee he deserved it so now they hooked up in secret but after she told her friends about it he was in an endless thoroefare of sex damn how he misses really misses high school Backtracking just a little bit before all this johnny tried dope he was 15 he bought 2 bags i guess right place wrong time but he loved it, it would be several years til he got the chance to do it again he was doing it then at a fairly regular basis until it was an everyday thing when johnny od d in antwons car while waiting for his friend Pete to go with him to cop him an 8 ball for him antwon tried putting the bags in johnnys pocket or just ditching him on that day PETE WOULDNT LET HIM anyways fast forward several months he and mitch were bored and cold so they went to sit in Pete's car Pete was just sitting in the next car to the right he actually thought they were trying to rob him Pete saved johnnys life it hurt johnny that pete fealt so little of him and then misunderstood the whole situation and had one of his crew members punch mitch and johnny in the face he just took it cause he knew he would kill this guy if push came to shove Pete realized what he had in his car was worthless but he never apologized and johnny still feels bad about that . By this time he and his misfit toys were following johnny right off the bridge from just coke to sniffing dope to shooting speed balls. he met Elle several months before this and he really liked her she had this energy that johnny loved he truly loved her for her. her laugh was adorable she had the most incredible green eyes and pale but beautiful skin but its the small imperfections like her underbite that truly made her beautiful. It was his first relationship that wasn't about the sex he just loved her energy and being around her he didn't want to ruin her life he just wanted to share everything with her they were inseperable despite her parents hating johnny they would take the train most of the time. He remembers one time when they were on the train they announced michael jackson had died.He really did love her as much as someone like him could love someone ,and when he found out some guy shot her up he was so upset he wanted to kill this guy but didn't know him. this time his father confronted him they got into it he really hurt his father and still feels awful about it when he was 17. So he was kicked out and stayed in chicago for the time being he went to rehab again and cried to her on the phone til she went too but they both fucked up and went right back now he was living in Chicago part time and bg part time to sling to the kids in the burbs Knicks as dimesthough they didn't know any better he had a knack for making money and backtracking just a little the other times one time after they copped elle fell over right outside the Deerfield train stop he didnt know if she did it on purpose or what but the police were there within 30 seconds johnny ran and still remembers the officers yelling stop or well shoot he eventually got tired and they caught him they asked him if anything was going to stick them when they were searching of course he forgot about the rig in his pocket and they beat the shit out of him this was not the first run in with the law after 90 dats of juvy previously described in fact he was on pretrial probation in Lake County for possession of heroin once they were both apprehended at a little restaurant outside the train station in round lake that was probably the most sick johnny ever was his arms were absolutely covered in track marks thank god he had a celly who understood i guess track marks become very prominent if you reuse the same needle he was in lake county jail while elle was In McHenry cty jail she figured out a way to write to him w/ out her he probably wouldve given up which is a terrible thing to do while your in jail. He was their for about 50 days using a terrible public defender he copped to 1 count of possession and was given 2 yrs of 4/10 felony probation he then just stayed in chicago not that shithole of a town anymore they had let the house go into foreclosure so he left not looking back he lived in Chicago streeterville to be exact so everything he coped he would just walk a block catch the 66 to the west side just 2 Ukraine village or humboldt park he will always have the nostalgia of what chicago once was and the memmories remunissing his positive memmories greatly out weighed the negative like the 1 time johnny shot up bathsalts and ended up hiding in a dumpster from the invisable police. And another awful memory was the first time he did crystal meth he got some from his old roommate and after sniffing some went to Clark and division where he knew hed find a prostitute their this particular one costed johnny $15 so he was about to fuck her but the smell coming off her the homeless smell thats oh so distinguishable it was so awful that he immediately aborted and that incident will haunt johnny forever but when he got back to his future roommates house he was spun he washed a sink full of dishes and the smell of the rotting food immediately reminded him of that prostitutes odor so he immediately puked all night long his friend Eric stayed up with him he had some rocks so he wasn't tired at all johnny didn't stop puking til the next morning after filling his promethazine. .one memory that he will never forget is after walking to the west side from streeterville which he loved if he was sick hed obviously take the bus or swipe a bike from the bike room in his apt complex but just walking seeing all the beauty of chicago he didn't care it was 8 miles both ways he saw the blackhawks w/ Niemi stanley cup final game he watched where he watched at a bar called Tuman's on Leavitt because he was only 18, he had no idea how he could ever get threw probation PART 3 he knew how to play md's so he was got himself a prescription to xanax then when they cut him off he went to a different dr. And then the doctor that was referred to him by a rehab center prescribed johnny what ever he wanted at the peak he was getting max doses of soma, halcion, Restoril, prosom, baclofen, promethazine xanax subutex you see for the baclofen/ restoril soma/halcion he always had a refill but but kept switching while also getting 4 mg of k-pins and cialis from a different doctor so he was loving it he was always comfortably numb he finished his probation with ease not aware of the upcoming storm when he moved to McKinley Park to go school for audio arts but also learned how to a gangster let's back track just a little here he was locked up in cook county jail 3 times during his probation the second time he got popped this was where he met Eric they instantly clicked singing johnny rebel songs out load they should've been killed johnny was never convicted of anything because he had an amazing lawyer he has been arrested for 10 different felonies that his lawyer got him off he finally finished school but one day he went completely catatonic having several seizures his friends tried taking him to a detox center but they didn't know these symptoms so eventually he went the hospital and the Dr immediately knew what was going on so he detoxed him off all the other stuff And after about a week he was at a baseline of 20mg of valium this was when him and elle started drifting apart elle eventually realized that she was his love their relationship was the chicago river and he was the cinder blocks on her feet. he was an anchor around her neck. she knew she'd be better off without him i mean she was right So they split up...he was so heartbroken afraid hell never find love like that again She was some1 I knew in a past lifetime, she's moved on I wish her the best of luck she'll always be my 1st real love. obviously didn't listen to the hospital.md so he went back to his dr and even though the hospital dr called him he didn't care then he went right back to his array of medications he later ran into Eric on Belmont they hugged he was with his new gf Allie for their 2 week anniversary he got her a pair of $650 bvlgari sunglasses, she was sweet at first but just like his father quickly showed her true colors. you could tell she grew up spoiled because if she didn't get what she wanted she'd throw a huge tantrum he gave her a subutex once and deeply regrets it. and then she was just the worst type of person always throwing fits calling him names then once she got her sub from him just to get her to shut up it was all i love you it was a very unstable relationship after staying johnny abruptly ended after she was cheating on him that much was obvious to johnny that she was lieing because when she told him she had a very nonchalant tone, he wasnt stupid he knew she was cheating on him things ended with her digging her nails in johnnys wind pipe he moved to LA for a bit he moved back to Chicago he hooked up with Eric had an age of stagnation of someone in his teens you could tell because when he broke up with the 2 girlfriends he'd had in the 6 years they were chilling again he would rib them and demoralize them just that type of person he had tiny hands for a person of his stature. He often acted like a mean girl nice to your face chop you up to pieces when you were gone and his fucking crack tantrums were the worst but hhhe constantly clipped johnny wings because johnny was making serious money and he was broke by this time johnny was just using him for a place to live til johnny left and moved in the basement apt Eric threw a fit he got away with all of this because Johnny had no self esteem and eric took advantage of that .at this point johnny obviously didn't care if only johnny stood up to Eric but having such a low self worth he fealt as if he deserved this treatment And a normalized disposition to abuse from having a father that constantly put you down to having a friend it seemed normal he loved and hated Eric at the same time Eric was a ginger hungarian jew he liked the fact that his hair color was symmetrical with being of celtic ancestry he talked with an Irish accent sometimes it was just plain stupid he was extremely possessive he went threw Johnny's phone after going threw it and finding out he was playing guitar for erics friend he told him it was nothing personal what he should have said was you fucking suck at guitar you can't play for shit and he approached me he sees now that Eric was never really Johnny's friend he just liked to have someone around to make him feel better about himself the best of a bad situation if you will. They were smoking tons of crack threw their friendship but not even the phrase drug buddy could describe their relationship. but he more or less considered him to be his neighbor. Because they werent even buddies but, johnny was a no saint when his friend cal skimmed $200 off a $1200 debt johnny was supposed to collect but was busy so he sent his friend .He couldn't believe it cal said he only got the 1000 even though johnny told him if he did him this favour he could have $200 but he was just another shady piece of shit so he had to be made an example of him this wasn't about the $200 extra dollars that weasel conned it was the principal of the situation. Johnny laid out tarps in his apt menacing would have been the charge and wore rubber see threw gloves and combat boots on also he had his his high point c-9 mm strapped to him and was in plain view of course it wasn't loaded but cal didn't know that hed brought his psychotic friend who had a hachett with him for back up cal was never ....in any danger this On one hand idk why anyone would go inside a basement apt covered in tarps after knowingly decieving the owner of the apt.and johnny said they'd been camping this was a scare tactic that went off without a hitch and it worked johnny confronted cal and said that he gave him $200 just for picking up some money why would he lie and say that the guy only gave him $1000 he wanted answers cal said so what? I'm just gonna go out side to which johnnys soldier said you ain't going nowhere he ran as fast as he could leaving behind his gf nothing happened to her behind johnny didnt know cal was going to bring his gf he never met this girl before but i guess it was an added bonus so shed see what a pussy he was yelling rape up and down the street he soon left chicago saying it's too crazy there. But the lesson he should've learned was knowing your friends and family are all you got and you should never deceive them and this all came to fruition and that's all it was and all will ever be by the time Eric got evicted Johnny's md lost his license so he had to leave because he was catatonic seizuring this went on for months then started drinking heavily til he looked in the mirror and did not like what he saw an overweight disgusting person so he quit the drinking and worked out constantly everyday til he was in the single digits bodyfat he took it a little far 1000s crunches 1000 suicides 1000 push-ups and walking ten miles 5 minute planks this was his new addiction he didn't no the meaning of moderation. then just joined a gym he was once again dabbling with benzos when he rediscovered a black market for them in which you pay with btc or xmr not that much at first but he gradually increased his dose he went to see Eric same shit happened Eric grew tired of him and casted him out once again he always sought out erics approval. Even though it meant so little to him all he wanted was any version of an attaboy he went catatonic and ..seizured and ended up in a psychward. PART 4 once he was back on his feet he delved deeper into his addiction it got to the point where every other week he was buying 1000 clonazolam selling selling 200 to keep the cycle going clonazolam is a designer benzo approximately 4 times more powerful then xanax at any given time so he tried rehab one more time it was clear that this facility was not suitable for him he was put on a ativan taper 6 times always having the same out come seizures and after 50 days there he eventually had a stroke they didn't know he found out months later because he never stopped taking these benzos so on his way back home to Chicago his landlord had threw him out not because of money because he always paid his rent it was because he never signed a lease and his landlord knew he could get more for his apt he had several seizures on the way there so they stopped at a hospital in Springfield IL. And from the mri ekg they had discovered the stroke he had had. His story is not to glamorize drugs but to open people's eyes on the dangers of benzos he is not clean and doubts he will ever be because he has never truly gave sobriety a chance til he started going to na meetings at the hazelden on dearbourne he thought he was clean just because he quit heroin not realizing just because a doctor writes you a script it turns drugs into medication that he was not clean not even remotely hed use right after rehab everytime it was the thoughts in his head saying your a piece of shit you dont deserve love those thoughts tortured johnny so he self medicated but has grown as a person unlike his for mentioned friend who will never change his feathers he sees that now it seems to him that the people who cared about him were the ones he could always rely on the ones that dont care if you have money or not, like the harbor boys they were a group of homeless lincoln park kids that johnny looked after giving them money for food or cigs or beer because they looked out for him when he was homeless but never ran out of hustles hed remarket walmart supplements and sell them on ebay one time elias found a shitload of dilaudid and methadone in a dumpster johnny bought it for $20 but later gave him a stack because johnny fealt for elias he knows what homelessness looks like and the smile on his face was all payment he needed.his relationship with the as formentioned Eric was done when johnny gave Eric around $200 worth of pharmaceuticals just to see how eric was hed heard eric had cancer even though it was the same eric that had took johnnys roommate, stole his prescription glasses because they were raybans not knowing the lenses cost more then the frames themselves, and the topping on the cake stole johnnys grandfathers golf club that was all johnny had to remember him by invaded johnnys privacy eric just wanted more he stole johnnys guitar a guitar that paulie claimed he briefly played with styx with but that didnt matter when johnny made friends it wasnt about what he could get out of the relationship it was the soul that he looked into even though paulie played a small role in John's life johnny looked out for him on his death bed he gave johnny a Martin dcp4a just because he was sick and knew johnny would give it a proper home eric stole it thank god johnny had found the pawnshop where it was he showed the documents prooving it was his guitar and got it back. From here on out he. Johnny only TOLERATEd eric because Eric was johnnys quaalude supplier. After all of this johnny flipped out and shot eric in a spot he knew would go right threw so he stopped fuckin with him, he pittied eric because Eric was a sst army ranger and suffered from ptsd terribly after 2 tours in afghanistan and 1 in iraq.He lives his life now trying to get back to where he once was figuratively because he's so depressed and misery loves company and if he's going to make a he was always so very lonely even in a room full of people so he drank and popped pills on a daily basis to drown the pain of a life lost after hundreds of seizures and a stroke after being dope sick in jail countless times after so many overdoses and chances to stop without listening after being the chair person at a NA meeting at Hazelden for 6 months. when he stopped the dope he had finally come to realize that you can turn anything into heroin and while some people do hit their rock bottoms and change but to him all the friends he has lost the people that go in and out of your lives only to change it for the better or for the worse, threw all the hustles, all the seizures, the stroke the od's the stints in jail, being homeless when the winter the weather forecast said chicago would be colder then mars .He has come to realize that compared to some addicts he became quite successful . there is no bottom and his home has changed so much threw gentrification. All he has are memories. He gargles xanax down with a pint of rum daily no rehab facilities will accept him because he's so far gone all he lives for are his memories he doesn't suspect it will get any better so he put his high tech c- 9mm in his mouth pulled the trigger and it jammed it is a cheaply made gun that jams a lot he bought it at a pawnshop years ago. so much more depressed living by himself once apon a time his phone wouldn't stop ringing from friends to gf's to custys and his misfit toys now it's lucky if he gets a call from a creditor so far in debt bankruptcy is the option so decided enough was enough and started a taper he's trying to taper but it's so god damn difficult and he's scared hes more then scared at the person he's become no girl has ever scene him in benzo withdrawal exept in rehab while he was waiting in med line sat down in front of the nurses station let out a blood curdling scream and seized this is the formentioned stroke benzo withdrawal when you consider the amount johnny was taking is at least 100× worse then heroin withdrawal and it lasts for months to even years considering p.a.w.s. he added on subutex to his taper because he's always in a great deal of pain 2 herniated disks a shattered ankle that never fully recovered a stab wound etc. because he confronted one of the dealers he dealt with and instead of giving him bromazolam he gave him xylazine he immediately knew it was no benzo a) because he was still in a state of withdrawal and b) because he knew what this feeling was like it fealt like if youd taken too many clonidines and baclofen the staggering the uncertain footing johnny had high blood pressure his whole life so he takes the clonidine for this reason once he made it apparent he wouldn't deal with this vendor no more he didn't care he was scared of the future or the bleakness of it .not because he was living in LA or kc but because he was living with himself and no matter where he'd go on the vastness of the globe he would still be him and that's what kept him up at night. The fact that you can never run away from yourself. PART 5 you can go any where in the world but you are still you this is the story of johnny kinda rumbled out of order but you get it. He had one person in his life that would never gave up on johnny and that was Josh he met Josh when he was 14 over at als house they were playing guitar Johnny has always had a great deal of respect for josh and will always consider him a brother john now works as a crypto consultant and remote salesmen although watching everybody surpass you in every in chicago he worked as a audio engineer .it makes it hard to get out of bed. But johnny lives by himself and once he feels he's better then he'll return back to the world of the living johnny knew he was flawed but his anxiety was becoming far worse slowly turning into depression. addiction went rampant in johnnys family his great grandfather drank turpentine because he was so poor and died at the age of 32 from eshogeal vericies. Putting his grandmother in a horrible situation they grew up like pilgrims no heat electricity or running water she was ridiculed at school everyday because she was 100% German was poor had only 2 dresses the kids were awful to her calling her nazi and what ever the current mean things to say at the time but this toughned her up. she had her addictions aswell diet pills and norco they say it skips a generation that might be true his grandfather used to ride the trains like freight trains to get from point a to point b til one unlucky day he wore a brand new pair of leather dress shoes and slipped off and his feet were chopped off under the tracks he was a tall man 7ft and slim 160 lbs he met his wife at church and they fell in love he hooked her house up with running water heat and electricity. He made a career out of working on trains and once stopped a collision from happening if he could lose his feet doctors telling him hed never walk again and going back to work for the very thing that almost killed him his grandfather was a hero he was a wasnt even in the same ballpark as far as tenacity goes. Hes scared to ask for help from anybody but he did johnny does not believe that we are powerless over are addictions quite the contrary he believes we give our addictions the power he only holds himself responsible for his addictions doesnt blame genetics or how he was raised or the sycophants and succubus that push you into that direction. The stroke he had had at the previous rehab stint thankfully did not affect him with cognitively so hes writing what he remembers but thats just the tip of the ice berg,what was once blue was now black and this deeply saddened him he was the first to do coke and dope out of all his misfit toys and all the other lost souls that followed him into the abyss Thank God they never went down benzo st. With him he lost so many people he truly cared about and loved he obviously changed the names except for a few this story because like he said b4 some addicts do hit their rock bottoms but to johnny the several hundred seizure survivor the stroke survivor the 3 stints at cook county one at lake and one at DuPage and one in sedgwick. This once extrovert has become quite the opposite just like the guitar that his friend paulie gave him on his deathbed the guitar he loved so much the guitar that was stolen and went threw hell retrieving it that one of his exes stomped on in a fit of rage totalling it, while it was in its its case he feels forgotten out of tune worthless and irreparable for some of us there is no rock bottom just a Neverending well into darkness. those are the ones who hate themselves the most and don't believe in second chances. Those are the ones who watch life go by afraid of what's to come it's a very lonely way to live but once your sorrow turns to apathy as you watch your life pass you by & the Neverending sonat continues. He's lived his life to the fullest and although the regrets keep him up at night he's thankful to be alive and although he's got a lot of work to do before being in a relationship with any one he looks forward to finally putting himself first. After living this life he was diagnosed with ptsd. This is a painted portrait of a troubled soul not the b.s. that shows like shameless teach this generation. -the 66fallenangels

I had been on the fence about it for months now but it was a good learning experience for sure. I have been asleep for two hours over the last twenty six. The steroid isn't allowing me to sleep and sleep has always been my best medicine without Norco. I had been prescribed by my doctor that would eventually lose his license for a pill mill. I had left his practice a few years before it happened and he was always a great doctor. I've been blessed to have a child I am able to raise at home and since school has started found a great part time during school job at Amazon that will pay for college degrees and has amazing insurance. It's just repetitive bending after only four hours four times a week caused pain that cannabis OTC medicine and my chiropractic care couldn't control. This led me to pain management and feeling like a lab rat with them wanting to try invasive procedures that may or may not work knowing what has worked in the past. Now that the experiment is finished they are telling me to go to an er with at least six hours wait to suffer. The only pain felt during the injection was intense and spread from my neck all the way down to my calf. This pain has not subsidized and is nothing I've felt before. They say any pain above injection area isn't they're problem and could last two to seven days. The injection spot is fine. Have spoken to them and primary care but they have made no effort to help at this point. I had really hoped for a better outcome because I really love my job and can better our lives unless I'm going to be paralyzed and unable to function daily. I injured my back thirty years ago physical therapy chiropractic care and exercise helped for twenty years before the medication. Cannabis helped after meds. Now it's getting mentally painful too. I have to find a new doctor and my health anxiety is out of control. I'm thankful for the relief it's giving others and am appreciative for everyone's opinions and support! These last twenty four hours has created all new problems and I have to share my experience with Ascension medical group.
TL;DR Steroid injection in my experience is just an experimental treatment and can cause extra injury without any other recourse. Beware.

I’ve been an opiate user for 12 years. It’s been on and off with sobriety. Sometimes I get to a couple years. Sometimes I’m on for a year strait. It’s been a pretty standard story. Had a bad back injury at 25, was prescribed way too many Norcos. And things progressed as expected from there.
I had been sober for 2 years when I relapsed for the up-teenth time in early 2021. At first my dealer was able to get my regular oxy. But things had changed in that 2 year period I was sober. Fentanyl had taken over the market. My dealer was quickly out of the regular oxys. So I tried fentanyl for the first time.
I was engaged to the love of my life that Thursday. We had been together over a year, had booked the wedding venue, and she had got her dress the week before.
I took the exact same amount of fentanyl as I would have if it had been regular oxy. Needless to say, I died. I was brought back to life by a portable defibrillator machine the paramedics had brought. I was also helped by them drilling a hole through my shin to inject narcan directly into my bone marrow, as my heart and lungs were not working to take narcan a normal way. I woke up as they were carrying me down my parents hallway on a tarp they had rolled out. There wasn’t enough time for them to get the gurney. They kept bouncing me against the wall in that damn tarp, like transporting a beached whale.
My fiancé left me the next day. It’s been 2 years and I haven’t heard or talked to her since.
Her leaving me sent my down a “spite” spiral. After all, I had been clean for 2 years. I had only relapsed a few days ago, and she left me. My stupid addict mind thought “ I don’t deserve this!! I’ll give her something to leave me about!!” My strategy was to relapse even harder, to justify her absence. Somehow I had decided that the best way to deal with the situation, was to hurt myself even more.
About a week later I overdosed again (for the first time I OD twice in the same week). Same paramedics. Same drill into my shin for narcan. No defibrillator this time.
My mom is kind and old. She has blood pressure issues. The second time caused her so much stress that she got physically ill. So I had to leave their house. Me and my finance had just moved in a couple months prior. We were saving up for a down payment for a home we had put a small holding deposit on.
I live in the CA Bay Area. I started driving south and staying in AirBnBs at beach towns for a few months. Most of that time I was sober, but heartbroken. Crying every day about her moving away and having no way to contact her.
I ended up in Scottsdale AZ. I went to college out there at ASU, so I had some friends in the area. Long story short, the Phoenix metropolitan area is not a good place to go if you want to stay away from drugs. Fenty blues could be bought from $1-$3 dollars each. I had accidentally stumbled into an opiate users paradise in the middle of a downward spiral.
She told me she loves me more than anything, and that I have been a wonderful son. She’s enjoyed the time that she’s had on this earth with me. And she has loved me unconditionally from the day I was born right up to and including now.
Update: Here is a video that makes this post NSFW. It was after the first dose of Narcan. I passed out again and needed a 2nd. My mom started recording because she thought the first dose had worked. You can see she puts the phone down once she realizes it didn't. She wanted me to see what I was doing to myself, and what they have to experience. I am ashamed, humiliated, and sick of myself. Again, I'm not suicidal and I don't want to die. I am helpless. I see some not kind comments. Maybe I need those. But I am looking for inspiration. This was 1 and a half of the Fentanyl Blue pills. Snorted. I had been sober since May, so my tolerance is nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hp0BrB5FC-I

Quick backstory: In 2010 I was 20 and made a huge lifestyle change and dropped my weight from 315lbs to about 168lbs in about 8-9 months. I was so happy I was able to do this naturally on my own, but of course I was left with the extra skin and stubborn fat. I was hesitant and a broke college student, so I put off the tummy tuck. Im still so proud of myself for losing the weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle!!
Fast forward 12 years later: So last Wednesday (1/18) I finally got the tummy tuck & also opted to get lipo done on my flanks as well as abdomen. The first few days of recovery were extremely painful as I knew would be the the case. Here I am one week pos-op, and I feel like my incision itself is healing nicely. I’m took myself of the Norco on Monday, but the only excruciating area I seem to have pain in in my upper back where lipo was performed. I have been sleeping in an elevated position per doctor’s instructions.
I was just curious if anyone else who has had an abdominoplasty/lipo has experienced significant pain in their upper back from the lipo entry point. If so, how long did this pain take to subside for you?
I see my doctor tomorrow for a post-op appt and hopefully will be getting one of my drains removed. Overall, I’m so happy with how much the lipo did contour my pecs and remove my flanks :)

Quick backstory: In 2010 I was 20 and made a huge lifestyle change and dropped my weight from 315lbs to about 168lbs in about 8-9 months. I was so happy I was able to do this naturally on my own, but of course I was left with the extra skin and stubborn fat. I was hesitant and a broke college student, so I put off the tummy tuck. Im still so proud of myself for losing the weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle!!
Fast forward 12 years later: So last Wednesday (1/18) I finally got the tummy tuck & also opted to get lipo done on my flanks as well as abdomen. The first few days of recovery were extremely painful as I knew would be the the case. Here I am one week pos-op, and I feel like my incision itself is healing nicely. I’m took myself of the Norco on Monday, but the only excruciating area I seem to have pain in in my upper back where lipo was performed. I have been sleeping in an elevated position per doctor’s instructions.
I was just curious if anyone else who has had an abdominoplasty/lipo has experienced significant pain in their upper back from the lipo entry point. If so, how long did this pain take to subside for you?
I see my doctor tomorrow for a post-op appt and hopefully will be getting one of my drains removed. Overall, I’m so happy with how much the lipo did contour my pecs and remove my flanks :)

I guess the beginning of the story is as good as a place as any to start johnny grew up in a house without love but violence his father was a immigrant and his mother grew up a 7th day adventist in laments terms means church every saturday no dating going to the movies or drinking alcohol any time or watching tv or handling money on the sabbath . They had met in a bar while drinking this will become apparent momentarily, & were engaged w/in a year later. Anyways after tying the knot she wanted to celebrate with some drinks to which he said no you are my wife now and its against our meaning his religion, He quickly began to show his true colors she had found out that he had illegitimate children w/ some other women before they were married or so she says johnny had his suspicions that one of his affairs was the culprit. johnny feels that she acted without thinking about herself like she often did she could be an erratic women at times. He has had 2 affairs over their marriage he treated her like his property she began to feel the way after his constant bombardment of negativity she began to feel like she didnt deserve love like the way johnny feels all the time as if too know him more is too love him less. Johnny feels so deeply for his mother and her dwindling self esteem. Johnny fealt that she should have left him right then and there and gotten a divorce while she was still young. But her mother with her old fashioned ideology forbade it saying you can't break up the family even b4 they had one johnny resents his grandmother for that. She deserved love they all did his father just wasn't apt to fulfill those needs though. Johnny feels as if he scammed her for citizenship because once they were married his demeanor quickly changed over night he too could have had a better childhood assuming he wouldve been born, if only things were different. Things began to change for the worse. It became apparent that when you look at someone threw rose colored glasses all the red flags appear white. Every boy needs a father not a fucking mental case he remembered one time his mother gave him $20 to buy a video game crash bandicoot 2 for ps1 she worked that night so his father took him to best buy for his own reasons johnny bought the game the cashier wrung it up wrong so it made a bit of commotion when his father had scene what he had bought he broke the game into little pieces. Instead of giving him the money so he could put in his make believe bank ( for an Arab he acted more like a jew) He then broke the game into little pieces and beat johnny, just one example out of many more too come. It was obvious that to johnny his mother was always ignoring her problems til they went away but that not how life works. he blames the movie dr.zhivago for her mistake. she could trace her family lineage to the mayflower she briefly belonged to a upscale group called daughters of the American revolution. She has always tried to find the best in everyone and everything she was his rock. He fealt bad for his mother because she was so kind and honest she deserved to be loved & was in a loveless marriage she deserved to have a son who would excell not the disappointment that johnny feels that he is if he could give up his life so she could restart hers he would have she deserves to retire not continue working threw her 70s but cant because every house they had bought she obviously put the down payment on everytime she had 3 foreclosures and a chapter 7 bankruptcy so far because his father was terrible w/ money but he never gambled with his own he had her for that he wouldnt lose anything when the houses she put all the down payments on went tits up. He claimed no responsibility always making her the scape goat .His father was raised in a completely different culture and the culture clash really affected his children. Johnnys father opened up a convient store when johnny was little in Cabrini green which was another stupid investment , one night when the store was robbed he lost his business partner and best friend who had died from a fatal gunshot wound. Johnny came to realize that his fathers overwhelming sense of guilt and anger maybe was why he treated johnny the way he did which was a astute observation a that any child could make. johnny couldn't tell you how many times his father hit him with shit. But can tell you how many times his father said he loved him which is zero.This was his childhood. His family was messed up he loved his mother but he was also angry at her because she had him in when she was 39 so it's pretty much obvious that she probably wont ever retire, thanks to his deadbeat father... he knew that he wasnt going to have a mother for that long. His best friend since he was 8 was al he sleptover at al's all the time als father had a serious colĺection of horror films .and they were horror film buffs whenever he could go over there he did, he saw what a loving family looked like. Then they both found music al liked metal but johnny liked punk the first cd he bought was the ramones live w/ cj & Marky he was 12 years old. The music saved his life he no longer cared about the abuse the first show he went too was the adicts at Logan square auditorium. His mother knew hed be gone for the weekend but when he came home his posters were all ripped from his wall band shirts lit on fire and had a beating waiting for him but by this time he realized that everybody takes a beating ever so often he was not special he fell head over heels for the scene at that particular show there was a 5 block line to get in at the adicts show his favorite riot fest was the first riot fest at the congress dickies dk w/out jello the street brats he pretty much saw every band he wanted too over the next 15 yrs of his life his favorite chicago band was the street brats he's also seen the deadboys- stiv and iggy pop he went all over the city the congress grant park Logan square auditorium the beat kitchen and slowly but surely the scene died along w/ 77's cms pogo sick and johnny was sad but it just happens people grow up and in the words of death cab 4 cutie theres nothing righteous being 60& punk if he listed all the bands hed scene this would be alot more then a short story, He missed the days when you could smoke indoors so the shows he went too when he was 14 they were comical because there were always mosh pits for bands and the place was covered with a layer of smoke so you would see people passing out. This was a great way to blow off steam and his anger towards his life moshing and getting in fights and it breaks his heart because the scene has died pt.1 .he'd later get into heroin because all his heroes were dope fiends johnny thunders DeeDee Ramone Richard hell anyways back to him. He knew there was something wrong him he never fealt normal he always so anxious & hyper he was diagnosed with adhd. but the pills had the opposite effect on him they made him more anxious and wild so he was eventually was diagnosed with G.A.D. all of his life his father also suffered from something anger problems mania and depression So johnny figured he was bipolar . skip ahead a few years and he joined a band and they got good fast they played several shows even were on the bill w/ the casualties and the briefs at logan square,til he found this girl his band saved him from the shitty home situation every weekend he truly loved his band and his band mates but he stupidly put his gf first and flipped out when one of his bandmates said something about her he didn't like that because not only did he think he was in love he also never jacked off before not for a lack of trying lol just couldn't get it right til he fucked her an hour after meeting her they started dating so for the first 14.5 yrs of his life he was a virgin she was on her 10th 👦they went out for a couple months she got pregnant and he sent her a letter w/ 250 dollar check in the memo line it said "Johnny's half" and they broke up. he was broken hearted not because of the girl but because of the band his best friends his brothers he had left behind they went on to be truly amazing it still breaks his heart that his misprioritized his life for a fling when he quit the band that had saved him from his home life. He still talks to his guitarist from time to time this isnt really vital to the story but johnny thought hed say it anyways when the guitar player went to a christian college and was brainwashed using military grade procedures to build a cult he was out of it for quite sometime but his spark is coming back he still talks too him from time to time. But this happened much later in this story, so he coped with that pain of losing his band with weed and amphetamines also he forgot to mention that he grew up kinda fat which will become apparent momentarily he smoked weed whenever he could before he discovered ccc's they were the dumbest thing he'd ever got into and unknowingly when he took 32 of them he was with his friends chase and mal and they picked up al. chase wanted to rob al johnnys confudant his childhood friend his best friend al ,johnny was out of his mind and didnt know what was happening not in control he didnt realize what was happening after chased punched al he said if you leave me here. they werent going be friends and johnny and chase just laughed and left him behind the toys r us it wasnt until he started to come down he realized what had happened the truly heinous thing his friend chased cooked up that he was apartied too his friend chase was jealous of al and johnnys friendship and all al had on him was him was 2 dollars not that that had mattered chase just wanted al out of the picture. johnny regrets his friendship with chase he was skinny by this time but had an anorexic mindset meaning that anytime he looked the mirror all he would see was fat he got up too taking 32 of those pills at any given time when he overdosed he was 6 feet tall and weighed 120 lbs after two stints in the psychward he agreed to go to rehab because when his grandmother told him about how his grandfather reacted he fealt sad not the outside but on the inside he was taught to show any type of emotion was a weakness when he got out he went right back to smoking weed and when that wasn't enough anymore . Cocaine and alcohol were his thing now and his little crew of misfit toys did it everyday practically when one of them stole his connect he was furious but that's neither here nor there. he was mandated to go to rehab again same outcome went right back to booze and coke til & h johnny was a good theif he stole expensive clothes designer sunglasses and when his parents went out of town for the weekend johnny threw a party after him and his friend lee went to jewel and since Osco the part of jewel that had the pharmacy and the liquor. Was closed they kept filling their backpacks with bottles of whiskey and rum and vodka til the trunk was full they mustve gotten away with at least $3000 worth of booze seriously they had filled 3 big garbage bags w/ alcohol and hid it in johnnys basement the day before johnnys father went away his one friend asked fast forward 6 months PART 2 . Backtracking just a little bit before all this johnny tried dope he was 15 he bought 2 bags i guess right place wrong time but he loved it, it would be several years til he got the chance to do it again he was doing it then at a fairly regular basis until it was an everyday thing when johnny od d in antwons car while waiting for his friend Pete to cop him an 8 ball antwon tried putting the bags in johnnys pocket or just ditching him on that day PETE WOULDNT LET HIM anyways fast forward several months he and mitch were bored and cold so they went to sit in Pete's car Pete thought they were trying to rob him Pete saved johnnys life it hurt johnny that pete fealt so little of him and then misunderstand the whole situation and had one of his crew members punch mitch and johnny in the face Pete realized what he had in his car was worthless but he never apologized and johnny still feels bad about that . By this time he and his misfit toys were following johnny right off the bridge from just coke to sniffing dope to shooting speed balls. he met Elle several months before this and he really liked her she had this energy that johnny loved for the person she was he loved her laugh she had the most incredible green eyes and pale but its the small imperfections like her underbite that truly made her beautiful he didn't want to ruin her life he just wanted to share everything with her they were inseperable despite her parents hating johnny they would take the train most of the time. He remembers one time when they were on the train they announced michael jackson had died.He really did love her as much as someone like him could love someone ,and when he found out some guy shot her up he was so upset he wanted to kill this guy but didn't know him. this time his father confronted him they got into it he really hurt his father and still feels awful about it when he was 17. So he was kicked out and stayed in chicago for the time being he went to rehab again and cried to her on the phone til she went too but they both fucked up and went right back now he was living in Chicago some of time and bg to sling the other times one time after they copped elle fell over right outside the Deerfield train stop he didnt know if she did it on purpose or what but the police were there within 30 seconds johnny ran and still remembers the officers yelling stop or well shoot he eventually got tired and they asked him if anything was going to stick them when they were searching of course he forgot about the rig in his pocket and they beat the shit out of him this was not the first run in with the law in fact he was on pretrial probation in Lake County for possession of heroin once they were both apprehended at a little restaurant outside the train station in round lake that was probably the most sick johnny ever was his arms were absolutely covered in track marks thank god he had a celly who understood i guess track marks become very prominent if you reuse the same needle he was in lake county jail the mail that Elle wrote him got him threw it for about for about 40 days using a terrible public defender he copped to 1 count of possession and was given 4/10 felony probation he then just stayed in chicago not that shithole of a town anymore they had let the house go into foreclosure so he left not looking back he lived in Chicago streeterville so everything he coped he would just walk a block catch the 66 to the west side just 2 Ukraine village or humboldt park he will always have memories some good some bad like the 1 time johnny shot up bathsalts and ended up hiding in a dumpster from the invisable police. And another awful memory was the first time he did crystal meth he got some from his old roommate and after sniffing some went to Clark and division where he knew hed find a black. prostitute this particular one costed johnny $15 so he was about to fuck her but the smell coming off her the homeless smell thats oh so distinguishable it was so awful that he immediately aborted and that incident will haunt johnny forever but when he got back to his future roommates house he was spun he washed a sink full of dishes and the smell of the rotting food immediately reminded him of that prostitutes odor so he immediately puked all night long his friend Eric stayed up with him he had some rocks so he wasn't tired at all johnny didn't stop puking til the next morning after filling his promethazine. .one memory that he will never forget is after walking to the west side from streeterville and back he saw the blackhawks w/ Niemi stanley cup final game he watched threw the glass at a bar called Tuman's on Leavitt because he was only 18,he he had no idea how he could ever get threw probation PART 3 he knew how to play md's so he was got himself a prescription to xanax then when they cut him off he went to a different dr. And then the doctor he prescribed johnny what ever he wanted at the peak he was getting max doses of soma, halcion, Restoril, prosom, baclofen, promethazine xanax subutex while also getting 4 mg of k-pins and cialis from a different doctor so he was loving it he was always comfortably numb he finished his probation with ease not aware of the upcoming storm when he moved to McKinley Park to go school for audio arts let's back track just a little here he was locked up in cook county jail 3 times during his probation the second time he got popped he met Eric they instantly clicked singing johnny rebel songs out load they should've been killed johnny was never convicted of anything because he had an amazing lawyer he has been arrested for 10 different felonies that his lawyer got him off he finally finished school but one day he went completely catatonic having several seizures his friends tried taking him to a detox center but they didn't know these symptoms so eventually he went the hospital and the Dr immediately knew he detoxed him off all the other stuff And after about a week he was at a baseline of 20mg of valium this was him and elle started drifting apart elle eventually realized that she was the love their relationship was the river and he was the cinder blocks on her feet. he was an anchor around her neck that she would be better off without him i mean she was right So they split up...he was so heartbroken that he obviously didn't listen to the hospital.md so he went back to his dr and even though the hospital dr called him he didn't care then he went right back to his array of medications he later ran into Eric on Belmont they hugged he was with his new gf Allie for their 2 week anniversary he got her a pair of $650 bvlgari sunglasses, she was sweet at first but just like his father quickly showed her true colors. you could tell she grew up spoiled because if she didn't get what she wanted she'd throw a huge tantrum he gave her a subutex once and deeply regrets it. and then she was just the worst type of person always throwing fits calling him names then once she got her sub from him just to get her to shut up it was all i love you it was a very unstable relationship after staying johnny abruptly ended after she attacked him he moved to LA for a bit he moved back to Chicago he hooked up with Eric immediately Eric had an age of stagnation of someone in his teens you could tell because when he broke up with the 2 girlfriends he'd had in the 6 years they were chilling again he would rib them and demoralize them just that type of person he had tiny hands i alwa y s thought that was weird considering his height he was like a mean girl nice to your face chop you up to pieces when you were gone and his fucking crack tantrums were the worst he constantly clipped johnny wings but by this time johnny was just using him for a place to live til johnny left and moved in the basement apt Eric threw a fit he got away with all of this because Johnny had no self esteem and eric took advantage of that .at this point johnny obviously didn't care if only johnny stood up to Eric but having such a low self worth. always figured hed be treated that way like but from having a father that constantly put you down to having a friend it seemed normal he loved and hated Eric at the same time Eric like to pretend a lot that he was irish even though he was a hungarian jew he talked with an accent sometimes it was just plain stupid he was extremely possessive he went threw Johnny's phone after going threw it and finding out he was playing guitar for erics friend he told him it was nothing personal what he should have said was you fucking suck at guitar you can't play for shit and he approached me he sees now that Eric was never really Johnny's friend he just liked to have someone around to make him feel better about himself the best of a bad situation if you will. They were smoking tons of crack threw their friendship so the word drug buddy comes to fruition now he just considered him his neighbor.johnny was a no saint when his friend cal skimmed $200 off a $1200 debt johnny was supposed to collect but was busy so he sent his friend .He couldn't believe it cal said he was johnnys friend but was just another shady piece of shit so he had to be made an example of him. Johnny laid out tarps in his apt just for a scare tactic menacing would have been the charge and wore rubber gloves had his 9mm & doc martens hed brought his psychotic friend who had a hachett with him for back up cal was never ....in any danger this was a scare tactic that went off without a hitch and it worked johnny confronted cal and said that he gave him $200 just for picking up some money why would he lie and say that the guy only gave him $1000 he wanted answers cal said I'm just gonna go out side and johnnys back up said you ain't going nowhere then this happened ..cal ran leaving his gf behind yelling rape up and down the street he soon left chicago saying it's too crazy there. But the lesson he should've learned was knowing you dont fuck with your friends and this all came to fruition and that's all it was and all will ever be by the time Eric got evicted Johnny's md lost his license so he had to leave because he was catatonic seizuring this went on for months then started drinking heavily til he looked in the mirror and did not like what he saw an overweight disgusting person so he quit the drinking and worked out constantly everyday til he was in the single digits bodyfat he took it a little far 1000s crunches 1000 suicides 1000 push-ups and walking ten miles 5 minute planks this was his new addiction he didn't no the meaning of moderation. then just joined a gym he was once again dabbling with benzos when he discovered a black market for them in which you pay with btc or xmr not that much at first but he gradually increased his dose he went to see Eric same shit happened Eric grew tired of him and casted him out once again he always sought out erics approval. Even though it meant so little to him all he wanted was an attaboy he went catatonic and ..seizured and ended up in a psychward. PART 4 once he was back on his feet he delved deeper into his addiction it got to the point where every other week he was buying 1000 clonazolam bars clonazolam is a designer benzo approximately 4 times more powerful then xanax at any given time so he tried rehab one more time it was clear that this facility was not suitable for him he was put on a ativan taper 6 times always having the same out come seizures and after 50 days there he eventually had a stroke they didn't know he found out months later because he never stopped taking these benzos so on his way back home to Chicago his landlord had threw him out not because of money because he always paid his rent it was because he never signed a lease and his landlord knew he could get more for his apt he had several seizures on the way there so they stopped at a hospital in Springfield IL. And from the mri ekg they had discovered the stroke he had had. His story is not to glamorize drugs but to open people's eyes on the dangers of benzos he is not clean and doubts he will ever be because he has never given sobriety a chance hed use right after rehab everytime it was the thoughts in his head saying your a piece of shit you dont deserve love those thoughts tortured johnny so he self medicated but has grown as a person unlike his for mentioned friend who will never change his feathers he sees that now it seems to him that the people who cared about him were the ones he could always rely on the ones that dont care if you have money or not, like the harbor boys they were a group of homeless lincoln park kids that johnny looked after giving them money for food or cigs or beer one time elias found a shitload of dilaudid and methadone in a dumpster johnny bought it for$20 his relationship with the as formentioned Eric is done when johnny gave Eric around $200 worth of pharmaceuticals just to see how eric was hed heard eric had cancer even though Even though it was the same eric that had took johnnys roommate, stole his prescription glasses because they were raybans not knowing the lenses cost more then the glasses themselves, and the topping on the cake stole johnnys grandfathers golf club that was all johnny had to remember him by invaded johnnys privacy eric just wanted more he stole johnnys guitar a guitar that paulie claimed he briefly played with styx with but that didnt matter when johnny made friends it wasnt about what he could get out of the relationship it was the soul that he looked into even though paulie played a small role in John's life johnny looked out for him on his death bed he gave johnny a Martin dcp4a just because he was sick and knew johnny would play eric stole it thank god johnny had found the pawnshop where it was he showed the documents prooving it was his guitar and got it back. From here on out he. only put up with Eric. because now johnny only puts up w/ eric because Eric was johnnys quaalude supplier he lives his life now as a ghost because he's so depressed and misery loves company he's always so very lonely drinks and pops pills on a daily basis to drown the pain of a life lost after hundreds of seizures and a stroke after being dope sick in jail countless times after so many overdoses and chances to stop without listening after being the chair person at a NA meeting at Hazelden for 6 months. when he stopped the dope he had finally come to realize that you can turn anything into heroin and while some people do hit their rock bottoms and change but to him all the friends he has lost the people that go in and out of your lives only to change it for the better or for the worse never do threw all the hustles all the seizures the stroke the od's the stints in jail being homeless after chairing a meeting .He has come to realize that for some addicts there is no bottom and his home has changed so much threw gentrification. All he has are memories. He gargles xanax down with a pint of rum daily no rehab facilities will accept him because he's so far gone all he lives for are his memories he doesn't suspect it will get any better so he bought as previously stated he has hi-c 9mm doesn't care its a cheaply made gun that jams a lot he so depressed living by himself once apon a time his phone wouldn't stop ringing from friends to gf's to custys and his misfit toys now it's lucky if he gets a call from a creditor so far in debt bankruptcy is the option he still greatly reduced his benzo & rum intake and he's scared he more then scared at the person he's become no girl has scene him him in benzo withdrawal exept in rehab he was waiting in med line sat down in front of the nurses station let out a blood curdling scream and seized this is the formentioned stroke which is 100× worse then heroin withdrawal he added on xylazine because he confronted one of the dealers he dealt with and instead of giving him bromazolam he gave him xylazine he immediately knew it was no benzo a) because he was still in a state of withdrawal and b) because he knew what this feeling was like it fealt like if youd taken too many clonidines and baclofen the staggering the uncertain footing johnny had high blood pressure his whole life so once he made it apparent he wouldn't deal with this vendor no more he didn't care he was scared of the future not because he was living in LA or kc but because he was living with himself and no matter where he'd go on the vastness of the globe he would still be him and that's what kept him up at night. The fact that you can never run away from yourself. PART 5 you can go any where in the world but you are still you this is the story of johnny kinda rumbled out of order but you get it. He had one person in his life that would never give up on johnny and that was Josh he met Josh at a sleepover at als house they were playing guitar he Johnny has a great deal of respect for josh and will always consider him a brother john now works as a crypto consultant although watching everybody surpass you in every conceivable way it makes it hard to get out of bed. But johnny lives isolated by himself and once he feels he's better then he'll return back to Chicago johnny knew he was flawed addiction went rampant in johnnys family his great grandfather drank turpentine because he was so poor and died at the age of 32 from eshogeal vericies. Putting his grandmother in a horrible situation they grew up like pilgrims no heat electricity or running water she was ridiculed at school everyday because she was 100% German was poor had only 2 dresses the kids were awful to her calling her nazi and what ever the current mean things to say at the time but this toughned her up. she had her addictions aswell diet pills and norco they say it skips a generation that might be true his grandfather used to ride the trains like freight trains to get from point a to point b til one unlucky day he wore a brand new pair of shoes and slipped and his feet were chopped off under the tracks he was a tall man 7ft and slim 160 lbs he met his wife at church and they fell in love he hooked her house up with running water heat and electricity. He made a career out of working on trains and once stopped a collision from happening if he could lose his feet doctors telling him hed never walk again and going back to work for the very thing that almost killed him if he could accomplish all this why was johnny so pathetic his grandfather was a hero he was a wasnt even in the same ballpark as far as tenacity goes. he needed helping he'd ask for it one more time and was .declined. so he gave up. The stroke he had had at the previous rehab stint was messing with his memories with him cognitively he just wasn't the same person anymore so hes writing what he remembers but thats just the tip of the ice berg,what was once blue was now black and this deeply saddened him he was the first to do coke and dope of all his misfit toys and all the other lost souls that followed him into the abyss Thank God they never went down benzo st. With him he lost so many people he truly cared about and loved he obviously changed the names except for a few this story feels like it won't end til johnnys dead because like he said b4 some addicts do hit their rock bottoms but to johnny the several hundred seizure survivor the stroke survivor the 3 stints at cook county one at lake and one at DuPage and one in sedgwick. And just like the guitar that his friend paulie gave him on his deathbed the guitar he loved so much the guitar that was stolen and went threw hell retrieving it that one of his exes cracked several times in a fit of rage he feels forgotten out of tune worthless and irreparable for some of us there is no rock bottom just a Neverending well into darkness those are the ones who hate themselves the most and don't believe in second chances. Those are the forgotten ones. Johnny is hopeful that one day he could be clean again but benzos are a very hard thing to taper and he's scared of seizuring catatonia dt's and if he has another stroke that could be the one that finally does him in I hope you people have opened your eyes to what benzos do to you so you won't have to make the same mistakes that johnny had but in a world crumbling to an opiate epidemic benzos are always going to be looked over -the 66

the 66
I guess the beginning of the story is as good as a place as any to start johnny grew up in a house without love but violence his father was a immigrant and his mother grew up a 7th day adventist in laments terms means church every saturday no dating going to the movies or drinking alcohol any time or watching tv or handling money on the sabbath . They had met in a bar while drinking this will become apparent momentarily, & were engaged w/in a year later. Anyways after tying the knot she wanted to celebrate with some drinks to which he said no you are my wife now and its against our meaning his religion, He quickly began to show his true colors she had found out that he had illegitimate children w/ some other women before they were married or so she says johnny had his suspicions that one of his affairs was the culprit. johnny feels that she acted without thinking about herself like she often did she could be an erratic women at times. He has had 2 affairs over their marriage he treated her like his property she began to feel the way after his constant bombardment of negativity she began to feel like she didnt deserve love like the way johnny feels all the time as if too know him more is too love him less. Johnny feels so deeply for his mother and her dwindling self esteem. Johnny fealt that she should have left him right then and there and gotten a divorce while she was still young. But her mother with her old fashioned ideology forbade it saying you can't break up the family even b4 they had one johnny resents his grandmother for that. She deserved love they all did his father just wasn't apt to fulfill those needs though. Johnny feels as if he scammed her for citizenship because once they were married his demeanor quickly changed over night he too could have had a better childhood assuming he wouldve been born, if only things were different. Things began to change for the worse. It became apparent that when you look at someone threw rose colored glasses all the red flags appear white. Every boy needs a father not a fucking mental case he remembered one time his mother gave him $20 to buy a video game crash bandicoot 2 for ps1 she worked that night so his father took him to best buy for his own reasons johnny bought the game the cashier wrung it up wrong so it made a bit of commotion when his father had scene what he had bought he broke the game into little pieces. Instead of giving him the money so he could put in his make believe bank ( for an Arab he acted more like a jew) He then broke the game into little pieces and beat johnny, just one example out of many more too come. It was obvious that to johnny his mother was always ignoring her problems til they went away but that not how life works. he blames the movie dr.zhivago for her mistake. she could trace her family lineage to the mayflower she briefly belonged to a upscale group called daughters of the American revolution. She has always tried to find the best in everyone and everything she was his rock. He fealt bad for his mother because she was so kind and honest she deserved to be loved & was in a loveless marriage she deserved to have a son who would excell not the disappointment that johnny feels that he is if he could give up his life so she could restart hers he would have she deserves to retire not continue working threw her 70s but cant because every house they had bought she obviously put the down payment on everytime she had 3 foreclosures and a chapter 7 bankruptcy so far because his father was terrible w/ money but he never gambled with his own he had her for that he wouldnt lose anything when the houses she put all the down payments on went tits up. He claimed no responsibility always making her the scape goat .His father was raised in a completely different culture and the culture clash really affected his children. Johnnys father opened up a convient store when johnny was little in Cabrini green which was another stupid investment , one night when the store was robbed he lost his business partner and best friend who had died from a fatal gunshot wound. Johnny came to realize that his fathers overwhelming sense of guilt and anger maybe was why he treated johnny the way he did which was a astute observation a that any child could make. johnny couldn't tell you how many times his father hit him with shit. But can tell you how many times his father said he loved him which is zero.This was his childhood. His family was messed up he loved his mother but he was also angry at her because she had him in when she was 39 so it's pretty much obvious that she probably wont ever retire, thanks to his deadbeat father... he knew that he wasnt going to have a mother for that long. His best friend since he was 8 was al he sleptover at al's all the time als father had a serious colĺection of horror films .and they were horror film buffs whenever he could go over there he did, he saw what a loving family looked like. Then they both found music al liked metal but johnny liked punk the first cd he bought was the ramones live w/ cj & Marky he was 12 years old. The music saved his life he no longer cared about the abuse the first show he went too was the adicts at Logan square auditorium. His mother knew hed be gone for the weekend but when he came home his posters were all ripped from his wall band shirts lit on fire and had a beating waiting for him but by this time he realized that everybody takes a beating ever so often he was not special he fell head over heels for the scene at that particular show there was a 5 block line to get in at the adicts show his favorite riot fest was the first riot fest at the congress dickies dk w/out jello the street brats he pretty much saw every band he wanted too over the next 15 yrs of his life his favorite chicago band was the street brats he's also seen the deadboys- stiv and iggy pop he went all over the city the congress grant park Logan square auditorium the beat kitchen and slowly but surely the scene died along w/ 77's cms pogo sick and johnny was sad but it just happens people grow up and in the words of death cab 4 cutie theres nothing righteous being 60& punk if he listed all the bands hed scene this would be alot more then a short story, He missed the days when you could smoke indoors so the shows he went too when he was 14 they were comical because there were always mosh pits for bands and the place was covered with a layer of smoke so you would see people passing out. This was a great way to blow off steam and his anger towards his life moshing and getting in fights and it breaks his heart because the scene has died pt.1 .he'd later get into heroin because all his heroes were dope fiends johnny thunders DeeDee Ramone Richard hell anyways back to him. He knew there was something wrong him he never fealt normal he always so anxious & hyper he was diagnosed with adhd. but the pills had the opposite effect on him they made him more anxious and wild so he was eventually was diagnosed with G.A.D. all of his life his father also suffered from something anger problems mania and depression So johnny figured he was bipolar . skip ahead a few years and he joined a band and they got good fast they played several shows even were on the bill w/ the casualties and the briefs at logan square,til he found this girl his band saved him from the shitty home situation every weekend he truly loved his band and his band mates but he stupidly put his gf first and flipped out when one of his bandmates said something about her he didn't like that because not only did he think he was in love he also never jacked off before not for a lack of trying lol just couldn't get it right til he fucked her an hour after meeting her they started dating so for the first 14.5 yrs of his life he was a virgin she was on her 10th 👦they went out for a couple months she got pregnant and he sent her a letter w/ 250 dollar check in the memo line it said "Johnny's half" and they broke up. he was broken hearted not because of the girl but because of the band his best friends his brothers he had left behind they went on to be truly amazing it still breaks his heart that his misprioritized his life for a fling when he quit the band that had saved him from his home life. He still talks to his guitarist from time to time this isnt really vital to the story but johnny thought hed say it anyways when the guitar player went to a christian college and was brainwashed using military grade procedures to build a cult he was out of it for quite sometime but his spark is coming back he still talks too him from time to time. But this happened much later in this story, so he coped with that pain of losing his band with weed and amphetamines also he forgot to mention that he grew up kinda fat which will become apparent momentarily he smoked weed whenever he could before he discovered ccc's they were the dumbest thing he'd ever got into and unknowingly when he took 32 of them he was with his friends chase and mal and they picked up al. chase wanted to rob al johnnys confudant his childhood friend his best friend al ,johnny was out of his mind and didnt know what was happening not in control he didnt realize what was happening after chased punched al he said if you leave me here. they werent going be friends and johnny and chase just laughed and left him behind the toys r us it wasnt until he started to come down he realized what had happened the truly heinous thing his friend chased cooked up that he was apartied too his friend chase was jealous of al and johnnys friendship and all al had on him was him was 2 dollars not that that had mattered chase just wanted al out of the picture. johnny regrets his friendship with chase he was skinny by this time but had an anorexic mindset meaning that anytime he looked the mirror all he would see was fat he got up too taking 32 of those pills at any given time when he overdosed he was 6 feet tall and weighed 120 lbs after two stints in the psychward he agreed to go to rehab because when his grandmother told him about how his grandfather reacted he fealt sad not the outside but on the inside he was taught to show any type of emotion was a weakness when he got out he went right back to smoking weed and when that wasn't enough anymore . Cocaine and alcohol were his thing now and his little crew of misfit toys did it everyday practically when one of them stole his connect he was furious but that's neither here nor there. he was mandated to go to rehab again same outcome went right back to booze and coke til & h johnny was a good theif he stole expensive clothes designer sunglasses and when his parents went out of town for the weekend johnny threw a party after him and his friend lee went to jewel and since Osco the part of jewel that had the pharmacy and the liquor. Was closed they kept filling their backpacks with bottles of whiskey and rum and vodka til the trunk was full they mustve gotten away with at least $3000 worth of booze seriously they had filled 3 big garbage bags w/ alcohol and hid it in johnnys basement the day before johnnys father went away his one friend asked fast forward 6 months PART 2 . Backtracking just a little bit before all this johnny tried dope he was 15 he bought 2 bags i guess right place wrong time but he loved it, it would be several years til he got the chance to do it again he was doing it then at a fairly regular basis until it was an everyday thing when johnny od d in antwons car while waiting for his friend Pete to cop him an 8 ball antwon tried putting the bags in johnnys pocket or just ditching him on that day PETE WOULDNT LET HIM anyways fast forward several months he and mitch were bored and cold so they went to sit in Pete's car Pete thought they were trying to rob him Pete saved johnnys life it hurt johnny that pete fealt so little of him and then misunderstand the whole situation and had one of his crew members punch mitch and johnny in the face Pete realized what he had in his car was worthless but he never apologized and johnny still feels bad about that . By this time he and his misfit toys were following johnny right off the bridge from just coke to sniffing dope to shooting speed balls. he met Elle several months before this and he really liked her she had this energy that johnny loved for the person she was he loved her laugh she had the most incredible green eyes and pale but its the small imperfections like her underbite that truly made her beautiful he didn't want to ruin her life he just wanted to share everything with her they were inseperable despite her parents hating johnny they would take the train most of the time. He remembers one time when they were on the train they announced michael jackson had died.He really did love her as much as someone like him could love someone ,and when he found out some guy shot her up he was so upset he wanted to kill this guy but didn't know him. this time his father confronted him they got into it he really hurt his father and still feels awful about it when he was 17. So he was kicked out and stayed in chicago for the time being he went to rehab again and cried to her on the phone til she went too but they both fucked up and went right back now he was living in Chicago some of time and bg to sling the other times one time after they copped elle fell over right outside the Deerfield train stop he didnt know if she did it on purpose or what but the police were there within 30 seconds johnny ran and still remembers the officers yelling stop or well shoot he eventually got tired and they asked him if anything was going to stick them when they were searching of course he forgot about the rig in his pocket and they beat the shit out of him this was not the first run in with the law in fact he was on pretrial probation in Lake County for possession of heroin once they were both apprehended at a little restaurant outside the train station in round lake that was probably the most sick johnny ever was his arms were absolutely covered in track marks thank god he had a celly who understood i guess track marks become very prominent if you reuse the same needle he was in lake county jail the mail that Elle wrote him got him threw it for about for about 40 days using a terrible public defender he copped to 1 count of possession and was given 4/10 felony probation he then just stayed in chicago not that shithole of a town anymore they had let the house go into foreclosure so he left not looking back he lived in Chicago streeterville so everything he coped he would just walk a block catch the 66 to the west side just 2 Ukraine village or humboldt park he will always have memories some good some bad like the 1 time johnny shot up bathsalts and ended up hiding in a dumpster from the invisable police. And another awful memory was the first time he did crystal meth he got some from his old roommate and after sniffing some went to Clark and division where he knew hed find a black. prostitute this particular one costed johnny $15 so he was about to fuck her but the smell coming off her the homeless smell thats oh so distinguishable it was so awful that he immediately aborted and that incident will haunt johnny forever but when he got back to his future roommates house he was spun he washed a sink full of dishes and the smell of the rotting food immediately reminded him of that prostitutes odor so he immediately puked all night long his friend Eric stayed up with him he had some rocks so he wasn't tired at all johnny didn't stop puking til the next morning after filling his promethazine. .one memory that he will never forget is after walking to the west side from streeterville and back he saw the blackhawks w/ Niemi stanley cup final game he watched threw the glass at a bar called Tuman's on Leavitt because he was only 18,he he had no idea how he could ever get threw probation PART 3 he knew how to play md's so he was got himself a prescription to xanax then when they cut him off he went to a different dr. And then the doctor he prescribed johnny what ever he wanted at the peak he was getting max doses of soma, halcion, Restoril, prosom, baclofen, promethazine xanax subutex while also getting 4 mg of k-pins and cialis from a different doctor so he was loving it he was always comfortably numb he finished his probation with ease not aware of the upcoming storm when he moved to McKinley Park to go school for audio arts let's back track just a little here he was locked up in cook county jail 3 times during his probation the second time he got popped he met Eric they instantly clicked singing johnny rebel songs out load they should've been killed johnny was never convicted of anything because he had an amazing lawyer he has been arrested for 10 different felonies that his lawyer got him off he finally finished school but one day he went completely catatonic having several seizures his friends tried taking him to a detox center but they didn't know these symptoms so eventually he went the hospital and the Dr immediately knew he detoxed him off all the other stuff And after about a week he was at a baseline of 20mg of valium this was him and elle started drifting apart elle eventually realized that she was the love their relationship was the river and he was the cinder blocks on her feet. he was an anchor around her neck that she would be better off without him i mean she was right So they split up...he was so heartbroken that he obviously didn't listen to the hospital.md so he went back to his dr and even though the hospital dr called him he didn't care then he went right back to his array of medications he later ran into Eric on Belmont they hugged he was with his new gf Allie for their 2 week anniversary he got her a pair of $650 bvlgari sunglasses, she was sweet at first but just like his father quickly showed her true colors. you could tell she grew up spoiled because if she didn't get what she wanted she'd throw a huge tantrum he gave her a subutex once and deeply regrets it. and then she was just the worst type of person always throwing fits calling him names then once she got her sub from him just to get her to shut up it was all i love you it was a very unstable relationship after staying johnny abruptly ended after she attacked him he moved to LA for a bit he moved back to Chicago he hooked up with Eric immediately Eric had an age of stagnation of someone in his teens you could tell because when he broke up with the 2 girlfriends he'd had in the 6 years they were chilling again he would rib them and demoralize them just that type of person he had tiny hands i alwa y s thought that was weird considering his height he was like a mean girl nice to your face chop you up to pieces when you were gone and his fucking crack tantrums were the worst he constantly clipped johnny wings but by this time johnny was just using him for a place to live til johnny left and moved in the basement apt Eric threw a fit he got away with all of this because Johnny had no self esteem and eric took advantage of that .at this point johnny obviously didn't care if only johnny stood up to Eric but having such a low self worth. always figured hed be treated that way like but from having a father that constantly put you down to having a friend it seemed normal he loved and hated Eric at the same time Eric like to pretend a lot that he was irish even though he was a hungarian jew he talked with an accent sometimes it was just plain stupid he was extremely possessive he went threw Johnny's phone after going threw it and finding out he was playing guitar for erics friend he told him it was nothing personal what he should have said was you fucking suck at guitar you can't play for shit and he approached me he sees now that Eric was never really Johnny's friend he just liked to have someone around to make him feel better about himself the best of a bad situation if you will. They were smoking tons of crack threw their friendship so the word drug buddy comes to fruition now he just considered him his neighbor.johnny was a no saint when his friend cal skimmed $200 off a $1200 debt johnny was supposed to collect but was busy so he sent his friend .He couldn't believe it cal said he was johnnys friend but was just another shady piece of shit so he had to be made an example of him. Johnny laid out tarps in his apt just for a scare tactic menacing would have been the charge and wore rubber gloves had his 9mm & doc martens hed brought his psychotic friend who had a hachett with him for back up cal was never ....in any danger this was a scare tactic that went off without a hitch and it worked johnny confronted cal and said that he gave him $200 just for picking up some money why would he lie and say that the guy only gave him $1000 he wanted answers cal said I'm just gonna go out side and johnnys back up said you ain't going nowhere then this happened ..cal ran leaving his gf behind yelling rape up and down the street he soon left chicago saying it's too crazy there. But the lesson he should've learned was knowing you dont fuck with your friends and this all came to fruition and that's all it was and all will ever be by the time Eric got evicted Johnny's md lost his license so he had to leave because he was catatonic seizuring this went on for months then started drinking heavily til he looked in the mirror and did not like what he saw an overweight disgusting person so he quit the drinking and worked out constantly everyday til he was in the single digits bodyfat he took it a little far 1000s crunches 1000 suicides 1000 push-ups and walking ten miles 5 minute planks this was his new addiction he didn't no the meaning of moderation. then just joined a gym he was once again dabbling with benzos when he discovered a black market for them in which you pay with btc or xmr not that much at first but he gradually increased his dose he went to see Eric same shit happened Eric grew tired of him and casted him out once again he always sought out erics approval. Even though it meant so little to him all he wanted was an attaboy he went catatonic and ..seizured and ended up in a psychward. PART 4 once he was back on his feet he delved deeper into his addiction it got to the point where every other week he was buying 1000 clonazolam bars clonazolam is a designer benzo approximately 4 times more powerful then xanax at any given time so he tried rehab one more time it was clear that this facility was not suitable for him he was put on a ativan taper 6 times always having the same out come seizures and after 50 days there he eventually had a stroke they didn't know he found out months later because he never stopped taking these benzos so on his way back home to Chicago his landlord had threw him out not because of money because he always paid his rent it was because he never signed a lease and his landlord knew he could get more for his apt he had several seizures on the way there so they stopped at a hospital in Springfield IL. And from the mri ekg they had discovered the stroke he had had. His story is not to glamorize drugs but to open people's eyes on the dangers of benzos he is not clean and doubts he will ever be because he has never given sobriety a chance hed use right after rehab everytime it was the thoughts in his head saying your a piece of shit you dont deserve love those thoughts tortured johnny so he self medicated but has grown as a person unlike his for mentioned friend who will never change his feathers he sees that now it seems to him that the people who cared about him were the ones he could always rely on the ones that dont care if you have money or not, like the harbor boys they were a group of homeless lincoln park kids that johnny looked after giving them money for food or cigs or beer one time elias found a shitload of dilaudid and methadone in a dumpster johnny bought it for$20 his relationship with the as formentioned Eric is done when johnny gave Eric around $200 worth of pharmaceuticals just to see how eric was hed heard eric had cancer even though Even though it was the same eric that had took johnnys roommate, stole his prescription glasses because they were raybans not knowing the lenses cost more then the glasses themselves, and the topping on the cake stole johnnys grandfathers golf club that was all johnny had to remember him by invaded johnnys privacy eric just wanted more he stole johnnys guitar a guitar that paulie claimed he briefly played with styx with but that didnt matter when johnny made friends it wasnt about what he could get out of the relationship it was the soul that he looked into even though paulie played a small role in John's life johnny looked out for him on his death bed he gave johnny a Martin dcp4a just because he was sick and knew johnny would play eric stole it thank god johnny had found the pawnshop where it was he showed the documents prooving it was his guitar and got it back. From here on out he. only put up with Eric. because now johnny only puts up w/ eric because Eric was johnnys quaalude supplier he lives his life now as a ghost because he's so depressed and misery loves company he's always so very lonely drinks and pops pills on a daily basis to drown the pain of a life lost after hundreds of seizures and a stroke after being dope sick in jail countless times after so many overdoses and chances to stop without listening after being the chair person at a NA meeting at Hazelden for 6 months. when he stopped the dope he had finally come to realize that you can turn anything into heroin and while some people do hit their rock bottoms and change but to him all the friends he has lost the people that go in and out of your lives only to change it for the better or for the worse never do threw all the hustles all the seizures the stroke the od's the stints in jail being homeless after chairing a meeting .He has come to realize that for some addicts there is no bottom and his home has changed so much threw gentrification. All he has are memories. He gargles xanax down with a pint of rum daily no rehab facilities will accept him because he's so far gone all he lives for are his memories he doesn't suspect it will get any better so he bought as previously stated he has hi-c 9mm doesn't care its a cheaply made gun that jams a lot he so depressed living by himself once apon a time his phone wouldn't stop ringing from friends to gf's to custys and his misfit toys now it's lucky if he gets a call from a creditor so far in debt bankruptcy is the option he still greatly reduced his benzo & rum intake and he's scared he more then scared at the person he's become no girl has scene him him in benzo withdrawal exept in rehab he was waiting in med line sat down in front of the nurses station let out a blood curdling scream and seized this is the formentioned stroke which is 100× worse then heroin withdrawal he added on xylazine because he confronted one of the dealers he dealt with and instead of giving him bromazolam he gave him xylazine he immediately knew it was no benzo a) because he was still in a state of withdrawal and b) because he knew what this feeling was like it fealt like if youd taken too many clonidines and baclofen the staggering the uncertain footing johnny had high blood pressure his whole life so once he made it apparent he wouldn't deal with this vendor no more he didn't care he was scared of the future not because he was living in LA or kc but because he was living with himself and no matter where he'd go on the vastness of the globe he would still be him and that's what kept him up at night. The fact that you can never run away from yourself. PART 5 you can go any where in the world but you are still you this is the story of johnny kinda rumbled out of order but you get it. He had one person in his life that would never give up on johnny and that was Josh he met Josh at a sleepover at als house they were playing guitar he Johnny has a great deal of respect for josh and will always consider him a brother john now works as a crypto consultant although watching everybody surpass you in every conceivable way it makes it hard to get out of bed. But johnny lives isolated by himself and once he feels he's better then he'll return back to Chicago johnny knew he was flawed addiction went rampant in johnnys family his great grandfather drank turpentine because he was so poor and died at the age of 32 from eshogeal vericies. Putting his grandmother in a horrible situation they grew up like pilgrims no heat electricity or running water she was ridiculed at school everyday because she was 100% German was poor had only 2 dresses the kids were awful to her calling her nazi and what ever the current mean things to say at the time but this toughned her up. she had her addictions aswell diet pills and norco they say it skips a generation that might be true his grandfather used to ride the trains like freight trains to get from point a to point b til one unlucky day he wore a brand new pair of shoes and slipped and his feet were chopped off under the tracks he was a tall man 7ft and slim 160 lbs he met his wife at church and they fell in love he hooked her house up with running water heat and electricity. He made a career out of working on trains and once stopped a collision from happening if he could lose his feet doctors telling him hed never walk again and going back to work for the very thing that almost killed him if he could accomplish all this why was johnny so pathetic his grandfather was a hero he was a wasnt even in the same ballpark as far as tenacity goes. he needed helping he'd ask for it one more time and was .declined. so he gave up. The stroke he had had at the previous rehab stint was messing with his memories with him cognitively he just wasn't the same person anymore so hes writing what he remembers but thats just the tip of the ice berg,what was once blue was now black and this deeply saddened him he was the first to do coke and dope of all his misfit toys and all the other lost souls that followed him into the abyss Thank God they never went down benzo st. With him he lost so many people he truly cared about and loved he obviously changed the names except for a few this story feels like it won't end til johnnys dead because like he said b4 some addicts do hit their rock bottoms but to johnny the several hundred seizure survivor the stroke survivor the 3 stints at cook county one at lake and one at DuPage and one in sedgwick. And just like the guitar that his friend paulie gave him on his deathbed the guitar he loved so much the guitar that was stolen and went threw hell retrieving it that one of his exes cracked several times in a fit of rage he feels forgotten out of tune worthless and irreparable for some of us there is no rock bottom just a Neverending well into darkness those are the ones who hate themselves the most and don't believe in second chances. Those are the forgotten ones. Johnny is hopeful that one day he could be clean again but benzos are a very hard thing to taper and he's scared of seizuring catatonia dt's and if he has another stroke that could be the one that finally does him in I hope you people have opened your eyes to what benzos do to you so you won't have to make the same mistakes that johnny had but in a world crumbling to an opiate epidemic benzos are always going to be looked over -the 66

Last update: January 2, 2023
This is a list of many of the popular releases from 2022, in reverse chronological order (most recent first). Check the 2021, 2020 game posts for more titles. There's also the Coming Soon! post.
2022 PC Releases:

• High On Life - December 13, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games) (XGP1)
• IXION - December 7, 2022 (Steam)
• Hello Neighbor 2 - December 6, 2022 (Steam) (XGP1)
• Knights of Honor II – Sovereign - December 6, 2022 (Steam)
• Marvel's Midnight Suns - December 1, 2022 (Steam) (Official Site)
• The Callisto Protocol - December 1, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games / Official Site)
• Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - November 30, 2022 (Steam)
• The Knight Witch - November 29, 2022 (Steam)
• Gungrave G.O.R.E. - November 22, 2022 (Steam)
• Ship of Fools - November 22, 2022 (Steam)
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales - November 18, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me - November 17, 2022 (Steam)
• Goat Simulator 3 - November 17, 2022 (Epic Games)
• Pentiment - November 15, 2022 (Steam) (XGP1)
• Ballads of Hongye - November 15, 2022 (Steam)
• Somerville - November 14, 2022 (Steam)
• Sonic Frontiers - November 8, 2022 (Steam)
• Football Manager 2023 - November 7, 2022 (Steam)
• The Unliving - November 7, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• The Chant - November 3, 2022 (Steam/Official Site)
• WRC Generations - November 3, 2022 (Steam)
• The Entropy Centre - November 3, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• From Space - November 3, 2022 (Steam)
• Horse Tales: Emerald Valley Ranch - November 3, 2022 (Steam)
• Outshine - November 3, 2022 (Steam)
• GOAL! The Club Manager - November 2, 2022 (Steam)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II - October 28, 2022 (Steam) (Official Site)
• SIGNALIS - October 27, 2022 (Steam) (XGP)
• STAR OCEAN THE DIVINE FORCE - October 27, 2022 (Steam)
• Victoria 3 - October 25, 2022 (Steam)
• Gotham Knights - October 21, 2022 (Steam) (Official Site)
• New Tales From the Borderlands - October 20, 2022 (Steam)
• Batora: Lost Haven - October 20, 2022 (Steam)
• UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection - October 19, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• The Last Hero of Nostalgaia - October 19, 2022 (Steam)
• Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - October 18, 2022 (Epic Games)
• A Plague Tale Requiem - October 17, 2022 (Steam) (XGP)
• Destiny's Sword - October 17, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• PGA TOUR 2K23 - October14, 2022 (Steam)
• Scorn - October 14, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games) (XGP)
• The Last Oricru - October 13, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• Sunday Gold - October13, 2022 (Steam)
• A Hero's Rest - October 12, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Dakar Desert Rally - October 4, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• EA SPORTS FIFA 23 - September 29, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator - September 29, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• RAILGRADE - September 29, 2022 (Epic Games)
• BONELAB - September 29, 2022 (Steam)
• Moonbreaker - September 29, 2022 (Steam)
• Foxhole - September 28, 2022 (Steam)
• Terra Invicta - September 26, 2022 (Steam)
• Slime Rancher 2 - September 22, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Serial Cleaners - September 22, 2022 (Steam)
• Squad 51 vs. the Flying Saucers - September 21, 2022 (Steam)
• Soulstice - September 20, 2022 (Steam)
• Construction Simulator - September 20, 2022 (Steam)
• There Is No Light - September 19, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Return to Monkey Island - September 19, 2022 (Steam)
• Metal: Hellsinger - September 15, 2022 (Steam)
• Judgement - September 14, 2022 (Steam)
• Lost Judgement - September 14, 2022 (Steam)
• The Wandering Village - September 14, 2022 (Steam)
• Isonzo - September 13, 2022 (Steam)
• Lovecraft's Untold Stories 2 - September 13, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• NBA 2K23 - September 8, 2022 (Steam)
• Steelrising - September 8, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Shatterline - September 8, 2022 (Steam)
• Disney Dreamlight Valley - September 6, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Train Sim World 3 - September 6, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Circus Electrique - September 6, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• MythBusters: The Game - Crazy Experiments Simulator - September 1, 2022 (Steam)
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R - September 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Ooblets - September 1, 2022 (Epic Games / Steam)
• Scathe - August 31, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• Call of the Wild: The Angler - August 31, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• F1 Manager 2022 - August 30, 2022 (Steam)
• Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed - August 30, 2022 (Steam)
• Tinykin - August 30, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• IMMORTALITY - August 30, 2022 (Steam)
• Saints Row - August 23, 2022 (Epic Games)
• Madden NFL 23 - August 18, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Thymesia - August 18, 2022 (Steam)
• Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered - August 12, 2022 (Steam)
• Arcade Paradise - August 11, 2022 (Steam)
• Cult of the Lamb - August 11, 2022 (Steam)
• Lost in Play - August 10, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• Two Point Campus - August 9, 2022 (Steam)
• Turbo Golf Racing - August 4, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• Sweet Transit - July 28, 2022 (Steam) (D)
• Raubritter - July 22, 2022 (Steam)
• Stray - July 19, 2022 (Steam)
• MultiVersus - July 19, 2022 (Steam)
• Escape Academy - July 14, 2022 (Steam)
• Dinkum - July 14, 2022 (Steam)
• Urbek City Builder - July 13, 2022 (Steam)
• XEL - July 12, 2022 (Steam)
• Time on Frog Island - July 12, 2022 (Steam)
• Monument Valley - July 12, 2022 (Steam)
• Lodestar - July 8, 2022 (Steam)
• Dragon Forge - July 8, 2022 (Steam)
• Matchpoint - Tennis Championships - July 7, 2022 (Steam)
• F1 22 - July 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge - June 16, 2022 (Steam)
• Starship Troopers - Terran Command - June 16, 2022 (Steam)
• Redout 2 - June 16, 2022 (Steam)
• The Quarry - June 9, 2022 (Steam)
• POSTAL: Brain Damaged - June 9, 2022 (Steam)
• Builder Simulator - June 9, 2022 (Steam)
• Silt - June 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Police Shootout - June 1, 2022 (Steam)
• LEAP - June 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Captain of Industry - May 31, 2022 (Steam)
• Godsbane Idle - May 31, 2022 (Steam)
• Nemesis: Lockdown - May 31, 2022 (Steam)
• Sniper Elite 5 - May 26, 2022 Steam
• Roller Champions (F2P) - May 25, 2022 (Ubisoft)
• Crossfire: Legion - May 24, 2022 (Steam)
• Dolmen - May 20, 2022 (Steam)
• Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong - May 19, 2022 (Epic Games)
• Eternal Threads - May 19, 2022 (Steam)
• V Rising - May 17, 2022 (Steam)
• Evil Dead: The Game - May 13, 2022 (Official Site)
• The Centennial Case : A Shijima Story - May 12, 2022 (Steam)
• Achilles: Legends Untold - May 12, 2022 (Steam)
• Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising - May 10, 2022 (Steam)
• Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters - May 5, 2022 (Steam)
• Trek to Yomi - May 5, 2022 (Steam)
• Ravenous Devils - April 29, 2022 (Steam)
• Kapital: Sparks of Revolution - April 28, 2022 (Steam)
• Sea of Craft - April 28, 2022 (Steam)
• Prehistoric Kingdom - April 27, 2022 (Steam)
• Ultra Age - April 27, 2022 (Steam)
• The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe - April 27, 2022 (Steam)
• Dune: Spice Wars - April 26, 2022 (Steam)
• The Serpent Rogue - April 26, 2022 (Steam)
• Skabma - Snowfall - April 22, 2022 (Steam)
• MotoGP 22 - April 21, 2022 (Steam)
• Teardown - April 21, 2022 (Steam)
• Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector - Necrons - April 21, 2022 (Steam)
• Terraformers - April 21, 2022 (Steam)
• Aircraft Carrier Survival - April 20, 2022 (Steam)
• Winter Ember - April 19, 2022 (Steam)
• Sephonie - April 12, 2022 (Steam)
• Demeo: PC Edition - April 7, 2022 (Steam)
• Split - April 6, 2022 (Steam)
• LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga - April 5, 2022 (Steam)
• Weird West - March 31, 2022 (Steam)
• Ikai - March 29, 2022 (Steam)
• Smart Factory Tycoon - March 26, 2022 (Steam)
• Ghostwire: Tokyo - March 25, 2022 (Steam)
• Aery - Calm Mind 2 - March 25, 2022 (Steam)
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - March 24, 2022 (Epic Games)
• NORCO - March 24, 2022 (Steam)
• Expedition Zero - March 24, 2022 (Steam)
• Highrise City - March 24, 2022 (Steam)
• The Planet Crafter - March 24, 2022 (Steam)
• Animal Shelter - March 23, 2022 (Steam)
• Starship Troopers - Terran Command - March 18, 2022 (Steam)
• STRANGER OF PARADISE: FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN - March 17, 2022 (Epic Games)
• Shredders - March 16, 2022 (Steam)
• WWE 2K22 - March 11, 2022 (Steam)
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök (DLC) - March 10, 2022 (Ubisoft)
• Distant Worlds 2 - March 10, 2021 (Steam)
• Northend Tower Defense - March 8, 2022 (Steam)
• Azrael - March 7, 2022 (Steam)
• Babylon’s Fall - March 3, 2022 (Steam)
• Beholder 3 - March 3, 2022 (Steam)
• ELEX II - March 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Shadow Warrior 3 - March 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Far: Changing Tides - March 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Conan Chop Chop - March 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Saints Row - February 25, 2022 (Epic Games)
• GRID Legends - February 24, 2022 (Steam)
• Ghost on the Shore - February 24, 2022 (Steam)
• Martha is Dead - February 24, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• Elden Ring - February 24, 2022 (Steam / Official Site)
• FINAL FANTASY VI - February 23, 2022 (Steam)
• MONARK - February 22, 2022 (Steam)
• Total War: WARHAMMER III - February 17, 2022 (Steam)
• THE KING OF FIGHTERS XV - February 17, 2022 (Steam / Epic Games)
• SpellMaster: The Saga - February 16, 2022 (Steam)
• Nimbus INFINITY - February 15, 2022 (Steam)
• Draft Day Sports: College Football 2022 - February 15, 2022 (Steam)
• Lost Ark (F2P) - February 11, 2022 (Steam)
• Diplomacy is Not an Option - February 9, 2022 (Steam)
• Sifu - February 8, 2022 (Epic Games)
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood - February 7, 2022 (Steam)
• Dying Light 2 - February 3, 2022 (Steam)
• Life is Strange Remastered - February 1, 2022 (Steam)
• Rainbow Six Extraction - January 20, 2022 (Ubisoft)
• Expeditions: Rome - January 20, 2022 (Steam)
• God of War - January 14, 2022 (Steam)
• The Anacrusis - January 13, 2022 (Steam)
• It Follows You - January 13, 2022 (Epic Games)
• Monster Hunter Rise - January 12, 2022 (Steam)
• Insomnis - January 7, 2022

(D) = Demo available
(XGP) = Available on Xbox Game Pass PC

I’m 19 in my first year of college. I broke my spine earlier this year and after I ran out of the 1 week supply of norco I started using m30s(fent) off the street to manage my pain. I got out of detox like a week before leaving for college. And since then the stress of college, my depression, and my persisting back pain, make it so hard to stay clean. Last week someone I know offered me some oxy and I took it. And now I’m reminded of all the relief it brings me. I just want to live in that feeling forever, but I don’t want to die which is inevitable if I go back on fent. I don’t know what to do.

To make a long story short, I (26f) have severe hip problems due to being born with hip dysplasia, a chronic illness and being too stubborn to go through with the corrective hip surgery in order to play a D1 sport in college because it was my dream at the time. I was a naive freshman in HS who didn’t understand the long term consequences. 11 years later (now) I am getting a hip replacement as well as corrective surgeries for long term injuries that occurred because I spent almost my entire childhood and college career flipping upside down so you can imagine the further damage that was definitely NOT worth it now. Then add the cysts in my hips that formed thanks to my chronic illness.
I have an appointment with my surgeon to discuss my options for the sciatica relief but due to the holidays, my appointment was pushed back. Does anyone have any tips for relief until my appointment such as OTC meds or topical creams, etc? And at my appointment is there any specific medications/therapies/etc you all have found useful that I should discuss with my doctor? I am prescribed Oxycontin and Norcos but I only take them when I’m practically on the floor crying because I know the risk of long term usage and I was hoping to use them unless I must. I’ve had no luck with ibuprofen and I have to limit my Tylenol usage to the best of my ability because of my chronic illness. Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

This is the story of one man's travels through alcoholism. It’s more for me than you but maybe someone will find it entertaining. Maybe someone will relate to it. Maybe, by some incredible fluke, it might even help someone from arriving at alcoholism like I have. There's a bumper sticker common to Texas that says, "I wasn't born a Texan, but I got here as quickly as I could". Well, I wasn't born an alcoholic, and I didn't get here as quickly as I could, but here I am one today. Maybe the switch was always flipped on and the room was just waiting for me to walk into it. I'm told the light will be on until I die. That I will always be a pickle and never again a cucumber. From now on I will always be an alcoholic. What a drag.
I don't see a reason to begin this story with the minutiae of my youth. Early life was neither completely fucked nor completely pleasant. Somewhere in between. I'm not sure what specific events caused the effect in me of drinking like there was no tomorrow but these days, that is how it is. Sometimes it takes a week, sometimes it takes months, but always it leads to no tomorrow style drinking. The problem of course with living like there is no tomorrow is that there generally is a tomorrow. Slowly but surely, the bill grows. Fees acrue. Penalities are levied. To this day I remain in awe of how long the tab was allowed to remain open.
I guess I will go ahead and point to an event and a couple of overarching feelings in my early life that tens of thousands of dollars of therapy and rehabilitation have told me are important.
I wish I could say my sister’s death at her 19th rotation around the sun, my 9th, affected me more. To be honest, the day I found out I cried because that's what everybody else was doing and it just seemed like what I should do as well. I don’t remember the feelings being visceral. It wasn’t like like what everyone told me it should be like, devastating and sorrowful. I even remember going to school and people telling me, “Oh we’re so sorry what happened to your family”. My response was generally like, “Yeah, okay thanks”. Neither sarcastic nor sorrowful. Almost like giving a stranger on the the street a nod. For me, it all mostly felt like, “Well, I guess we’re not going to see Illy anymore”. I was kind of glad. The turmoil in the house when she was there was very jarring and not so much in an upsetting way than in an annoying one. It seems impassive to say but when you are just trying to play with Legos and out of left field comes a disturbance you didn't cause, it's aggravating. They were violent with each other but I can’t say I really felt the effect of the violence from my observations. To me it just appeared that they were just really upset with each other and this is how it was worked out. That all stopped the day my dad carried her down the stairs in his arms. She was blue in the face having overdosed of one of her prescriptions. The ambulance arrived just as he made it to the landing. I witnessed the paramedics beat and shock enough life back into her to get her "alive" to the hospital. She lived in a coma for 3 weeks. I remember visiting her in the hospital. People became very excited when while they held her hand she would squeeze it. Her plug was pulled late in June. My mother took her death very hard. It still to this day has not struck me how difficult it is for a parent to lose a child. Like losing a sibling I understand as difficult, but I can say that with no certainty. It wasn’t until my teens when I began working at the pharmacy that I realized what it meant to my mother. Looking up her profile from that time there were more than several prescriptions for sleeping pills over the course of a year. As far as my sister, personally, I feel she was troubled, and she didn’t want to feel that trouble anymore. I heard it put best by someone who said "It’s like being in a movie that has sucked royally for 45 minutes. The last 45 minutes are probably not going to turn around it for you". The tragedy of this is of course how young she was. I can’t really speculate on why she did what she did, but I feel she was not happy for long enough to either not see another way out or in the fashion of how some of us take too many Tylenol. She just thought more would help with the pain.
As far as negative feelings, I can say for certain today that I never felt supported. Not the way I see others having been. Maybe I’m spoiled. Well, for sure I’m spoiled. But there was never a real interest in what I did ever in my life by those around me. I just kind of did things. Baseball, soccer, boy scouts, band. I’m not even sure what drove me to those things. Well my mom usually drove me to those things, but I can’t say I really had a passion for them at any time. I completed them successfully (well I can’t sport for shit) but again, they were just things that you did.
I will say that while shame was instilled in me, I can’t say an equal or even average dose of confidence was there to balance it out. But what did I know? I was a kid just doing things. I didn’t know a pat on the back should make you feel good; I just knew a spank on the ass made you feel bad. This is nobodies’ fault, and I do not blame anyone for this, it’s just something I didn’t realize until the therapy that would come trying to mend a broken man. I’ve heard it said that we over coddle our children now. I’m kind of for that. I never had the shit beaten out of me, but I’m glad we have generally shifted away from that behavior. But for me I wouldn’t say I was really taught how to feel good about myself. Everyone around me just kind of did or appeared to at least. For me, this palatable attitude towards myself became much more difficult to simply emulate as an adult than it had been as a kid.
So overall, I was treated well, fed often, learned the rules, learned about breaking the rules, learned how to avoid trouble (lie), and learned that whether you were born an only child or became one, you run the risk of overprotection. I suppose the latter is to be expected.
So, if that’s the aperitivo this is the antipasto.
As I got older, I learned that drugs had purpose. At seventeen I worked in a pharmacy where if you had allergies you came and got an antihistamine. If you had a bacterial infection you came and got an antibiotic. If you had thyroid issues you came and got thyroid medicine. And if you had a quack doctor you came and got narcotics. This is what I knew of drugs. I experimented, you know, me and the rats. I even remember the first thing I experimented with, generic Lortab 10/500. They were Watson brand blue. 10 mg of hydrocodone and 500 mg of acetaminophen. The "rats", were two friends of mine. We each took two and headed over to the local bowling alley. Not feeling anything, we took another. Still not feeling anything, we took one more. I can say for sure this occurred over the course of 30 minutes total because I later learned, after further experimentation, that 30 minutes was the exact amount of time it took me to feel the effects of an oral dose of hydrocodone. At a table behind the lanes the opiates began kicking for all of us and my friend made a statement that stays with me until this day. “It’s like… everything is ooookaaaaaay”. We could do nothing but agree with her. That is EXACTLY what it felt like. I didn’t realize how much trouble this statement would be until a little over 10 years later. Still, at the time, hydrocodone took a bit of control. I abused them for sure. Weeklong binges led to withdrawals a few times, but somehow once the supply ran out, I was able to forget about them. Later, during my college years, I became addicted to Adderall. Not so much a physical addiction as so much an addiction to all the things I could accomplish while on it. If there is a performance enhancing drug for life, Adderall is it. I would study an entire course over the span of a weekend and take the mid or final the following week. It’s kind of a habit that has stuck with me, although these days it’s usually coffee or the occasional Primatene mist tablet. Drugs and their purpose you know.
Like hydrocodone, speed took the reins of my life in certain aspects, but like hydrocodone I was able to be put it down without too much trouble. In all fairness, no longer being able to obtain it was probably helpful but additionally I was shifting my addiction to a new drug… work. I began working jobs in my mid-twenties that I could stay at for days, drug free, and feel like I was on top of the world. I was learning, I was helpful, people looked up to my intellect. It felt good. Money too. It was the first job where I made a significant amount of cash money American. More than my friends for sure. I could buy dinners, toys for big boys, movie tickets, arcade passes, whatever. Everyone accepted me. I was the man and like I said, it felt good. I still hadn’t figured out how to feel this way on my own, you know, without external influences, but it didn’t matter. Somehow, I had developed a personality that people found amusing, so I was never in short supply of people to feed my ego. I don’t think I was a dick, but I treated relationships like the death of my sister. “Well, I guess I’m just not going to see so and so anymore”. Never really putting in the work necessary to sustain a friendship for more than a couple of years and never really feeling like it mattered even though to my ego it mattered. Okay, so maybe not a dick but nothing apropos of something you could base a resolution on. My friends were getting married and I didn’t have an opinion on that institution one way or another. At this point I had collected one ex-fiancé and I recall that when the relationship ended it just had very little effect on me (there's a pattern here). I never dreamed of married life. I didn't feel any great loss. I didn’t even know I wanted companionship until I later when I began to say goodbye to my true love. But we'll come back to that.
Things went on like this for years until I stopped working 80-hour weeks and moved to a new city. Another well paying job that challenged me, but something was different about this job. It was interesting, it kept me busy, it sent me to school, but it also had a proper amount of staff. This was something I was not used to. Unlike previous well paying gigs, this one trained me me to pass off work and go home. Not only was I not encouraged to work so many hours but I found that I now swam with whales. This wasn’t just a bigger pond. This was an ocean, and I was a trout at best. I still had my passably humorous personality, but my intellect was not nearly as lauded as it had been at previous jobs. It was at this time that I was beginning to learn that I was not quite the cock of the walk that I had thought I was. Luckily, even without the distraction of workaholism and without the external boosts to my ego, I still had a new city to keep me busy. Negative influences were low and I was truly having fun. Hundreds of miles away from my hometown I was able to fill the hole which, unbeknownst to me at the time, was real and had existed for quite a while. The turmoil that had thus far been silent enough to ignore started cranking up the gain. In the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Florida when I was 29, it blared like a heavy metal rock concert.
At this time, I would like to digress to make note that prior to my Floridian excursion, I had moved a short distance to a party city. Not that the previous city wasn’t, but this was the kind of party city that contained a very large college. Drinking was all around me like it never had been before. It was at the numerous parties. It was after work. It was at work. It was on the water. It was off the water. It was before, during, and after sporting events. It was the next morning at brunch. A microbrew by definition is "a type of beer produced in a microbrewery". At least a half dozen neighbors were engaging in microbrewing in their garages. Across the city, everyone was doing it. If that wasn't enough variety, and don't you think it ought to be, going to a proper beer store was like renting NES games in 1989. There were just so many to choose from. Walking up and down 2 - 3 double aisles at Cox video for 30 minutes trying to decide on a game. My mid twenties adventurous nature led to many brands being bought although I still hadn’t been lured into the alcoholic fray. Just a six pack variety style once a week with a flat of Live Oak or 512 every month for company. And happy hour? I used to hate happy hour. At that time, I very much agreed with what George Carlin said about it. “Happy hour is just a support group for people who hate their jobs”. I found this to be spot on. I didn’t really enjoy the company of others in a happy hour setting. Even if I was trying to get shitfaced which normally, I wasn’t. It was annoying and often I stayed home to play video games or watch shitty TV. Adding to this attitude, most of my friends who engaged in happy hour often lost their possessions in drunken stupors. This included their cars, which we would spend the next morning searching the city for. If they didn't lose shit, they hurt each other doing shit. "Let me give you a piggy back ride" sort of shit. You shouldn't have to tell adults not to give each other piggy back rides while drunk. But I digress. Back to Florida.
I would like to say right off the bat. When you are caught in a rip current in the ocean swim parallel to the shore. You may (well I did) want to swim directly to the shore but because of the strong currents below you it is very possible that this will be a futile act. Swimming parallel to the shore will allow you to get out of this current and into a lane with far less force pushing you into the ocean. I did not know this at the time. I was a strong enough swimmer, but no where near strong enough to overcome a rip current. I thrashed for what felt like an eternity although was probably minutes. I was screaming bloody murder but because my voice was also not as powerful as the crashing of the waves no one heard me. I guess I don’t have a good distress look either because there were plenty of people on the beach. No lifeguards though. Just my one friend of a friend on the shore who noticed what was probably my last lurch out of the ocean, signaling that something was not okay. Seriously, no morsel of spunk had I left. I was dead tired after fighting for so long (minutes) and I had the thought, “Well I've heard drowning is a peaceful death”. It might be. After the thrashing trying to save yourself and the convulsing after sucking down enough water to displace your lungs ability to process air properly. Right after all that, I'm sure it’s very peaceful. But I was pulled out, honestly thinking I had died. I damn near killed my savior trying my hardest to hold onto the pink and white flowery rafter they had snagged before jumping into the ocean. The moment I got to the shore, I made it to a beach chair. I heard the screams of two young girls right before I passed out.
I’m omitting something that happened because, ever the narcissist, I want to keep this about me. Like my sister’s death though, it was an event that should have had more of an effect on me and at the time, had very little. Besides, I was still very selfishly in shock that I myself was alive. I should be dead. I was sure I was going to be 45 minutes prior, which is how long I had slept. For a good while I honestly thought I was and that I was living out some weird moments of what would have happened if I hadn’t died. Soon, I would soon be floating above myself where some angel would explain to me what had happened. That or I would be drug below myself by a demon, no explanation necessary. But when neither scenario occurred, I wiggled my feet in the sand. I looked left and I looked right. This seems to be life. To my right there was a cooler filled with Yuengling beer. I drank four of them in about 10 minutes. One after the other. The words my friend had said to us at that table 12 years ago in tha bowling alley, filled with opiates, echoed through my mind. “Everything is ooookaaaaaay”. And it was. So, I passed out. Then I had surgery.
Not like, right there on the beach, but about 6 – 8 months later. The wound happened kind of suddenly and was relatively minor, but it was in a place which would make surgical recovery incredibly uncomfortable. The tuches (my bum). And when you work in IT at a time just before standing desks became commonplace, tuches pain was both, well physically painful, but also aggravating. My old dalliance, 10 mg hydrocodone, swept in to relieve me of both my physical and mental pain. Post-op I was prescribed a boatload of it and told to take the pills 1-2Q4HPRN. You medical nerds will get that one. PRN be damned, I 2Q4H’d for sure. For months. The doctor just kept calling in the script. Walgreens just kept telling me it was ready. I just kept gulping them down. As a former pharmacy tech, I feel like I should have known better, but I didn’t. Ultimately, I probably just didn’t care.
One day though, the calls stopped. The supply line dried up. My love affair was over. "No matter", I thought, like I had thought about previous relationships, “Norco was just no longer a part of my life”. I’d move on, just like I had several times before. I wouldn’t sit dejected by a phone that would never ring like some miserably inadequate feeling teenager just wanting to go to the prom. No sir. I would throw up, kick, sweat, and not sleep by that phone for days. Three to be exact. On day four, I would buy 2 quarts of Corona Familiar and down the both of them in minutes. And then I slept. A little over three years later I would be doing the same thing with vodka. In similar volumes.
But that’s enough for now. Primo and secondo to follow.

I played contact sports (rugby/football) through college which I now (mid 30s) regret as I ignored injuries. I have an upcoming surgery in 3 weeks to fuse my Sacroiliac Joint. This will be my 16th surgery, and fourth spinal fusion. My other surgeries were mostly sports related (nose, jaw, both ankles)
I’ve had a number of ablations and injections under sedation recently, and my doctor has remarked that even under high doses, I’m very tolerant to the sedation medications (he would use 5 mg Versed and 100 of fentnyl and I would be having regular conversations, almost unimpaired)
To hopefully lower my tolerance for general anesthesia, I’ve abstained from THC (I have a MMJ prescription), alcohol (usually just a weekend drinker), and am sparingly using Norco for when I’m just incapacitated. In my past fusions (2 in 2020) they’ve needed to increase my PACU dialudid limit for pain relief to 4 mg total.
How can I best help my anesthesiologist treat me, especially given my surgeon wants this to be an outpatient surgery.
I printed out my anesthesia notes from my previous two fusions that lists the dosages of drugs from prior fusions (different emr so they don’t have records). I also asked my surgeon if I could have a few days of Percocet before switching to Norco which I take a few a week.
Any advice on how to best assist my anesthesiologist? Im about 225 lbs and 6’3” and have lost 15 pounds trying to maximize fitness within my limitations (I think my BMI is technically obese but im pretty broad/built like an athlete)

Age at the time of this story: 25. Gender: M
December 30th, 2019. I had just flew home after a three month stint in a Florida rehab for kratom, adderall, and alcohol
I had put my family through hell that entire year, particularly my younger brother, who told me point blank that he couldn’t live with me. I had a finite time to get a job and move out. I had spent the previous 4 years playing bass and vocals in his pretty successful band up until that point, and although I had finally gotten my shit together, I had ultimately proven to be a completely untrustworthy individual.
I quickly got a job at a local electronics manufacturer and re-enrolled in college as I had been studying electrical engineering and was close to having my associates. Hell, I even had a small business building guitar pedals at one point. Despite this, my immature brain at the time simply could not cope with the thought of how badly I had fucked up, and instead of powering through this like an adult or getting put on some kind of ssri (which in hindsight, I needed badly) I remembered that there was one opiate supposedly far better, and far more euphoric than kratom; Tianeptine. I had never tried it myself, in fact, my only experience with it was watching a mutual friend battle with it years prior. As fucked up as it is, what made me actually WANT to seek out this stuff was diving into quittingtianeptine and reading a plethora of horror stories, how hard it was to quit. The reason being, was that I figured that this was reflective of how strong the euphoria was. This is a glimpse into how weirdly autistic and immature my brain works when put under stress. After all, you need to be autistic and emotionally retarded n order to study engineering, it's a state law
I didn’t want this stuff being shipped to my house unless I absolutely had to, so I googled around to see if any sketchy shops sold it locally. To my surprise, there was a small “business” on google maps listed in Kenosha called “Tianeptine Friends” which had a website, and was open 24/7 located in Kenosha, Wisconsin, just an hour or so from my house in Chicago. Curious, I called the number and a sickly high pitched male answered in that stereotypical junkie drawl. I told him that I wanted 3 grams of sodium and 3 grams of free acid. He told me to drive to a specific speedway in a kind of seedy area of Kenosha. Despite giving him an hour heads up, and telling him when I was leaving, he had me wait in that Speedway parking lot for over an hour, which would become a semi-frequently recurring theme in the months to come.
When he finally pulled up, I was greeted by the most smelly and disheveled man I had ever seen. I’m serious, the vast majority of homeless people I see walking around the streets of Chicago were more well kept than he was. He was also one of the most fried and retarded pieces of literal shit I have ever met. I remember thinking that he looked a lot older than his voice would lead you to believe. He looked like a post meth Elmer Fudd. I got my shit from him, paid and left
Effects-wise, I loved it more than heroin and every other opiate I had tried up until that point from the moment I felt it. It had a more uplifting, less downer feeling to it. I started using every day to ironically, numb the constant thinking of the results of my previous shitty decisions. A couple weeks before the pandemic, I started renting out a band practice rehearsal space in the west side of Chicago with 24/7 access. When the pandemic laid everyone off, I had ample free-time to get high and play my absolute nuts off for hours at a time. Though I technically shared this space with a few other bands, the pandemic cancelled all shows for the foreseeable future and I was the only one using it. My existence for the better part of the next six months was as follows; wake up, eat tianeptine free acid, drive to the practice space, get more high, practice drumming for hours, occasionally record songs on guitar, and just generally bum around the space until I fell asleep there. I only really left the spot to pick up more tianeptine from Kenosha, go home to shower, or donate plasma for tianeptine money. While under the influence of other opioids, music didn’t seem to interest me at all, but with tianeptine, I would often get lost in music that I had long since forgotten about. If timed right, taking a quarter spoonful of freeacid after scoring and blasting Language by The Contortionist as I hit the highway on my way home made the music like the first time I had heard it, even though I had long since stopped giving a shit about that specific kind of djent/prog stuff since I started getting into good music and stopped being a teenager. Very early into the pandemic, one of my best friends who was also my bandmate at the time, fucking died less than 8 hours after our last conversation. I promptly used this event to justify my retarded behavior going forward.
Tianeptine has this weird effect on me where it actually gives me energy, enough to drum along to insanely fast and complicated songs for literal hours, especially when combine with 4-Fluorophenibut. Nobody in the family really suspected me of relapsing because I was very in shape from the drumming, ripped in fact
There was a period of this summer when I tried to quit by using Suboxone, only to discover that subs give me all the bad effects of opiates and strip me of all my motivation to do anything productive. Like kratom, it left me feeling flat and unable to enjoy music. After weaning down and attempting to jump off at around 2mg, I was left unable to sleep days on end unless the following criteria was met; be drunk, fuck the hot ass 19 year old with thicc hips and mommy milkers that I had recently met, and chase it with a trazodone melatonin sandwuch. No, like, I literally was unable to get any more than 2 hours of sleep a night prior to having sex with her. After that, I got a solid 7. Being that I literally needed to fuck her in order to sleep, she rose to the top of my hierarchy of needs, which led to me being way clingy and scaring her off only a couple weeks into our thing. Shortly after she cut me off, I was in the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant in Round Lake when two guys started shooting at each other....with me directly in between them. After high tailing it out of there, I took this as a sign that life sucks, I'm gay, and therefore I will get more tianeptine. I then started using tianeptine again
Later that month, my smelly tianeptine friend informed me that he had 3-chlorophenibut powder on hand, which is the active ingredient in baclofen. I wasnt using the fluorophenibut more often than a couple times every few weeks at the time, but decided to give it a go one day. Thing is, he neglected to inform me that without a tolerance, 50mg is enough to put you on your fucking ass which, without a very good scale, is impossible to measure. I scooped what I thought was a very small amount on a butter knife and ate it, promptly blacking out and waking up 23 hours later with puke on my floor. I estimate that i must have taken at least 200 milligrams. When I final regained my composure, I felt as if all mental barriers that existed from my C-PTSD and generalized anxiety had faded away for good. I was completely present, not dissociated and clearheaded for what felt like the first time in my life. A very specific idea for a song came into my head that I couldn't get enough of which sounded like a triumphant crescendo from hell. For any hipsters out there who might know what the hell I'm talking about, the idea was basically and augmented version of the breakdown riff from Gaza's "This We Celebrate", sped up by a lot, over a classic Gabe Serbian drum beat (Drummer for the locust) with layers of terrified screams into a tape delay directly inspired by the song Leng Tche by John Zorn's naked city. For anyone curious, yes, I ended up recording that song, which I aptly named Baclofen Overdrive. The part that came into my head ended up as the crescendo/ending and I wrote the rest of the song backwards from there
After getting on my phone, I received news that on the literal day and location that I went to go pick up my drugs, Kyle Rittenhouse had gunned down an associate of mine that frequented the same music scene I was involved with during the infamous Kenosha protests mere hours after I had left. Well, shit
The experience that made me quit this shit for good
It began like any other time I scored…I drove out to Kenosha and picked up approximately 75 dollars worth of tia freeacid, and eyeballed a small amount on a plastic spoon before gulping it down and getting on the highway back home. I felt completely normal until stepping out of my car which is when, it hit me
Now, before I go on to explain what happened next, I have to emphasize that I had an extremely high tolerance for this crap, and anyone who has taken too much tianeptine will tell you that it has a sort of ceiling effect similar to kratom and that you just feel woozy and maybe throw up worst case scenario. This is not what happened
Upon stepping out of my car, I became extremely disoriented, and found it very difficult to stand up. It felt like my driveway was slanted. It’s very hard to explain exactly what this sensation was like, but I pretty much knew right then and there that I was fucked. I felt a pervasive sensation of needing to yawn, but it was to the point of being painful.
I went inside and tried to convince myself that this was just simply a panic attack, pacing around the room, attempting to meditate, all the while I was getting more and more dissociated by the minute. I did some pushups and smoked a cigarette, which is when I realized that my heartrate was extremely high
I called my dealer, asked him what the fuck was up and if he cleaned the scale used to weigh my shit. I asked him if I should go to the hospital to which he replied “They wouldn’t know how to deal with what you’re going through” He actually suggested to come over to his house and let his equally fried retard of a wife monitor my heart while I slept. I tried explaining that I couldn’t see straight at all, and I was losing my basic motor skills more and more by the minute, like, even if I was retarded enough to trust his RC fried ass self with my life, there wasn’t any way that I had the coordination to drive all the way back to Kenosha with my progressively deteriorating state
Possibly foreseeing what would happen next, I opted to not sleep in my room, and decided to try and wait this out on the couch in the living room just in case this became an emergency situation. Surprise surprise, it did
I don’t remember any of this but apparently, my dad found me passed out on the couch and didn’t think much of it, until he nudged me to wake me. I promptly stood up, passed out and hit my head on the floor. Cue the next thing that I actually remember:
On the couch, I was surrounded by paramedics and unable to control my limbs. I was frantically flailing my arms, and unable to stay still despite the paramedics asking me to. I felt trapped in my body. “What did you take!?” one paramedic asked several times, alls that could come out of my mouth was a retarded, multipitched “whUUUaaaAAAt?!”. I said this, multiple times, all while flailing about and scaring the ever living shit out of my family. My dad truely thought that this was the time that I, his first son, was going to die or worse, permanently fuck my life up into becoming handicapped via severe brain damage.
According to the hospital records I requested, this is when they sedated me with ketamine to calm me the fuck down. This caused me to have a very, very vivid dream that seemed to last around two weeks, involving me, one of the nurses, and driving around Bensenville in my van. In all reality, I was only out for about a day and a half.
My coma dream was then interrupted by me waking up and projectile vomiting on the floor next to my hospital bed. I was in full blown tianeptine withdrawal and in the ICU. The nurses started asking me questions, and my answers to a lot of the basic ones like the date, my name, and the president I either got wrong or took me far too long to figure out the answers to. For some reason I refused to tell them about the tianeptine that I took despite being pressed about what drugs I had taken, out of fear of retaliation from my father. In hindsight, these fears were completely unfounded for a multitude of reasons, but I was still fucking delirious from whatever the fuck I took. I couldn’t remember my father’s phone number despite knowing it by heart since I was ten years old, and I was hallucinating very, very strange things which were compounded by the fact that I didn’t have my glasses in there
Shortly after vomiting, I began having the absolute worst pain in my lower back/ass area to the point where I was screaming my fucking head off. The nurses told me to pipe down but I physically could not. Now, I spiral fractured my tibia and fibula at fourteen when skateboarding which hurt like a cunt, but the pain i was currently feeling in my back was somehow a thousand times worse. I’ve never had a history of self harm, but I began violently biting and scratching my arms and hands to the point of drawing blood just to get my mind off of this pain. All while screaming bloody murder. This went on long enough for them to actually restrain my arms to the bedpost. I then started screaming stuff like “GIVE ME OPIATES PLEASE!! FUCK! CUNT! FUCK! DIE AAAAAAAA PLEASE GIVE ME SOME FUCKING MORPHINE BUT A LOT OF IT I HAVE A HIGH OPIATE TOLERANCE FUCK”. I also really needed to piss
They eventually relented and gave me two ten milligram hydrocodone, which I promptly chewed up and tossed back. After that the pain still wouldn’t go away. I continued screaming until they gave me haldol which knocked me the fuck out finally, but not before forcing all the piss out of my body and all over myself because I couldn't piss into the bedside cup thingy when prompted for some reason.
The next day, I was approached by a hospital psychiatrist who asked me the questions you'd expect. Had I tried to kill myself, did I have any active thoughts of hurting myself or others etc. When she asked me if I experienced hallucinations, I distinctly remember seeing the blurry outline of what looked like a man on a horse ride around my hospital room, hop onto the psychiatrist's clipboard, then under my bed. "No", I replied, though this wouldn't be the last time they would come around and ask me questions along those lines, which I will get to later. I spent a total of six days in the ICU and my memory is a bit fuzzy as to the order of the following events i'm about to describe, but I'll do my best to do so chronologically. My blood pressure was extremely elevated and at one point, I asked if I could walk myself to the bathroom. My cardiovascular system was so fucked that I almost passed out after trying to stand up for just a few seconds while the machines monitoring my blood pressure went haywire. I opted to lay down and piss in the cup for the time being. "You know, you almost died" one of my bedside nurses told me.
At one point during the night, a patient in the room next to me needed resuscitation. A hospital worker then grabbed the biggest defib paddles I have ever seen and attempted to revive the person. He then walked out of the room looking down at the floor, clapped the paddles together which created a shower of sparks and walked off. Thinking that it may have been a vivid dream, I asked a doctor the following morning about it and as it turns out, that really did happen. Dude died. Nice
Another fucked up thing I saw that I'm not entirely sure if happen was seeing a guy with a full leg cast get the end of his foot stuck in one of the hospital doors that had started to lift him upwards and off his mobile stretcher. The whole staff was trying to free him as the he was screaming. As this was happening, the TV in my room was playing a live feed of an X Ray view of the guys leg as this was going on. After they finally managed to free him, from the door by essentially forcing his leg to do the front splits, he started screaming and writhing in pain as the live feed of the internal parts of his leg showed a replay of something snapping in there. Just over and over like a sports recap, and X-ray view of this guys leg snapping. I remember this way too vividly, dream or not.
I was experiencing the worst mental agony and physical pain of my life while in there, albeit not nearly as bad as when I first woke up. I was able to get fed a couple more round of norcos to subside my withdrawals after I finally told them what I took. I was also told that my blood was sent off to poison control. A funny thing about opiate withdrawal that nobody seems to talk about is just how horny you get. This is due to the fact that while in active addiction, opiates actually tank your testosterone and make you not want to jerk off or even seek out sex, so when you quit, the opposite happens. Three or so days into my stay, I couldn't handle it. Being in the ICU, you have a nurse in your room 24/7 and i didnt want to be a COMPLETE degenerate by blatently jerking off in front of them. That being said, they were on their phones or work computers 99% of the time and not actively looking at me, and with my newfound sensitivity in the crotch area, I was able to adjust my blankets in such a way where you couldn't tell that I was moving at all, and cum into prepared tissues in 20 seconds or less stealthily as fuck. I probably jerked off a minimum of ten times a day for the remainder of my ICU carrier and never got caught, or make a sound even. One of my greatest achievements in life, probably above my engineering degree. Are you proud of me dad?
Another side effect of opiate withdrawal is the return of creativity. I was coming up with mad song ideas, lyrics even. I wanted nothing more than to come home and play more stupid goofy avant garde prog jazz retard mathcore on my 8 string. I realized on that hospital bed that while in active addiction I was simply going through the motions when it came to music. I wasnt playing to play, hell, I barely recorded. I was just getting high and seeing how long I could maintain a 260bpm blast beat while modifying pedals to make the kick drum mic in the practice space go through a compressor like a crackhead. I had several deep conversations with the various nurses in charge of keeping an eye on me which made me realize how grateful I should be to be alive. One of them described how they survived a famine in Poland during the collapse of the USSR and upon landing in the united states, she actually teared up at the sight of all the food inside of the first grocery store she went inside of. Another was from northern Africa, where a civil war was currently taking place and the rest of her family was in constant danger. A third told me how an adverse reaction to a flu shot landed him in the ICU for a whole 8 months, and how he basically finessed his way out of having to pay a dime out of the seven figure hospital bill without it affecting his credit
At some point, I was approached by another hospital psychiatrist who asked me the same round of questions and being that I was at the lowest point of my life and finally able to cry due to not being numbed out, I started to sob like a little faggot (dont cancel me im literally gay) and told them about how much I wanted to kill myself and that I was sexually assaulted when I was six. Because of this, I was discharged to the psych unit for a mandatory 72 hr hold after I was finally able to walk and my blood pressure returned back to normal. In the psych ward, I met a bunch of cool people who I still talk to, a fat dickhead who i ended up triggering, and most dishearteningly, a childhood friend of mine. This friend of mine had previously been missing for over two years out of state after having a mental break. This friend, who I reconnected with in our late teens, was always doing and selling hella drugs. Sometime after we reconnected when we were both 21, he apparently became a completely different person. After going MIA in California circa 2017, he had apparently become a meth addicted vagrant on top of showing signs of severe schizophrenia. The person that stood before me in the psych ward in September of 2020 was not the same person I grew up with skateboarding when we were 12. Hell, it wasn't even the same person I did acid with in 2014. What stood before me was a wide eyed, Syd Barrett of a man who would talk to himself when alone in his room and laugh like a maniac. During lunch, he would chew his food with his mouth open and sometimes not even use utensils like a fucking animal. This deeply disturbed me
At one point during group therapy, the therapist had a prompt and all of us would then answer it one by one. The prompt; if you had a magic wand and could change one thing about the world, what would it be. Standard group innocuous therapy stuff right? Wrong. When it got to this girl who I started befriending in there, she said that she wished that politicians would actually get stuff done. I piped up and said that the reason they don't currently work is because they're all pedophilic boomers who deleted all semblance of neuroplasticity by doing too much coke in the 80s. This made everyone laugh including the therapist, all except for this one fat kid. He started going off on this gigantic tirade that went along the lines of "I don't think that's funny man. You're saying that these politicians, who swore on the Bible are doing DRUGS? I'm in a secretive youth group for future leaders, we've met all the politicians! FUCK YOU! YOURE A PIECE OF SHIT" he started punching walls and walking towards me. What was I thinking as this was happening? I was laughing my ass off, but a tad bit worried that if he swung at me, my PTSD and years of jiu jitsu would kick in and then i would then have to deal with a fat kid with a broken arm and potentially more time in that hell hole. Before he could swing at me, the therapist pushed the panic button and he was promptly scooped up by security and a doctor. They booty juiced him and the next time I saw him a few hours later, he was in a haldol daze as he packed his stuff to be transferred to a higher security psych ward. Fucking idiot
Anyways, after my 72 hours was up, I was promptly set free and never touched that shit again because opiates are for pussies. Later in life, I ended up getting addicted to phenibut and amphetamines like a real man, but that story is for a different day. This experience traumatized me very deeply. For the next year or so, I began to have this reoccurring delusion where I was absolutely convinced in the back of my mind that I was still in that coma in real life due to how vivid the initial coma dream lasted. I ended up writing a song about this experience as well. For those of you who might be curious, the songs inspired by these experiences can be found at GENXJOPLIN.BANDCAMP.COM I'm working on getting a full band to play these (and much more that haven't been released yet) live so if you don't completely suck at your instrument and live in the Chicagoland area, let me know. Musically it's almost like if Naked City, System of a down, Mr Bungle, Cardiacs all had a bukkake session on an 8 string guitar that gives birth and that baby falls down the stairs after doing a thumb print.
As of writing this (October of 2022) I have finally kicked all substances and am 47 days sober after finding psych meds that help me address my C-PTSD and depression without resorting to terrible decisions that inevitably lead to me ruining my life and almost dying. I have also received a formal diagnosis for autism spectrum disorder which in hindsight, was very fucking obvious to everyone but me
Cheers pricks!

Hi, Im a first-time student trying to figure out my next steps after applying for FAFSA and tentatively submitting an application for RCC (mostly just to get access to counseling so I can figure out what to so next as far as picking classes).
Im currently undecided on my main choice for a major, but my big dream/aim is 2D/3D animation (2D priority, mainly thinking along the lines of film and games), graphic/multimedia design, and potentially also game development (where I would ideally combine all these skills and other various ones). At the moment, however, it seems like some basic graphic design courses are the best place to start...???
Im looking at RCC, MoVal and Norco, but Ive so far only been able to get info from the individual schools' websites for info on classes rather than student opinions, but from what Ive gathered so far, Norco College seems to be known for their Game Dev courses (although I dont have student opinions on this yet), RCC has an animation class, although I might apparently be better off studying at least 2D animation myself on the side (online tutorials and the like), and RCC and MVC each have their own Graphic Design-related clases, and MVC seems to have their own Game Art classes.
I practically require mostly or all-online classes, as I barely have any time after work to fit in, and flexibility is pretty limited at the moment.
I have a decent amount of experience with relevamt software (have messed around with Photoshop a little, Clip Studio Paint has been my go-to for a bit), and have done some of my own art on the side, and have a good PC to work with, although I dont currently have anything portable other than my phone.
My current full-time job has me working 5 days a week (all weekdays atm) with occasional overtime on Saturdays, but Im possibly looking to find a different job that's much closer to me (I live in Perris and drive all the way out to Ontario). Im open to student work, but Id rather keep my full-time pay than go part-time.
Advice and insight is much appreciated, thanks.

They found my cysts when I was about 8 years old. Don’t know how many though at that time. Right now all the CT scans say “innumerable cysts”. My dad passed before that when he was 42 (4 days after my 7th birthday). Complications from kidney disease is what I know at least. I’ve been seeing a nephrologist since then. I’m turning 22 in a few months and all my bloodwork shows normal kidney function. the lowest my eGFR has been was 90 and creatinine stays around 1.0. Yesterday my GFR was measured at 101. I went into the ER because I was having severe back pain and after 6 hours and a CT scan they told me one of the cysts on the top of my right kidney had burst, which sounds fucking terrifying but all they did was refer me to a urologist and give me Norco and sent me on my way. All my blood work has been perfectly normal my whole life, even with an honestly terrible diet (lots of soda, fast food, hardly any exercise) and I fear it’s starting to catch up to me. I want children, and I want to see them grow up, graduate high school and college, get married and have kids of their own, like my dad never could. I don’t want them to grow up without a father like I did. I’m honestly terrified for my future. Am I overreacting????? I’m bawling my eyes out typing all this but there’s nobody else I can talk to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhNOfXxNB7A