Post 3 – Cracks in the Mask

I was still getting offers.

Division 2 football scholarships were coming in. A couple Division 1 schools were offering probationary walk-on spots with scholarships on the table if I proved myself. Coaches saw potential. They saw the athlete. What they didn’t see was how far gone I already was.

If I had kept my grades up, the D1 doors would’ve been wide open. But I wasn’t focused on school. I wasn’t focused on anything except staying high and keeping the image alive.

By this point, I was fully addicted to opiates. It wasn’t recreational anymore. It wasn’t for fun or rebellion. It was survival. I had moved past snorting. Now I was smoking it. I needed it just to feel level.

Heroin started creeping in. Not openly. Nobody was calling it that yet. But it was there. Quiet. In the background. Like a shadow waiting its turn. And it didn’t feel like a hard line anymore. The stuff we said we’d never touch had already worked its way into the routine.

Then 2008 hit. And everything changed.

My family had been running on credit and image. And when the crash came, that credit ran out. Everything they’d been hiding got ripped wide open. The big house didn’t mean anything anymore. The mask we’d all been wearing stopped working.

And right as our family was being exposed financially, my secret life started getting exposed too.

Word started getting around. School. Coaches. Family friends. My parents couldn’t keep pretending anymore. And the pressure blew the whole thing up.

They got divorced. And when people asked why, they didn’t hold back.

It was because of me.

Because of my drug use.

That’s what they said.

Everything fell apart at once.

And I still wasn’t ready to stop.

If you missed the first post in this series, scroll back and start there.

This is CooperSpoon Dirt Over Diamonds

It’s not a comeback story. It’s the truth, one post at a time.