Thanks everyone for the kind words. While I still believe that Marijuana should be decriminalized, I will never, ever feel that way about heroin. There is no such thing as casual use of heroin. He had been using it for well over a year before anyone realized it. Unlike other drugs where you can easily spot someone who is high on them, heroin is different. The first few uses gives one a feeling of euphoria but after just 3 or 4 uses, the body becomes addicted to it and the user needs to shoot up just to feel normal.
That was when it was discovered that he was on the junk. He was having a hard time aquiring some of his fixes and when he was off the drug is when he would act weird and hateful. But when he was on it he seemed like his normal self. When he died, he was just 20 years old. 2 years earlier had won a hardship scholarship to the Univeristy of North Texas and was doing well.
Both his parents were dopeheads (Meth and Cocaine) and by the time he was 8, he and his 4 year old brother came to live with my parents who raised them to adulthood (the younger one is now in the U.S. Navy). Ryan used to rail about his parents and how they let drugs become more important than him and he vowed never to touch the stuff.
What a shock it was then to find out that he became addicted to the worst one of all and it eventually ended his young life. Added to that pain is that two of his good friends who were pallbearers at his funeral are no longer with us today. There is nothing good about heroin and if anyone thinks it should be legalized, they are either ignorant of its danger or delusional.
Donny
