There was no off switch. There was no way to just say, okay, I won't do it.
It became a game. How can I get more? How fast can I get them?
My happiness depended on whether I had them or not.
I was introduced to pain pills through hearing it at school.
It was easy to justify because it's prescribed by a doctor.
It's a very social thing. Infrequent. We couldn't get a hold of it all that much.
I steadily networked and found different people.
They would sell them to me and it opened up a flood game of me having access to uncountable amounts.
It changed from a social thing. So me starting to guard them and hide them and know exactly how many I had and how many I had to get to feel normal. This was running my life.
It's very hard for people to understand the lengths you'll go to to get this.
It's changed your brain chemically.
Pretend you've got the worst hunger you've ever had in your life, and that hunger is never subsided.
There's nothing you can take or do to get rid of that except one thing.
I took 20 pills, OxyContin. It was a very clear thought that I had. My life is in immediate danger.
Any further down this path, you're going to be leaving your wife and your daughter here on this earth alone.
I called her on the way home and I told her I told you that I had a habit of all this, but it is beyond my control.
This is something that I can't do by myself. We got a hold of a doctor.
Then I talked to my religious leader.
He got me involved in a recovery program.
I talked a lot to people about religion. I'd been a missionary. I'd done many different things in my life where I was teaching the atonement of Jesus Christ. Or so I thought.
I thought I understood what it meant.
But I'd never put that into practice in my life. Not really.
Not until this moment
I was really able to see that somebody is helping me control this.
To rely on my savior and say a prayer. To take those cravings away from me.
To say it's easy. And to say it's magic or just disappears is not realistic.
But I certainly felt an extra help. A help from somewhere that was beyond me that I wasn't controlling.
I doubt the cravings, the actual physical cravings will ever go away,
but I feel like I have some place I can go to get help to to have that lifted or taken away from me and have a moment of peace. And I believe that my Savior's influence in my life has given me that.