A Junkie's Journey

One

 Same old, same old. Nothing had changed, but he liked to pretend that it had. Scratch that; things had changed. He had gotten better at lying, manipulating, and bullshitting due to his increasing desperation and dependency on snorting his pills. What else is new?

Tristan just kept on thinking; his mind never stopped. He couldn't really blame it on the drugs anymore, it was all him. All the problems with his mind and school, all the relationships falling apart at the seams, all the sleepless nights that were making him crave the pills even more. God, he was such a dumbass, even letting thoughts of snorting pills pass through his head before he had even crushed one.

Snorting pills was part of his daily routine nowadays. Tristan had never been able to handle little changes in his schedules; even his mother had been telling him that since Tristan was younger. If anyone was to catch Tristan doing any kind of drug, especially snorting something, they would crack down on him and be stricter. That would throw Tristan's mental state out of whack; since he wouldn't be able to do drugs for a while after he was caught, his routine would be too different for him to handle. Although getting caught with pills was nearly too hard to think about, Tristan knew it was bound to happen. Soon.

His grandparents were too gullible, giving Tristan too much trust when he really didn't deserve any to begin with.

Tristan needed to organize his school papers in a binder a few months ago, but some of the papers didn't have holes on the sides. He found a hole-puncher, but after using it, the bottom holding all the punched holes came off, and the holes spilled on the floor. He was sober at the time, so he really didn't feel like cleaning it up. Over the next few months, whenever anyone came into Tristan's room, they would laugh and tell him that the holes looked like little pills.

Recently, Tristan was getting desperate. He hadn't been sleeving or cheeking the little pills he snorted, so he was more on-edge than usual. His grandmother gave him a pill and he was getting water from his room when he realized that he could stack a few of the paper holes on top of each other, put the real pill in his pocket, and swallow the papers in front of his grandmother so that she would think he swallowed the pill. In reality, the pill would be in his pocket, ready for Tristan to crush and snort whenever he wanted.

Tristan had been swallowing the paper holes for around a month now, and the whole ordeal was going smoothly. No one in his family knew that he was currently snorting anything, and that was great.

A little while back, Tristan's parents came to visit him and his grandparents. His mother had talked to his grandmother about his pill problem. His mother asked his grandmother if Tristan was still snorting anything, and his grandmother was pretty much one hundred percent sure that Tristan wasn't snorting anything.

Now, here's why Tristan thought he'd get caught soon. He kept his paper holes in a baggie similar to the baggies he kept his powder in. He'd always keep the two baggies with him, in case he needed to pretend to swallow a pill somewhere he wouldn't usually have paper holes. While Tristan's parents were visiting, he lost the baggie carrying the holes. If anyone found that baggie before Tristan, he'd be done for. Tristan couldn't lie his way out of that situation.

He was so behind with his online classes that it was too overwhelming to even look at. Tristan completed three semester-long classes in a span of eleven months, and he had to complete twelve in total before August. That meant he had nine to go if he wanted to graduate with all of his friends in his (Past? Current?) grade. The thing is, Tristan cared about his education, but at the same time, he didn't. He wanted a future with a well-paying job, a husband, and kids, and he could see himself getting there and getting what he wanted; however, he also didn't think he deserved a future and couldn't see himself living past the age of eighteen.

"Whatever," Tristan finally said out loud to himself. "Whatever," he repeated with more confidence. "I'll think about this shit when it gets more relevant." He railed a couple lines of Focalin and laughed, falling back on his bed.