He was sitting on a discarded Pepsi crate behind a gas station in downtown Nashville smoking a Pall Mall Cigarette and drinking a Bud Ice tall boy.
“I was clean for 22 months,” he told me while looking to the side as if he were afraid he would disappoint me. “I lost it though, lost my job and lost my truck that I worked for,” he said after telling me that he was addicted to heroin. As for a place to live, he lost that too because he was living with his sponsor who couldn’t risk his sobriety.
He told me that he overdosed on heroin one month ago and literally died. He was later revived after being transported to the hospital and given a second chance at this thing we call life.
Former CBS Reporter Dan Rather once did heroin for a story. He later stated, “I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly.”