Fentanyl Addict interview-Kristen

all right kristen mm-hmm kristen uh where'd you grow up where are you from originally the dc area northern virginia dc i was born in richmond and uh my i mean i guess we were pretty well-off um family good parents i have to say that's great but i i have one brother and we were we were swimmers that was uh what i did growing up and i was good i still hold records for that i still miss it but i was um you know practiced before school after school every weekend we had a meet it was just i was all winter and school uh no this was when i was uh i swam before i could walk really like i was swimming i have records from when i was five in 1984 still so um when i was real little and then when i was 12 i went to junior olympics and that the coach that i had for that um my parents were going to move to northern virginia so i went to live with him and other swimmers had done that you lived with your coach yeah rather than your family and well because they moved and so to in order to stay with that same coach and on that team uh i had to live in that area and um so i stayed with him and [Music] that just ended up being [Music] he molested me so it just wasn't about swimming anymore and it ruined everything basically because i quit and i it was like to this day i wish i had just either stuck it out regardless of what he was doing or just he had never done that because that was like the one thing in my life that i was really good at like i think probably everybody has a gift but i would that i was really good and i you know that would have been my ticket that would have been what i could have done did he get caught for this eventually but not for me i never um i never came forward mostly because later i had got i was abducted and i did go to the police for that and that man went to prison but that was at the same time i heard that my old coach was getting caught so i didn't um i just i guess i just didn't want to go through both things at once or i figured he was already getting in trouble and i had to i already had to go to court in louisiana for the um the kidnapping and so i just didn't say say anything how did you get kidnapped i was driving on my way to mardi gras and i got off the interstate to get a pack of cigarettes because i was out and i pulled up at um i stopped i mean this was in shreveport louisiana but i mean at the time i didn't know where i was i and i just pulled up to a red light and there was a police station right there it was like a compound multiple buildings and uniform cops and everything walking around and a man well these guys had been yelling towards me over to the side kind of just like cat calling and i was ignoring them basically and he uh then i saw like a flash in one of the mirror i don't know it happened so fast he jumped in my passenger side door and stuck a gun in my side and just said drive and i thought he was carjacking me so but even if i had known what he was doing i hadn't i drove i just did what he said um and i was trying to act like i wanted to be there and like kind of like laugh and make things light-hearted and until he hit me he backhanded me really hard and i was that was when i realized that i was in trouble and i don't know before that i guess i was pretending that somehow i wanted him in my car i even tried to say um like okay well can i drop you off somewhere and because i i need to get back home like you know like he was gonna get do that um but he took me back to a house and he chained me to a pole in a shed behind this house and um i was there for five days almost a week and i didn't see anybody else but him and he raped me a thousand times and and i mean i knew i thought he was gonna kill me i knew he kept saying he didn't know what to do with my body he said that over and over and i was thinking we're in louisiana you can like cut me and throw me in a swamp somewhere and alligators will probably eat me like i'm thinking i can think of what to do with my body what is wrong with this dude um and the one time during that whole time that i saw another person he was showing like one of his friends like that he had me or something and the friend was like i know her she's a cop that was driving around and i don't know why he said that i don't know who he thought i was but i was thinking oh my god if they think i'm a cop like that's even worse but in retrospect it's kind of like if i was a cop they would have swarmed you by now like but um i was tired i was chained by my ankles and i um i had been a stripper before that actually because this was um i had been hooked on heroin slightly before this not to jump around but uh and i danced for a while during that and i don't know if that's what gave me the idea or her watching true crime maybe gave me the idea but um i was they i went up to the top of the pole and pushed the boards up with my um ankles with the chains on my ankles they were like old-timey um shackles and my feet were probably like 18 inches apart maybe and until i got the chain on the other side of the pole and then i fell asleep but i meant to go right because he only left he would leave at like maybe like four in the morning right towards dawn and just be gone for an hour or two and that was when i was gonna go but i was so tired he hadn't given me any food or water the whole time and i was just exhausted and i fell asleep and then when i woke up and realized that he'd gotten laid out oh my god i just scrambled and made too much noise with the chain and um but i was out and i was trying to run but my my they were still chained together but i was he came out of the house and he had the gun but he didn't shoot at me and i remember thinking that i could feel him a bullet like going right between my shoulder blades i was just sure it was going to hit me right there for some reason but he didn't shoot it and i don't know why maybe it was never loaded or maybe it was even a fake gun i don't think it was a fake gun because the cops did well i i got to a service station and an older lady showed up there um after the cops had gotten there and she said she saw me and sort of saw part of the incident and so she was saying that she was yelling for me to come and hide in her house and she was then she said i i don't have a phone but we could have both hidden and i was like oh my god if i had gone in your house and then you told me you didn't have a phone i might have killed you um but yeah at least she showed up to the the um service station and the and they i mean i didn't have any clothes on i and i just had like a tank top that was ripped and i had blood all over me and i was uh but no one else between where i ran from in the service station made any move to help me they all just looked at me like i was in the wrong neighborhood it was it was sad but that man had uh been in prison for 25 years for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl and he was on parole for two months when he got me the parents of that girl and her brother came to my trial beca and were thanking me for putting him back in prison um because i mean they fought so he wouldn't be released and he ended up literally doing the same exact crime as he did to their daughter and um that's that's the reason he kept telling me he didn't know what to do with my body because that's how he thinks he got caught for that first crime he thought if he had made it so they couldn't find her body he wouldn't have gotten caught um i mean i don't know if that's that's true or not i mean maybe but either way i mean how sick are you that you spend 25 years in prison and you're out on parole for two months and you'd go out and do the same it's just it's just crazy so you got away i did i got away and i um and he got caught he got caught and how they found him was in louisiana i don't know who built shreveport louisiana but they there are roads on the front and the backs of all the houses which is just seems like a huge waste of space but and then the houses look the same on both sides it's really weird so i didn't i was having a really hard time i thought i could just go in the car with the detectives and backtrack where i'd run and find this location because they i've realized four or five days afterward they really weren't at least working fast enough or hard enough in my opinion to find him and so i asked could we go in the car and i could just take them to where i was which they did but then after about two hours i was i found myself like apologizing to them because i i just couldn't seem to find it and that surprised me because normally i have a pretty good sense of direction and i but then right after i was getting ready to say why don't we just let me stop trying to do this i saw it and i was just like oh my god that's it and they said okay well let's drive around to the front side of the house because it looked like the front side of the house and with the shed in the yard which was weird to have a shed in your front yard but that's what it looked like but then when they said let's drive around the front the other side of the house looked exactly the same and it was just weird to have street on both sides but when we went around the front he was laying in the driveway changing the license plate on the car and i was like that's him that's him right there and they got they well we went to the end of the street and the only thing i asked them was don't please don't walk him like right by the car you know so he'll see that it's me i don't you know and they did that and that always bothered me they did they arrested him and walked him directly right by me so um how long is he in for now 99 years he got 99 years plus he was i mean he was on parole for he had been sentenced to 25 years to life so he really got the rest of that term anyway um but i was happy for the 99 years because that's just like a jury saying you know you're never getting it again we're gonna give you years that's you're not going to possibly live through you know so you went through the thing with your swim coach and then you went through this yeah and i was i think i was already destroyed from my swim coach and i said where the drug you started yeah um because i at first i started drinking in high school and um just a lot and i would drink before school if i could i just was trying to i don't know what i was trying not feel that's what i was trying to do and then it started with smoking weed and then i was the guy that i was dating or i started dating someone that was selling weed and i basically stayed with him while he sold the harder and harder drug each you know then he started selling coke and then i was doing coke and along with the drinking so i would do the cocaine and be able to stay awake when i was drinking too much and was your family involved in your life i mean it was when my my parents um well my dad started cheating on my mom with the older sister of these guys that i went to school with and she was only four years older than me when i was 15. so i found out about it because my uncle had died and when my parents were away at the funeral my brother threw a big party he was only 13 months older than me so we had all the same friends and stuff so at this party um my brother got really drunk and at like three in the morning he says let's call dad's girlfriend and get her to make us breakfast and i'm like dad has a girlfriend tonight but he called her and she came and made people breakfast which was weird and i lasted maybe a month or so after that before i told my mom that my dad was cheating on her but she she must have known because when she asked me who it was and i was like i can't say that because i was a daddy's girl like i didn't want to really be telling on him at all but then i felt so sorry for her it was a small enough town that it became like the biggest scandal there and everybody knew about it and i felt like they were everybody i mean everybody did know about it and they were i don't know if they were laughing at my mom but at least talking about her you know and it's just i hated that place for that reason i never i still never want to go back there just because it's just i don't know maybe too small of a town i just anybody that would like just gossip so much about one family going through basically a divorce but somebody cheating or you know it's just it was mean i always felt like it was me and i've always had more empathy for people than that and i don't like it when people treat other people really badly i've had a hard time on the street because of that too because that's the norm treating other people badly but that makes me that hurts me like you know if someone's making fun of someone or just like i've seen people just walk up and start beating another person for no reason like no conversation before just just being mean i've seen some horrible things like that and i don't know why people act like that but i've always been definitely someone to fight for the what brought you down underdog um i uh well i quit using heroin and i was on methadone um well because i ultimately started using heroin because that's the same dealer boyfriend uh yeah this part comes a little bit first he he i got hooked on heroin because he's an idiot and he was speaking in slang to guys in worcester massachusetts which is 18-hour drive from where we lived but he was trying to get coke because we didn't have we hadn't had coke in a couple weeks and it was christmas and at that point people just wanted to snort something in that small town i guess so he was going to drive these 18 hours and pick up coke in worcester massachusetts but they were talking on the phone using slang when he got all the way up there driving my car um they had heroin and he would not coke because they were both saying dope or whatever they were saying they're idiots so stupid so he bought the heroine because he's an idiot and he just wanted to bring some drugs back i guess and so that's how i started using heroin and um that same boyfriend ended up um choking me until i was unconscious and throwing me over the side of a bridge in that town and he he went to prison but only for six years for that and i thought that was really low because if you're trying to kill someone and you actually think you did kill them and you're trying to dump their body you should get the same sentence as a murderer i think but that was um the last day i ever spent in that town so how do you think you've had so many of these abusive relationships with men i i i think because i say what i think and i'm opinionated and i don't hold back i think i speak a lot before i think and a lot of these guys that are like want to be gangster type guys will slap you around for that for having any kind of a opinion or voice which is why i'm single forever now because i don't i'm a horrible judge of who i should date clearly and do 42 have children no because i couldn't have kids and that was what precipitated my relapse i mean i was queen for almost 15 years really and i'm not now during that 15 years i actually got married and then i had six miscarriages and my whole life i knew i would have kids i mean the first place i ever worked was a daycare center and i i mean i just love them and uh when i couldn't have them and then when i run into girls out here they're like oh yeah no i have a son and i'm like you don't have a kid you're out here your kid is with someone else thank god but it always bothers me because i'm like and you're lucky you could have them to begin with you know here i am i desperately want them and um i ended up using again because which when you're clean for that long oh my gosh i was so far removed from drug use and everything that happened to me that i actually might have made it i might have been in that small percentage but you know nothing turns out in your life the way you think it's going to i don't know it gets kind of um just well what's the point if i'm not gonna if i don't have kids and i don't what else am i gonna do i mean i guess i didn't really have another plan or maybe i was just punishing myself for i don't know but by then i had moved out here because that was part of after what happened with that guy and the whole bridge thing um i never went well i never was back in that town again and um so that's really why i came out here when i was five years old i saw a picture it was a postcard of the santa monica pier and it looked like when i was five it looked like an amusement park and you know uh when i was older when i found out that that was somewhere that you could live and like make money and i was they i just thought that was definitely where i should go so that was what put l.a in my head really like the weather and i think the last winter i was um in northern virginia it was so cold my um my whole car was covered in snow and once i scraped it then the keyhole was frozen and i couldn't stick the key in and i was like oh my gosh i'm done so um that was uh the weather and that picture from when i was five that brought me out here but there's so many people that are transplants but well at first it was it was good i do i remember talking to my mom on the phone and telling her i was happier than i'd ever been before because i was you know just working and have my own apartment and i was in la and it's beautiful here and um i was not in danger of running into anyone that i didn't want to see you know and so i was comfortable and um i remember telling her i was yeah happier than i'd ever been before and then i slowly just first i would have wine like after work with uh people from work you know and then it's like i think that's how i slowly started going towards relapsing because it was just a social thing and then that's obviously really bad for me because i can't just keep it at that and then i ended up not working at the like i've worked i've had some great jobs and um worked in some really like cool places like forensic accounting and things stuff like that that i'm really interested in to do with like forensics and crime and you know so that part of my life should have been great but you know i was always sort of pulled towards the dark side for some reason and even my parents my dad i mean my brother and i both were heroin addicts and my dad never even smoked a cigarette and he he's asked me before you know how did i end up with 100 of my kids are hooked on this drug and i never not only did not do a drug i didn't smoke a cigarette i never he's never been a drinker just nothing and he has 100 of his kids our addicts and he always feels like what did i ever do to deserve that it's certainly not his fault but um i don't know i i sometimes i wonder why i've had it seems like and unusual amount of bad things happen to me like i have a stepfather now that my parents split up and my dad actually married the woman that he was cheating on my mom with and then my mom was by herself for a long time and then um she got remarried and um my stepdad is he was an ambassador for his whole career in a bunch of different countries but he's very straight laced he does not believe in anything like luck or bad luck he doesn't even though i mean to me i've had some bad luck and um he after knowing me for six years he was like okay you have bad luck i'll admit it i mean luck or i have a i have a mouth or i have a voice i like to say that's better my mouth so much so but i've loved it out here but not not until i got being on the street is not something you love it's worse than anything i could ever imagine how did you relapse i um i slowly started with the wine that then i started buying it for at home after just like a happy hour thing and then i ended up getting laid off from my job that i really liked and it was during the time when unemployment paid you for 96 weeks before i think it was trump that cut that off to nothing but since it was so long those 96 weeks even though it was way less than i made i managed to still make it work and just used all my free time to go back into a deep depression and not wanting to get out of bed and ultimately searching for heroin and um it actually i didn't know about skid row i went to compton because i think that's what it says in like rap songs or something because that's definitely where i went and they directed me to skid row and um then i used heroin um relapsed on heroin and um didn't my parents didn't know or anything because they were they're still back on the east coast and they still thought i was out here doing great and then fentanyl came along and i started using that and now i don't know what the end of the story is were you living are you on the street i am i'm technically i'm in a shelter right now which is uh such a huge blessing i mean because it's unusually hard i remember the first night i was going to be outside i called so many places that day because they say they have like emergency vouchers for motels and stuff that's not true they don't um and they were all kind of like scoffing at me i'm you know like oh well nobody's even gonna look at your file until you've been outside for a year and i'm like oh my god i was like not even wanting to be outside for tonight i mean because at the time even though i was using i i was thinking if somebody could have you know help me with a place to stay i could at least maybe keep working and things wouldn't get so bad but i couldn't slow it down at that point it was maybe i guess too late and then once you're out on the street it's shocking how hard it is to get back inside because no like like they told me on that very first day she they were telling me the truth all eight of those places were telling me the truth nobody looks at your file so you've been outside for a year and once you've been outside for a year you're a different person than you were because hey the person i was buying drugs from of all people said i was mad and he was like no you can't be homeless you're going to change you're not going to be the same sweet chris you're gonna be like hard and mean like you won't even lend somebody your lighter and he was right he was right because people do some horrible things to each other out here which is so stupid i've never walked by a homeless person asleep on the street and thought what could i steal from them that seems to me but they do like and it's the worst feeling i don't know i think i felt worse the first time and every time after that that i woke up on the sidewalk and someone had stolen everything i owned and i literally just had clothes on my back i think that was a worse feeling almost than any of the other horrific things from the kidnapping rapes i don't know i feel like that was almost worse because that was just that was just that was really hard for some for some reason i don't know like i guess i felt like there were people that could help me with other bad things that had happened or well they happened i wasn't destitute though so i could still eat a good meal and take a shower um after those things happened especially rapes i mean showering was like but this was like i was already homeless and now somebody just somehow made that worse um how do you support yourself now i steal from stores and sell it boost it i wasn't sure you'd know what boosting was a lot of people don't but of course you should um yeah and i uh that is hard for me to do because most of these places um you know i shopped in with my parents growing up which is probably why or how i learned how to behave in them so i can go into a lot of places where some other people might not be able to really even go in them um and uh so i kind of feel i it feels bad i remember standing at some counters in department stores and macy's and stuff when i was a kid and my mom being like where is this checkout lady you know but we never would have left the store because there was no employee you know that never crossed anybody's mind so they're not being an employee to check you out now being such a good thing is kind of weird but then it is it's you know makes you enough money to get by but having to do that every day is rough does this lifestyle affect you emotionally it's it has worn me completely down because it's just it's just such a waste you know like uh and it's sad i mean i had managed to go through all these other things in my life but not get you know tangled up in police issues you know and but when you're boosting every day you're gonna eventually get caught for things like that so now it's like i've got court dates that i've missed and i'm just waiting for i guess to get arrested and go in on those warrants because anything else i do before that happens i still am going to have that so i just feel like now my life is embarrassing for you to used to be a great swimmer that yeah had a lot of potential enough yeah and now i'm yeah and it's the reason i won't go i mean my dad and they want me to go back there and spend time in like a long-term rehab and i'm like how could i even go to that area i wouldn't show my face anywhere like i would be too scared of running into someone that knew how good i had it before and like for them to see me now it's too it's too embarrassing i couldn't do it i just um and also i mean about a week ago i was sitting on a sidewalk down the street from a mall that i had just boosted at and i was starting to fall asleep and i i wrote with my marker i wish i was dead on the sidewalk and when i woke up it was because these two cops were waking me up and i was still i guess half asleep because i had taken a xanax too once so i was kind of out of it and not i hadn't really thought ahead to them taking me to jail because somehow i was thinking i wasn't doing anything wrong so i don't know what i was thinking i wasn't thinking clearly but especially well so then when i was handcuffed while they were searching everything um i still somehow wasn't thinking i was going to go to jail oddly but they didn't actually take me to jail the cop the one cop it was a man and a woman and the man asked me if i wrote that on the sidewalk and i told him that i did and i was i was thinking he was just going to charge me with vandalism or something and um then i don't know he he was like you know what um you have two warrants but i think you need a break so we're just going to let you go i couldn't believe it i don't know why he did that but it made me think like you know well he let me go but the next person like i don't know right does that mean i'm supposed to go turn myself down i don't know i just i can't believe that my life is what it is now kristin what would you say is the most important lesson you've learned after all of this that it's just drugs and just not the answer it's just a temporary fix because everything that i've done drugs for like to numb myself and to not feel all that stuff is still there when i quit which is why i don't want to quit but then what does that mean i'm supposed to use drugs for the rest of my life that's not practical either i mean i'll end up in prison it's true what they say because in order to support yourself what i have to boost okay so i'll end up in prison long before i would use for the rest of my life i mean there are a lot of people oding right now i have never od'd somehow oddly never so i don't know why that is but i have no stories of using too many drugs i use a lot but i just have a high tolerance oddly i don't know i have all these people that are dying from fentanyl sometimes it feels like it doesn't even get me high enough and i don't even it's not even the high it's like just the numb but that's definitely drugs are not the answer if i could ask god or whoever put us here to take one thing from me it would be depression because i was clean for 15 years i'm pretty sure i can lick drug addiction but i use because of depression mainly and that's what i would want him to absolve me of because that's the worst the worst feeling i literally i can't watch a an animal like a dog that looks like it's like maybe the brunt of the litter and i was this happened yesterday so there was this one little dog that was like going in the corner by herself and looked so sad and i'm literally sitting there thinking is she depressed because that would kill me um like and i that's the dog i'm going to pet and try to make happy because yeah it's the worst feeling in the world being depressed i mean anything that drive you to this type of life is definitely you know it's got to be a really bad feeling all right kristen thank you so much for sharing your story thank you i wish you the best of luck out there thanks you

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Length: 37min 11sec (2231 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022