You never had a problem with buying weed from me in junior high. You seemed to appreciate my proclivity for procuring high quality acid in high school. But when I started smoking meth during my senior year, you called me “a worthless tweeker.” When I missed the SATs because I partied too hard the

Four years ago I swallowed my last pain pill. Christmas night. After days of trying to look past the glowing orange pharmaceutical bottle on the kitchen counter. At Chris’s parent’s home in Pennsylvania. My mind a mess. Months of heavy anti-psychotics, antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication. A pill to focus. One to calm. Another to balance. To block

I wonder sometimes, where I’d be now, if I hadn’t stopped drinking and popping xanax. I’ve been advised over and over not to “what if” myself into a bout of anxiety. I get anxious easily. But my mind goes there, now and then. Especially when things are going well. And things are going well right

  The following poems are by Author Jake D. Parent, and were written in memory of his beloved cousin Tim, whom died of a drug overdose in jail. Jake is also Co-Author and Editor of Hearts & Scars – 10 human stories of addiction, whom he dedicated to Tim also. Jake is the author of Only