Local heroin user shares inside perspective

Smokey Rhodes, who has two months of sobriety under his belt, started dabbling with opiates more than a decade ago and eventually progressed to injecting heroin. Requesting only anonymity, the pseudonymous recovering addict related his experience in the hope of helping others get straight.

“Everybody’s teetering, should I or shouldn’t I?” he said. “If I can help that one person lean more the right way...”

As with most users, Rhodes’ path to the needle involved numerous stops along the way. Now in his mid-30s, he began experimenting with mind-altering substances in high school, he said, even though his adolescence wasn’t particularly trying.

“I had good parents and I wasn’t trying to act out,” he said. “I was just trying to fit in.”

Alcohol and marijuana were the extent of Rhodes’ indulgences until his early 20s, but as some people opt to do, he gradually began to go further

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