The ground was colder than it should have been.

Not winter cold.
Not need-a-bigger-jacket cold.

Bone cold.

Street cold.

The kind of cold that crawls inside your ribs and settles there like it has every right to stay.

I lay there with folded cardboard for a pillow, listening to the city breathe.

Sirens.
Footsteps.
Someone yelling at nobody.
Someone else crying quietly into their hands.

A thin sweater.
Ripped socks.
Runners with holes in the soles.

The only things separating my fragile body from the bitter concrete.

I used to own a business.
A house.
A boat.
A future.

Now…

I owned a sidewalk.

Not long before, stores had gladly opened their doors with welcoming smiles.

Now they locked them when they saw me coming.

I wasn’t a customer anymore.

I was a nuisance.

People love to say addiction is a choice.

As though you wake up one morning and think,

“You know what would be fun? Losing everything.”

They never see the years before the fall.

The trauma.
The betrayal.
The losses.
The unimaginable heartbreak.
The slow, quiet breaking.

They don’t see the first time the drug doesn’t feel like sin.

It feels like relief.

Like peace.

Like silence.

For the first time in years…

The screaming inside your mind finally stops.

Your despair.
Your grief.
Your loneliness.

All replaced by a chemically manufactured happiness.

Until one day…

You wake up beneath a bridge.
Beside a dumpster.
Or on the floor of some place you don’t even remember walking into.

Surrounded by insects.
Cockroaches.
Mice.

And one overwhelming thought.

I can’t do another day of this.

That night, lying on a concrete sidewalk, I made myself a bargain.

Not forever.

Not,

“I’ll fix my life.”

Just…

One more day.

Stay alive tonight.

Figure tomorrow out when the sun comes up.

---

This book is the story of what happened after I made that bargain.

And how…

Somehow…

I’m still here.