Happy Valley Page #6

Four years.

I've been divorced

for four years

and been in this room

pretty much.

I just hide.

Hide from reality.

Just go get my heroin

and come back and hide.

And you know?

I got married, stayed clean,

broke my back,

went in the hospital.

They gave me a whole bunch

of, you know, painkillers.

They don't work because

you already have a tolerance

even though you've quit,

so it's up doing heroin.

Then, pretty soon,

your wife's coming in,

and you're doing heroin

on the bathroom floor,

and, you know, pretty soon,

they just get sick

of dealing with it.

And the last straw

was I quit again

and then broke my leg

racing motocross.

Same thing.

Then she just got sick

of dealing with it.

And, I mean,

you can look around and...

All-State in three sports

in high school,

played college football

and baseball,

and think of the life

I could have had.

And many times over,

I kept getting chance

after chance after chance,

and... and I'm still doing it.

Get a few days, and then,

I don't know.

It just goes on.

And then I have such

a tolerance,

I can do, you know, 40 times

more than the average person.

Literally enough to O. D.

a band of gypsies, you know?

And so...

That much right there

would O. D. a person

that's never done it before.

Oh, just bust up my nice room.

And then I'll cook up

some crack, some cocaine,

and put it on there, too,

and mix it.

Plus, I just ate eight Valium.

And so...

It's hard to imagine

why that's so addicting, but...

And it's not just the dope

that's addicting,

it's this whole thing.

Going up and getting it,

the rush of getting it.

Getting it from the Mexicans.

The cops are sitting

across the street.

The ride down, the ride back,

you know?

Making it up, fixing it up.

Literally, when I was coming

down and running into the house,

it's like Christmas.

You're running in here so giddy.

You got to get your water,

you know?

It's sad.

It's sad.

The more you're on,

the harder it is to come off.

And the problem is, is you feel

like you have the worst flu,

the worst everything,

and you're so sick.

You're throwing up.

Runs down your pants,

and you get some heroin.

I n two minutes,

you're at the top of the world.

And that's the problem,

because you're so low,

and, all of a sudden, bang.

You know, 'cause normally

when you're sick or whatever

or have cancer or whatever,

you're sick.

There's nothing you can do

about it.

But with this, you know

damn well you get some,

you go from here to here.

And so it's such a big jump

that, you know, that's one of

the reasons it's so addictive.

And I just hope and pray

that we can help some people

and... and for me to do this

in front of people like this

is unbelievable for me because

I would never, never do it,

which is, to me,

I'm making some progress

because I've got to help

some people.

And I think the only way

I'm gonna get better

is if I help people,

because then I'm not doing it

just for me, you know?

And I'm not showing as much

emotion because I'm high,

and that's what getting high

does, is it takes your emotion.

It makes the hurt go away,

you know, temporarily.

I'm willing to go through hell

to do something positive.

And Daniel... at me

all the time.

Like he's high and mighty

and I'm living in this room,

and he doesn't realize that...

and it's starting.

He's getting

his family problems now.

Got the wife wanting divorce.

It's starting.

You know,

I can see him in me so much.

Gonna put them on

a spectrograph, right?

Here's what morphine looks like,

right?

Here's what opium looks like.

Here's what Lortab looks like.

Here's what Percocet...

They're all the same thing.

They're almost the exact

same thing, you know?

So, pay for the doctor's visit,

pay for, you know,

for your insurance.

Pay for the prescription.

Pay to take it

down to Walgreens,

or get in your car,

spend $6 worth of gas.

Not get the exact same thing,

get a stronger version

for $ 10 in a little balloon.

When I first came here in '86,

drug deaths weren't that common.

We were probably seeing

50 to 70 drug deaths a year.

The vast majority

were illegal drugs.

Last year, we did

in this office.

Of those 411,

prescription-drug-related

deaths.

These are drugs like oxycodone,

hydrocodone, methadone.

If you add folks

who are both illicit,

as well as prescription drugs,

that total goes up to 270.

If you think about it, pills,

painkillers in particular,

which is a huge problem here in

Utah from what I have noticed,

it's like smoking weed, which

is a grown plant, you know?

It's something that comes

from the earth.

For me, I think that's a little

lesser down there, you know?

It's like, "Okay, that grows."

It's not like it's okay, but

you're not gonna be hooked.

But people that are

on painkillers,

they're hooked, you know?

It gets you by the...

and it's just, from that point

on, you're screwed, you know?

You have to have it,

and you basically will lose...

I've seen people

just lose themselves.

You know someone, a good friend,

you know, and they're the person

you know,

and then down the path,

they've used so much

that they'll flip on you

and do whatever they can

to get their next fix.

They'll just lose their soul

almost.

It was not anything

you'd ever wish on anybody...

to lose a child.

Blake was a very outgoing kid

as, you know, in elementary,

junior high.

Very popular.

Had a lot of friends.

He was always kind of the leader

of the group.

He was doing well, you know,

until he hit about his sophomore

year in high school.

Got kicked off the team

as a sophomore,

grades started to drop,

and his personality changed.

He just became reclusive.

He'd come home,

and he'd go to sleep.

We never thought

anything about it.

Then we started questioning him,

and we started looking at him,

and once you look at him,

then you can see it.

You can see the signs.

You know, he'd come home,

and his eyes would be bloodshot.

He'd be tired.

He was pale.

There was many times

where I had to jump in

between my husband and Blake

because he was so frustrated

with him.

Blake would be high

or would have drugs on him.

My youngest daughter,

who was in junior high,

would come home

and go straight upstairs.

My other son was serving

a mission,

so he was kind of

out of the loop anyway.

And we all knew that eventually

he was gonna overdose

doing what he'd done.

We knew that he couldn't do

what he was doing

and live through it.

And I was upstairs

getting ready to go to work,

and my husband came running

upstairs and screaming at me,

saying, "Suzanne, come down.

Something's wrong with Blake."

And he was laying on the bed,

and my first thought was that

he had cotton in his nose

'cause he had foam coming

out of his nose and his mouth,

and then I realized

that it was mucous

and that he most likely

had a seizure.

I pulled him off the bed

and couldn't get his mouth open

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