A Boy Who Lost Himself To Drugs Review

And that was the trap. Liam had not started using to get high. He started using to get low—to turn down the volume on a brain that never stopped thinking, to quiet a heart that felt things too deeply. The drugs did not steal his soul in a single dramatic night. They borrowed it, a little at a time, promising always to give it back.

He lost friends first—the real ones, the ones who tried to help. He told them they were judging him. He told them they didn’t understand. Eventually, they stopped calling. Then he lost school. Then he lost jobs. He stole from his mother’s purse and lied so smoothly, so automatically, that the words came out before he could stop them. No, Mom. I’m fine. I just have the flu. I just need some rest. a boy who lost himself to drugs

That boy does not exist anymore.

He lost himself so completely that eventually, he stopped looking for the person he used to be. The boy who wanted to be a poet died a quiet death, not with a bang but with a surrendered sigh. In his place was a stranger: hollow-eyed, twitching, capable of things the seventh-grade Liam would have found monstrous. He sold his mother’s jewelry. He forged checks. He sat on curbs in the rain, waiting for a dealer who was two hours late, and he did not wonder anymore what his life was supposed to look like. And that was the trap

By sophomore year, the meteorology charts were rolled up and shoved in the back of a closet. The telescope his grandparents gave him for his birthday sat in the garage, its lens cracked. Liam’s new collection was more efficient: empty pill bottles, crumpled foil, a roster of phone numbers for people who would never ask how he was doing, only what he had. He lost weight, then more weight. His skin took on the pale, translucent quality of something that lives under a rock. The light in his eyes did not go out. It was replaced by something else: a constant, frantic calculation. Where is the next one coming from? How much money is left in my wallet? Who owes me a favor? The drugs did not steal his soul in a single dramatic night