For the first time in my life I'm just going to come out and say it.. I need help.

It's kind of crazy how similar this is to my life.

But that remark about how the partyers would have "gone to prison" for calling an ambulance for their OD'ing friend because "this is America" is ridiculous. I cannot believe that to be even a little bit true, and people need to stop saying shit like that because it's exactly what leads to people being left to die in bathrooms because idiots think they'll get arrested for underage drinking or whatever. If anything I'd think you're more likely to get hit with serious charges for leaving somebody to die. So please, people, stop just saying ignorant shit like that.

It does remind me of my most traumatic experience with an OD. This gal I had been hanging out with from time to time had been pestering on facebook to help her IV her dope. She claimed that it was usually her BF that would help her fix and that now they were broken up and she was left to smoke/snort and waste dope. I knew this was a lie - she had only smoked and snorted, and her reaching out to me was either her just wanting someone to help her IV, or she was into me, still can't figure out which. Point is I had been telling her no, but when she offered me a free big (.25) I couldn't really refuse. So I met her near a metro station downtown (but like in the commercial, office building area of downtown, so there really wasn't anybody around), and it was like 1 AM. We just posted up on a concrete bench right out in the open and started prepping the shots. I made her promise me she wasn't on benzos (turns out, she was) and wanted to start her off on a small hit to test her tolerance and the strength of the dope. She insisted I give her a full half point. Fuck it. She's been doing H for a while, she'll be fine. So I inject the full shot into her. She *instantly* falls backwards, and her lips are blue so fucking quickly I could barely process what was going on. All the other OD's I'd witnessed took a little longer than this - they were never so instantaneous. This was bad. Really bad. I whip out my phone - it's fucking dead. I lift her up in my arms and frantically start searching for somebody, anybody to help us. I will definitely commit suicide if I've just essentially manslaughered this young, beautiful, full-of-potential girl. She was fucking 19 at the time (I was 21). She has a family. No no no no no no no no... Thank junkie Jesus there was a cruiser just sitting right around the corner. I yell at the car as loud as I can. They call an ambulance, and the cops give me a lift to the hospital behind the ambulance. They had asked me questions about how this happened, and all I said was that I knew she had just taken a shot of dope, that I had gotten high before coming (and that I had nothing left on me), and I made up some nonsense about how she ducked around the corner to go fix and that when I went to go check on her she had fallen off.

Point being the cops knew I was lying to them in some way, but they didn't do anything. They confiscated the heroin she had on her (which this bitch actually told me to replace for her, which I did, because I felt so guilty, I also bought her a new pair of pants because they had scissored open her pants in the ambulance). Goddamn was I pissed when I eventually found out through one of our mutual friends that she *had* taken benzos that day, and had been on them all day. Which kind of explains her rash decision to try IV'ing heroin for the first time. I cut her out of my life - I was pretty traumatized and angry that she had put me in that position. I would *much* rather have OD'd myself than inject somebody with the shot that kills them. No way I could live with that. But yeah the cops didn't charge me with anything, hell they didn't charge her with anything either. So yeah, the fear that somehow you'll get arrested or charged for some minor time bullshit as a reason to not call an ambulance for somebody that has OD'd is bullshit. That's not a rational fear, and unless you have a body hidden in the basement or some shit then just take the fucking possession charge (which again, I would think most of the time they won't even pursue). Having somebody's death on your conscience is far worse. And no, nobody's going to fucking prison for calling an ambulance for an OD, and no regular user with a regular user amount of dope is going to get their life ruined because of calling an ambulance for an OD. Maybe if you're on probation, a really short leash type of probation, then maybe there's something to fear. But even then, fearing a breaking of probation charge so much that you don't call an ambulance for an OD is not understandable, it's not okay, it's not rational, it's not realistic... It's just bullshit man. We gotta stop letting people have that idiotic idea in their head.

/r/addiction Thread