Heroin Addict Reached Bottom; Believes Life Spared to Warn Youth

RIO GRANDE – Paul Conway’s life changed when he decided, on the spur of the moment, to walk away from methadone. Tired of being “just a number” at the Burleigh clinic where the drug is dispensed, the 28-year-old knew a living hell awaited him as he went cold turkey, immediate cessation without monitored medication.
Agony and shame aside, the young father wants to live to see his children grow. He had a chilling dream that cemented his resolve. In the dream that recurred three times, he saw his young daughter carrying his new son to his grave. The child said “Someone wants to meet his daddy.” “I feel I was spared for a reason. It’s powerful.”
There was nothing mystical about Conway’s life as one of five children, all of it spent in South Jersey. Now inspired with a message, Conway hopes his story may change just one young person’s mind about experimenting with heroin.
Born in Washington Township, Conway’s early recollection of family life was at times calm, average and at other times turbulent. His parents decided to relocate to Lower Township.
He attended Richard M. Teitelman Junior High School in Erma.
“Life seemed like history repeated itself,” he said in an interview at the Herald office.
More troubled times resulted in his family moving back to Gloucester County. Life got no better there, Conway recalled.
“Things were horrible. We lived in a really bad neighborhood,” he said. One Christmas, recalled Conway, his grandparents bought them presents, took the family out, and on their return, found that someone had broken into their home and stolen all the gifts.
Through his school years, in several different schools, Conway recounted how there would always be at least one, perhaps two teachers, who took an interest in him, would buy him small gifts, and tried to instill hope in him. “I found myself, for some reason, gravitating to the bad things in life. The substances, when I was 11 or 12 I would drink beer, smoke weed (marijuana) and doing stupid stuff,” Conway said.
Conway continued feeling hopeless. Cheap drugs seemed to offer Conway an escape, if but for a fleeting moment. And his drug of choice was heroin.
About a year ago, “I overdosed on strong heroin in the Wildwood bus station, I prepped my drugs, shot up, and got this really weird feeling, and the lights went out,” Conway said.
“By the grace of God, some stranger found me and call 9-1-1,” he continued. Some cab drivers who knew him alerted his father that they had seen him on the sidewalk.
“I was gone. I don’t remember any of that,” he said.
“I woke up in the Wildwood police station chained to a bench. I said, ‘What am I doing here?’ A cop said ‘You OD’ed (overdosed) you idiot, you’re lucky to be alive. I was still really high,” Conway continued.
The self-proclaimed “seasoned junkie” attested that what he used was “powerful heroin.” He used what would have been a normal dose, but found himself with a black eye and a broken toe.
“I can’t explain the feeling, but in the next few days I was looking outside, looking at my kids. I got this understanding, this feeling ‘You could be under the dirt,’” he recalled. “That played a lot on me,” he added.
“I was mentally prepared, but felt really hopeless. I was so done with drugs and the physical addiction,” he said.
He would wake up about 5:30 a.m. and think nothing of hot coffee or breakfast, but instead of “waking up the dope man” for his start-the-day fix of heroin.
Admitting he was “a little lost at this point,” Conway read about the Addiction Recovery Center in Burleigh, but knew little to nothing about it. He ventured forth, and began methadone treatment to get off heroin.
For the first few months, “It was really good at first. In the first couple of months, I felt almost like the disease washed off me. I found myself going about a daily routine, interacting with my kids.
Feeling somewhat better, Conway grew pensive about the daily routine at the clinic, standing in a long line, listening to the “mixed conversations” of fellow addicts. Some were there “for the right reasons” while others were forced, by court order, to be there.
Conway listened as each person stepped to the dispensing window, recited a number, and then like an animal, fetched their methadone, in the form of purple juice served in a paper cup.
“They don’t look at you; you’re a number. This machine trickled out purple juice in a cup,” he said.
When his turn came, a step away from his methadone, “I said, ‘This can’t be it.’ I thought about trying to get clean or taking drugs every day. It was overwhelming. I turned around and said, ‘I’m done’ and walked out.”
He confessed to his girlfriend that things “Would probably get ugly,” then went to his father’s house.
Conway said he had been “in and out of jail, so I knew what was to come, but I wasn’t living like that any more. I sweated it out.”
Those who, like Conway, have “done hard drugs for a long time,” know, as he did, the psychosis that comes with addiction.
Conway remembers, as a youth, “tripping on acid (LSD).” His withdrawal was quite similar, he said.
“For 40 hours, I was sweating and shaking my arms. My elbows were hurting, but I was determined to stay clean. You feel like your skin is crawling,” he said.
Then he began to look into the core of his problem.
“I played football and basketball, my life was planned out. I want to find out where I went wrong. That is where my childhood stories come into play,” he said.
As he reran life, “I got his overwhelming feeling of being tricked and lied to.” Soon, he found himself “lying to my friends, yet really longing for this meaning, of someone to talk to,” he said.
He recalled teachers telling him he was a bright young man. Some tried their best to help him.
But his environment seemed stacked against him. “Everybody used drugs.”
He looked forward to visits with those caring teachers. “Even as a child I wasn’t sure what I was doing. That played on me. I begged my mother to send me to military school.” That never happened.
“I genuinely had no desire to be clean, only until now,” he said. “I am still evolving into a normal person.”
It was a simple revelation, as he was going through withdrawal, that his father asked him if he wanted breakfast. That was something he had not considered in a long time. He would wake up early, and he would focus on getting a fix, getting high. He never realized that the craving his body had was for food.
He recalled a breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns and coffee prepared by his father never tasted so good. Conway recalled “being a stone-cold junkie riding a bus in Camden” simply to stay warm.
“I have buried a lot of my young friends,” Conway said. “There are a ton of stories I could tell. There was no shortage of people who didn’t make it off that chart in time,” he said.
When he was using heroin, Conway would be “back and forth to Camden for dope and coke (cocaine).”
In Camden, Conway said, “anywhere you go, heroin is sold, 11 bags for $100. The quality is not all that great. I could go to 15 different spots and get 14 bags for $90 with more heroin in a bag, better quality and none of the risk.” “The word is out about our area. There are plenty of people with money. It’s easy, low risk, low risk of being robbed in Wildwood,” he said.
Having turned a page in his life, Conway looks at his young daughter and “became so outraged, to think how quickly the last 15 years flew by. My daughter, in no time, will be in high school. If we don’t get a handle on this (drug problem) she could become an addict. If you live in Wildwood, you can get cheaper and better heroin than in Camden. Everybody is living in the wake of destruction,” Conway said.
While some may think their heroin addiction is focused solely on themselves, Conway wonders about the children being cared for by aunts, uncles or grandparents because their parents are in jail or prison.
Inspired with taking the message to young people, Conway’s focus for the past couple of months has been to steer youth away from trying the drug.
He went to see many of his good friends in caskets. All were just like him, good boys and girls from decent families. They were gone before their lives blossomed, all due to heroin.
“I feel like I have a lot of groundbreaking ideas,” said Conway, who is unemployed.
He hopes to link with educators and law enforcement officials to tell the young what older adults cannot, because of the age barrier, how drugs will take a toll if not their life.
“There is no shortage of families affected by heroin,” said Conway. Nor is there any shortage of victims, like those who have had copper pipes or wires, or goods stolen from their home by an addict looking to make money to buy a cheap fix.
“Why is there such a shortage of help to people in this community?” Conway wondered. The county does offer treatment for heroin addiction. See a related story elsewhere in today’s edition.
Conway wants to become a vital part of the community warning youth about the death sentence that awaits heroin users. He hopes to work shoulder-to-shoulder with educators and law enforcement officers to guide them to higher paths than to a drug dealer’s door.
“Treatment after the fact is good, and already we are dealing with that problem. Ultimately, a more hands-on approach is needed. I can’t help but remember the teachers who helped me,” recalled Conway.
Social workers, in Conway’s view, are often well-meaning “young girls and guys who went to school and got degrees. They look at paper but don’t know how to put that into a human being, that sense of understanding. They follow procedures. If you test positive for pot, you are disrupting people’s lives. They are compounding the situation by just not listening.”
Conway believes there is a potential for groundbreaking in this area to make young people aware of the dangers of heroin and other illicit drugs.
“There should be some kind of system in place for the community to show these kids who are not sure how topsy-turvy other directions are and positive things that can take their place,” said Conway.
His idea: Start with the right people. Have them in the right place, and not people who want a job for the wrong reason.”
“Be a friend. Offer a leg up,” he advised.
Conway would like to talk with anyone about how to reach just one young person and steer them away from trying, even once, heroin. He knows what heroin does, and does not want to see anyone, especially young boys and girls,get hooked on something as awful as heroin.
(ED. NOTE: Those interested in contacting Conway can email him at: luckydad2@gmail.com.)