Idle Hands Are the Devil’s Playground: Drugs, Overdose, and Recovery
Episode Summary
Noah, my ATV guide in Alaska, joins me on this episode of Wisdom Shared. Last season, we heard from Noah’s mom, Melissa, who talked about her sobriety journey. In this discussion, Noah courageously shares his difficult journey with pills. He nearly died. He offers advice, hope, and solidarity to others facing similar struggles. His powerful narrative underscores the transformative power of sharing personal experiences in the hopes of helping others.
Resources
National Harm Reduction Coalition
https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/basics/fentanyl.html:
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/prevention/index.html
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use disorder, SAMHSA’s (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357), (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service) or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Callers can also order free publications and other information. You can also visit https://www.samhsa.gov.
Related Episodes of Wisdom Shared
Addiction to Sobriety: A Mother’s Journey: Noah’s mom shares her own addiction story
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The Wisdom Shared Team
Audio Engineering by Steve Heatherington of Good Podcasting Works
Co-Producer and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson
Production Assistant: Becki Leigh
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[00:00:00] Noah: I wasn’t afraid to die, but it could have been a possibility. And I should have been afraid, like I should have been afraid, because I’ve seen a bunch of people overdose and I ended up overdosing too. But when you’re doing that stuff, if you’re addicted to it, you’re not in a happy place or state of mind. And so you really don’t care.
[00:00:26] Carole: Welcome to Wisdom Shared, where people are the experts from their own experiences and where connection inspires change. I am your host, Carole Blueweiss. Today, I have as my special guest, Noah, a California native. I had the good fortune of meeting Noah a few years ago in Alaska where he had a summer job and where I was on a family vacation.
You see, my son convinced me that it would be fun to take an ATV tour. I agreed to go, but when I got there, I chickened out at the last minute. Thankfully, the guide, Noah, said I can ride with him while he followed the others. As we were making our way through what was to me jarring bumps and steep drop offs, I needed to talk. So, I brought up Wisdom Shared and heard Noah softly say that his mother had challenges raising him and his sister. I asked him what kind of challenges and he just said that I should interview his mother. Little did I know that this casual exchange would lead to two Wisdom Shared episodes, one about a mom who struggled with addiction while raising two kids, and the other of a young man’s struggle with prescription medications, pain, and withdrawal.
The interview with Noah’s mom is called Addiction to Sobriety, A Mother’s Journey, Season 2, Episode 14. Today, we will hear from Noah, a courageous, sensitive young man with a passion for board sports. I think we all need to hear this cautionary tale. Let’s now hear what Noah has to say.
What attracted you to skateboarding?
[00:02:23] Noah: I like board sports, something just in my blood, I guess. Like surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding. I grew up watching a bunch of skateboarding videos. It’s just the people I was surrounded with. It was just raw and rugged. As a kid, you know, skateboarders are rebellious. So you’re like, oh, we’re gonna go skate this spot, you know, they’re gonna kick us out. Just fun stuff like that.
[00:02:46] Carole: I think of skateboarding as it’s like the jazz of all sports. Improvisation and from the outside, it’s hard to understand because you see the kids or the people on skateboards doing things that you’re like, why are they doing that? And they do it over and over again.
[00:03:01] Noah: I guess it’s mastering the craft and finding the fun in that. Once you land that trick, it’s just like the best feeling ever.
[00:03:11] Carole: I’m trying to get to know people that have this inner wisdom from experience.
[00:03:17] Noah: Right, yeah. Yeah, I definitely have gone through some things that probably not a lot of people do go through and I’ve learned a lot from the things I’ve done. And I’m still learning. So it never gets easy and you just have to be true to who you want to be and really make tough decisions in life sometimes and yeah, you gotta learn from them. Otherwise, you just get stuck doing the same stuff.
[00:03:39] Carole: I asked Noah why he agreed to talk to me, a complete stranger.
[00:03:43] Noah: If anything that I say could help anybody, that’d be cool by doing something like this.
[00:03:49] Carole: Noah’s candidness about his self-described addictive personality sheds light on the complexities of addiction.
[00:03:55] Noah: I have a very addictive personality, so I love to have fun in all circumstances. And so what I’ve really learned too is that just learning to say no more, especially. One thing I had a terrible problem doing is never saying no. For me, it started in high school and you start taking drugs and stuff and I started smoking weed and then, you know, in high school people start partying so now you’re drinking and smoking weed.
[00:04:26] Carole: Like many teenagers, experimentation with drugs began in high school. What started as casual use of marijuana and alcohol soon escalated to a more dangerous addiction to pills.
[00:04:36] Noah: None of these things ever were like, a crazy problem, and then, I think, what it is, like, my vice was pills. So, pills are a slippery slope, and addiction in general is something that you have to learn to manage. But, definitely the thing that got me was pills in high school, when I started taking them, and then, yeah, I just liked them, and so, throughout high school, you would get them, whatever you get. In high school, it was way harder to get pills, so it’s mostly smoking and stuff like that and partying a lot.
[00:05:09] Carole: What were your pills that you were taking in high school?
[00:05:12] Noah: High school was more Vicodin and Norcos, just like pain pills like that your friends would get, because one of them broke their leg skateboarding and he gets sick from them, so he just gave them to me. So that’s how you like get them back in the day. There wasn’t like somebody selling them, really. The reason why I first moved to Hawaii, what actually got me to move there was, first of all, my friends moved back. It was their winter break, so they had just a few weeks, and so they were going back to school there.
[00:05:39] Carole: Noah’s spontaneous move to Hawaii was a pivotal moment. It was a chance to escape the stagnation of his hometown and find solace in a new environment surrounded by supportive friends.
[00:05:50] Noah: My buddy says hey, I don’t have a roommate anymore. If you want to come and live with me on campus, dude, you should move into my room. I don’t think they’re going to give me a roommate. And then my girlfriend had just broken up with me. I was like, my girlfriend broke up with me, I’m going to quit my job. I’ll sell my car. I’m going right now. So I just fricking bought a plane ticket that night.
And then, thankfully it worked out. I ended up moving to Hawaii and that was the first time I moved there. Stayed on campus with them and just lived the college life without having to go to college.
[00:06:17] Carole: How old were you?
[00:06:19] Noah: I’m 19 or 20, I think. I needed to get away from my hometown because it just gets really stagnant. And so it’s really easy to get bored here. And that was just a huge problem for me. And I like to have fun. It just becomes a problem. Like, you know, idle hands are the devil’s playground.
[00:06:35] Carole: So what did you say?
[00:06:37] Noah: Idle hands are the devil’s playground.
[00:06:39] Carole: I haven’t heard that.
[00:06:41] Noah: Oh, really?
[00:06:42] Carole: Yeah. So tell me, what does that mean to you, that expression?
[00:06:45] Noah: If you’re not doing something productive, if you’re not doing something you have idle hands. If you’re bored, you know, you’re not doing anything are the devil’s playground, like he’ll give you something to do. I’m so bored, now I’m just trying to party and then partying just gets deeper and deeper and then there’s nothing else to do. Like continue partying.
And so now I stay busy. I’ll do yard work. I’ll go on a bike ride. I’ll work out. Just the goal is to stay busy. The second you get bored, you start. Yeah, just doing whatever you think is going to be fun. So I moved out to Hawaii too, just cause I needed to get away from everything.
That was really a lifesaver for me at that point in time. Otherwise, I don’t know. I feel like it would have been bad, but it was good because I moved with my best friends and they really care about me. We just really take care of each other. So it’s important to have good people around you.
[00:07:36] Carole: It was two really good friends of yours, and they happen to be in the same school in Hawaii.
[00:07:41] Noah: Yeah, exactly. Two of my best friends, yeah.
[00:07:43] Carole: Did you ever have any desire to go to that school?
[00:07:47] Noah: No, they went to the university and I would have only gone to community college, which I actually did. I ended up going to the community college, but this was three years later after I had moved back there. So I went to that community college just for a semester. And then I ended up dropping out. I think that’s when I went to Washington the first time.
[00:08:07] Carole: Noah’s decision to move back to Washington was driven by a desperate need to escape his environment and the people who enabled his addiction. It was a courageous step towards reclaiming his life. But an accident while snowboarding in Washington marks the beginning of one of Noah’s darkest periods.
[00:08:25] Noah: I worked at a ski resort there, so I was working in a rental shop and had a great time, was there for two months. My best friend had got me the job because he moved from Hawaii to Washington. Once I moved there, and then that’s where I actually broke my back. I was snowboarding there. I just overshot a jump and landed straight to flat ground and just crunched and broke my back.
It was bad. It was not a good time. So that’s basically what started off one of the worst parts of my life. When I broke my back, Covid happened, and now I couldn’t move back to Hawaii. I was stuck in California again. The opioid epidemic, so they wouldn’t give me any, anything strong or any more Norcos. They were giving me ibuprofen for my broken back.
So I was like, okay, I’ll just go get Percocet from off the streets. I’ll go get some from one of my friends. So I started getting these Percocets because I didn’t have anything else. And then obviously you just start liking them, start taking them, keep buying them. But it turns out the Percocets ended up being laced with fentanyl.
And so that was the first time that I knew that I was doing that. And it’s weird because you hear about how bad fentanyl is, but you don’t think about how bad it is when you’re doing it because it’s a pill. You’re not like thinking, oh, it’s like, this terrible drug, you’re just like, oh, it’s just another pill.
It’s terrible. That drug is crazy because so it’s man-made and it’s made to attach 100 percent of itself to your opioid receptors. So you’re getting the maximum high versus heroin only attaches like 80 percent to your opioid receptors. So it’s like also easier to get off. So it’s super easy to get addicted to the man-made manufactured pill.
I ended up buying them, I was doing them all the time, and then I found out what was in them, and I’m like, well shit, like, I’m already doing them, I guess it’s fine, it’s not something I wanted to do, I wasn’t going out to buy fentanyl, but it’s a slippery slope. So anyways, I did become addicted to those, I have a little addiction, and it just starts getting bad, you get really depressed, and I was doing it because, like I said, I was bored, I wasn’t doing anything at home, I had broken my back, it was Covid, I wasn’t getting money or anything for any help, I had to end up in a job like early, and I don’t know, I was just really unhappy and thinking that this was solving my problems, but it was just adding fuel to the fire.
I was doing it for a year and a half. I’m like a very productive high. So it’s dangerous because I would be able to do it all the time, and you wouldn’t be able to tell. It doesn’t affect me. I’m not sloppy or going crazy with it. But it’s a problem because I’m still doing it every day. But it does change you.
You get more depressed. You get lazier. You start spending all your money on it. And, yeah, it just changes you. But I realized, I was literally spending all my frickin’ money on it. And I was like, I have to leave. I need to get away from this. Because I’m surrounded by people too that are doing this. So there’s no incentive for anyone there to help me quit.
I had no reason to and I had nobody to help. Not nobody to talk to. Nobody knew about this. I knew what I wanted to do and I knew I wanted to quit. I knew I didn’t want that to be me. So that’s why I ended up going to Washington again after I broke my back. It’s like, okay, you know what? This is the opportunity to get away.
I know what I’m going to be doing there. I already know how it is. I liked it. I’m going to go. I need to get away. I ended up moving back to Washington, and then that’s when I ended up going through withdrawals while I was there. And I realized, holy shit, I was actually, like, addicted to this drug. The withdrawals were the worst thing that I’ve ever gone through in my entire life.
I couldn’t eat for, like, five days. Anything I ate came out. For two weeks straight, I was just pooping, and then you just can’t sleep, you’re tossing and turning, your body aches, it’s just literally the worst experience of my life. And I don’t know, I’m grateful for every experience I’ve been through and learned because through going through that stuff, and going through a withdrawal makes you never want to do it again. It’s like, I’m not going through that again. Yeah, it’s pretty insane.
[00:12:41] Carole: Is that what they call dopesick?
[00:12:44] Noah: Yeah, yeah, going through withdrawals when you’re dopesick, it’s because they don’t have the drugs so their body starts going through withdrawals, you get like cold chills, you get just anxious and start sweating.
[00:12:57] Carole: Did you go through that with your friends, did they support you through that? I mean, or were you by yourself?
[00:13:03] Noah: So my friends in Washington, they didn’t know about it. When I moved there the second time, I went by myself.
[00:13:08] Carole: So were you doing the withdrawal all by yourself?
[00:13:11] Noah: I had to go through it by myself. Thankfully, the first two weeks that I got there, the mountain wasn’t open, so we didn’t like have to work. But yeah, I didn’t leave my room for like four days.
[00:13:21] Carole: And I’m guessing that you didn’t have any drugs to tempt you.
[00:13:25] Noah: No, I had nothing.
[00:13:27] Carole: You put yourself in a position where you couldn’t get it.
[00:13:31] Noah: Exactly. I isolated myself. I was like, I’m going to get away from all this. This is the only way, this is how it’s gonna go down. Either it’s now or later. And there’s no later for me, it’s now. But yeah, it was tough. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. It was, yeah, not okay.
[00:13:50] Carole: And then what happened after that?
[00:13:51] Noah: It’s tough for a while, like the first few weeks, but you really just got to stay busy and stay focused. And after you break a certain point of not being on that stuff again, you feel so much better and you notice how much better you’ve gotten and you don’t ever really want to go back. So the idea, is that who I want to be again? No. But you have to stay busy. Doesn’t mean you don’t think about it. It doesn’t mean you aren’t tempted.
And it’s. oh, just really important about the people you keep around you to support you. If you’re around people that are going to be doing that and not care if you do it, then you’re much more likely to just slip and do that. But if you have people around you that care and you can talk to about it, that then they’ll support you. Takes a lot of support for sure. Cause it is hard.
[00:14:46] Carole: So it sounds like you figured that out on your own. Like the part of you wanted to stop so badly and you figured it out that being around people that aren’t going to tempt you is one way to conquer the addiction or the, at least the temptation. That takes a lot of courage and also a lot of insight to even be in the thick of it and realize that you have to get yourself out of it.
[00:15:10] Noah: Yeah, it gets bad. To the point, you know, where you’re questioning, like I was literally spending all of my money on it. And yeah, at some point you’re just like, this has to stop. And how is this going to stop today? Otherwise you just keep making excuses to find a reason to do it later. Now’s not a good time because this. If you want it, you got to get it. And now. So, it’s the only way.
[00:15:34] Carole: Were you ever afraid that you were going to die?
[00:15:36] Noah: I wasn’t afraid to die, but it could have been a possibility. And I should have been afraid. I should have been afraid because I’ve seen a bunch of people overdose and I ended up overdosing too, but when you’re doing that stuff, if you’re addicted to it, you’re not in a happy place or state of mind. And so you really don’t care.
[00:15:58] Carole: What was it like to overdose?
[00:16:01] Noah: It was nothing at first, but it’s everything that happens after when you’re thankful that you’re alive and you realize what was I doing? But when it happened, I didn’t even realize, you know, I thought I was just closing my eyes.
[00:16:21] Carole: When I met Noah in Alaska, he appeared to be in good health and hadn’t been taking prescription medications for some time. So when he mentioned experiencing an overdose during our interview, it caught me off guard. The revelation left me with many unanswered questions about the circumstances surrounding this life-threatening event.
In the following segment, Noah will take us through the harrowing details of his near-death experience. He’ll recount the series of events that led to this critical moment, shedding light on the factors that made him particularly vulnerable. Noah’s story serves as a stark reminder of how a single misguided decision and one counterfeit pill can have devastating consequences.
[00:17:02] Noah: So I had been not doing drugs at all when I saw you I was totally fine and I ended up talking to a friend who told me that they got them shipped to themselves. So they’re like, yeah, I could ship them to you. And then I was like, fine, let’s just get a few, try it out again. And then, yeah. And then the first day I got them, I overdosed. What happened is I was staying the night with this girl and pretty much my girlfriend at the time and she didn’t know I was doing it and I had just gotten it.
I hadn’t done it in a long, long time. And then I ended up doing it again. It’s literally just the classic story of, you know, I put it down for a long time, tried to beat all these temptations, and then you do it one time, and it’s the first day I got it, and the one time. I did it in the room while she was in the shower. I was like, I’m gonna do a good amount, because I don’t wanna get high, and just relax.
And boom, so I go, I wait in her room, and the one time I did that, then she gets out of the shower, and I thought I’d just close my eyes to wait for her to get out of the shower, but then she came into the room, and said that I wasn’t breathing, and that my breathing was really low, and like, grumbling, trying to breathe, and then that I was blue, and so, she ended up giving me CPR for, I don’t even know how long, but while she gave me CPR, she also had to call somebody and one of our friends came running up and then thankfully there’s another girl was in the medical field.
So she knew CPR also. So she started doing CPR until the ambulance arrived. And then the ambulance Narcan-ed me and then woke me up. And when I woke up, I was just like, whoa, what the, I don’t know. I was just lost. I was like, just so confused. What just happened? Why are there all these people here? And then I realized I was like, shoot. I overdosed, that was one pill.
[00:18:57] Carole: And it was laced with fentanyl.
[00:18:59] Noah: Yeah, it’s crazy because all the pills are like laced with fentanyl nowadays and I thought because I had done it before, I was addicted to it, and when I was at the worst part of where I was at, I would do 10 of those a day. Yeah, and so people die from doing half of one of those pills or a quarter of one of those pills. Like I died from doing like, a little more than half of one. Yeah.
[00:19:29] Carole: You’re taking a pill. You don’t really know what’s inside, right? But they’re, the dealers are telling you this is Percocet, but you don’t really know, right, what you’re taking. Is that true?
[00:19:39] Noah: Technically, yeah, you don’t know because they’re just man-made, they’re pressed and made, but the fentanyl ones are the M30s and they’re the fake M30s, which is like this blue pill that says M on one side, 30 on the other, supposed to be a 30 milligram Oxycontin or Percocet, but they’re all fentanyl. But yeah, you can’t see, you don’t know what it, you don’t know what fentanyl looks like, and I don’t know what the regular powder for the other one looks like either.
[00:20:01] Carole: You’re actually taking it in a pill.
[00:20:03] Noah: Right. They press it to make it look like whatever the actual pill is, the counterfeit.
[00:20:09] Carole: In the past, they weren’t as strong, so you could take more and you didn’t overdose, right?
[00:20:15] Noah: No, in the past, I was just doing more, so my tolerance was way higher. So I thought, oh, this won’t do anything to me, because my tolerance was high, but now it was zero. And so that little amount, boom.
[00:20:30] Carole: And then going back to when you were revived, that Narcan really brought you back to life, right?
[00:20:36] Noah: The Narcan, yeah, that stuff saved me. Yeah, I have no idea how I made it back, honestly. They told me my pulse stopped for a minute. Pretty lucky to be here for sure. And they told me when I was in the hospital that three other people had overdosed. And, just from around the area and one of them died and the other one was brain dead. Yeah. And I was totally fine, but I wasn’t fine. I ended up getting pneumonia. I was in there for five days, but yeah.
[00:21:04] Carole: How do you feel now?
[00:21:06] Noah: I feel a lot more healed from that. Cause I still have temptations and thoughts before. It’s just really an eye opener. It was like, oh, first time you got them, you thought you were a big boy. You can do this again. It’s not what you want to do. Like literally died and then didn’t. So it’s just a sign that I’m not going to get through that again, so don’t do it again.
[00:21:28] Carole: It’s like a Russian roulette.
[00:21:31] Noah: Right, exactly.
[00:21:33] Carole: Your mom was very open with me about her struggles. And I remember you telling me in a very positive way, how your mom did a turnaround and was able to change things up. And I got the feeling, I don’t remember exactly what you said, but I got the feeling she was interested in wanting to help people.
[00:21:49] Noah: Yeah. She did a big 180 for sure.
[00:21:51] Carole: Are you close with your mom now, or do you feel like it’s still really tough?
[00:21:56] Noah: It was tough growing up because she was going through her stuff too, and so she wasn’t always there too much, but I’m just grateful for every experience that I lived, even whether they’re good or bad, because it builds you into who you are today.
I’m happy with who I am today, and it’s all because of all the things that have happened in my life. And for my mom, we just weren’t ever really too close until I moved out, moved to Hawaii. Once I got away, I was able to be on my own. And then she was able to work on herself and not have to worry. Things just got better and better. But yeah, we don’t, we talk sometimes now. I don’t get like deep conversations with her about stuff, but we’re nice to each other. We’ll go to dinner.
[00:22:37] Carole: And you have a sister.
[00:22:38] Noah: Yeah, I have a sister.
[00:22:40] Carole: Are you close with her?
[00:22:42] Noah: Yeah, I’m really close with my sister. I talk to her, not really about my struggles, but everything else. But she just lives down the street. So we’re hanging out too.
[00:22:50] Carole: What about your dad?
[00:22:51] Noah: My dad, he was never around. He was never in my life. I met him a few times. He didn’t do a lot of great things, I’ve heard. But I’m also grateful for that. If he was around, I don’t think he would have been a good influence on my life. So I’m grateful for being raised by my mom, my sister, and my grandma too. My grandma’s always been around and she’s a huge help. She’s definitely the reason our family is like a family.
[00:23:15] Carole: Any advice to kids that are in high school?
[00:23:18] Noah: Yeah. To kids that might be going through stuff like that, it’s tough because life is tough. You’re going through things, but it’s really important to find somebody who you can talk to and that you can feel like, you know, can relate or can listen to you, but you can find people that you can relate to.
Obviously, that’s really important because then you can find people that understand your struggle and usually there’s always some of your friends that are going through the same things and it’s just important to talk about things. Find things that make you happy. Your drive, you know, like what you want to do.
And find a way to stay busy and find a way to stay happy by being busy. Like I said, idle hands are the devil’s playground. So it’s just really important to stay busy and productive and learn to find confidence in where you are and what you’re doing. If you’re not happy with something, figure out a way to address it and just take it step by step to achieve that goal.
[00:24:12] Carole: And what about advice for parents or moms or dads out there that are trying to raise their kids? What do you wish that you had maybe that you didn’t have, or what do you see would be helpful for kids?
[00:24:25] Noah: It’s important to be able to be open and to allow your kid to feel comfortable to talk to you and to be open with you so you know how they’re doing, what they’re doing and then you’ll be able to notice if there’s anything different and then you can talk to them and that way they’re comfortable, but it’s probably hard as a parent to get close to your kid without being overbearing to where they’re like sad, or don’t want to talk to you.
You just gotta be open with your kid, make them feel comfortable. I had friends, their parents were their best friend, and I was always jealous. How are you best friends with your parents? I hide from my mom. But now we have a great relationship obviously, but that was before. And yeah, it’s just important to just love them and let them know how important they are and support them with their goals and just be there.
[00:25:10] Carole: What do you want your mom to know about how you feel about her?
[00:25:14] Noah: I think she knows. I’m proud of her. She’s done so much. Made a complete 180. Insane. I definitely look up to her. I think about trying hard in life and what I need to be doing. I’ll think about how hard my mom worked to get what she wants. Yeah.
[00:25:29] Carole: This is all sort of cliche, but I’m working on it myself, but they say if you can be your own best friend and just be as compassionate to yourself as you are to your best friends, that’s. It’s not so easy.
[00:25:40] Noah: Right. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And if you can learn to love yourself. You can’t learn to love anybody else until you learn to love yourself. So if you can be happy alone, you can be happy doing anything. And it’s your life. So you got to be happy.
[00:25:53] Carole: Did you ever go to support groups for helping with addiction?
[00:25:57] Noah: No, I didn’t. I know some people do and that really helps them, but I just have never found a good connection. I went to one, one time and I was just like, eh, I feel like I don’t really need it. The people I talked to about the stuff I need to talk to about, it gets out just enough and I don’t need a support system for being a drug addict. I don’t think I’m like that much of, and I can’t say that much of an addict because I was doing like a terrible drug for a long time and I have an addictive personality, so I feel like I know the answers to the questions I have, but if I do need to ask somebody, I know there’s certain people I can ask.
[00:26:36] Carole: Are you shy?
[00:26:37] Noah: It depends. There’s like things I don’t talk about, like this, I don’t ever talk about to anybody. I have only a few people, but it’s beneficial to get out there because when you’re going through an addiction, you don’t tell people about it also, too, because people can’t understand it. People are not going to understand it. And so.
[00:26:56] Carole: Yeah, it’s a lot of stigma, right? So that’s why, yeah, I can’t thank you enough for doing this and that hearing your story is going to touch somebody because it’s just the truth. And I think once people start just telling their truth, it helps other people feel less alone.
[00:27:13] Noah: Definitely, yeah. Yeah, it’s crazy. I appreciate it. Yeah. I’m glad I’m able to talk a little bit about it. Good to be able to reflect on it too. It helps you put it in more in the past.
[00:27:27] Carole: I do think that in high school, people are fairly vulnerable to doing what their friends do, so it is a risk.
[00:27:34] Noah: Yeah, especially in high school. Like I said, too, that’s one of the things I had to work on is saying no, because I just love to have fun. Yeah, especially now, if somebody’s like, sniff this or try this pill, you don’t know what’s in it. And especially now, you can frickin’ die from it. From literally, it sounded cliche before, oh, this kid did this drug once and he died. What? But no, you will literally die. You could die your first time doing it. So. you just gotta be smarter, you gotta be confident in who you are, don’t let other people’s judgments sway yours.
[00:28:09] Carole: I know you’re trying to help other kids and other parents and sharing what you’ve learned. I don’t think there’s much more that’s as noble as that.
[00:28:17] Noah: Thanks.
[00:28:17] Carole: So thank you. Thanks a lot.
[00:28:19] Noah: I appreciate you reaching out and yeah, having me talk about it too. It’s an experience, so thank you.
[00:28:29] Carole: Thank you for sharing your powerful story with us today, Noah. If you or anyone you know is struggling with opioid use disorder, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration at 1-800-662-HELP for free, confidential 24/7 treatment and information. For more resources, please check out the show notes.
Remember how I met Noah? I ended up in his ATV because I was too scared to drive myself. Just goes to show how you never know who you may be sitting next to until you strike up a conversation. I’ve learned that’s how connections begin and how wisdom is shared.
Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all the other episodes. Go to caroleblueweiss.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month. Thanks for listening.
