Going From Being A Portland State XC Runner To A Heroin Junkie In Two Years

ukathleticscoach wrote:

You don't get hooked on Heroin having taken it just once.

Yes you do.

Trialswatcher wrote:

I find it amazing that when folks psot certain things or remarks about certain people posts are pulled down.

Yet the founder of the site uses "Heroin Junkie" as his own post promoting headline.

Really? There was no other way to phrase or position this somewhere, it just had to get out there huh?

Call certain someones on here a "know it all arrogant jack ass", and you will be dropped in a heartbeat.

Shame on you.

this is so full of code...please...stop...

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Very informative post but don't agree with this bit:

'Sometimes it's just a disease obtained with one really poor decision'

You don't get hooked on Heroin having taken it just once.

Agreed. I did lots of different levels of drugs, including heroin, and never got addicted. The real complexity with these kinds of issues is that it's neither purely just a physical issue (a biological condition for which the person is completely blamess) nor is it just a psychological issue (it's purely a by-product of bad choices and dysfunctional upbringing). I started using drugs cause I was bored. Nothing more than that. It made me have experiences I could never have imagined were possible, but, I never wanted them so badly I would do things completely beyond reason (steal, lie, cheat, etc). In other words, the high wasn't worth the self-compromise. I think for many who become addicts, the high itself becomes more appealing and desirable than their "normal" life. Like me, I suspect people who persistently continue with drugs are really just dissatisfied with who they are (a psychological thing) and prefer the change that results from taking drugs. It changes who you are, at least temporarily, and if you dislike yourself enough, you'd do anything to be different all the time. I've never written about this, but, I suspect it would ring true with lots of folks if they actually thought about it enough...drug addicts or not...workaholics, runners who escape reality by running too much, control freaks. You name it, and there is more likely than not a socially acceptable drug of choice to go along with it.

Shrink Wrap wrote:

While your friends' parents may have given both twins the same opportunities and treatment in life, in utero, twins rarely have the same access to nourishment and often one twin's health is compromised more than another's at birth in terms of positioning, birth timing and access to oxygen.

I work with a lot of twins and triplets, and frequently see mild to very significant neurological differences between 'identicals'. Even with the same genetic code and parental treatment, from early on twins are exposed to varying life circumstances that have the potential to affect early brain development and cause one of the pair or tri to be more succeptable to addiction than the others.

Which is not to say that the twin with the higher susceptability to addiction isn't responsible for his behavior. He is, and I've never met a counselor who would suggest otherwise.

That is very interesting. I have friends with young twins and they have been different since birth so I know what you mean.

That being said, I think the claim that all addiction can be traced back to bad parenting is pretty bogus.

Wow I typically dont reply to the trash that goes on within these message boards but this one got me pretty heated. Clearly you are a UP runneer and dont have a clue what you are talking about and could not appreciate the hardships and pitfalls that the PSU program has suffered in the last severl years.

PSU is the largest university in Oregon, this year enrollment will be somewhere in the range of 28,000 (projected enrollment for this year) students. Oregon is a close second with 20,000. PSU has to fight year in and year out to keep our program running. Cutting trips, staying at smaller low key meets to cut cost while the other major schools as far as running is concerned for men (Oregon and UP) are traveling to high caliber meets, and I wont even bother with the details of mens scholarships because they are practically non existant. The truth of the matter is that PSU, like many schools in the nation can not finance a serious program, if it were not for title 9 both mens and womens track and cross country would be long gone. PSU has a significant number of problems and trust me the #1 issues for us typically does not include how much we party. Consider this, Oregon gets new uniforms each year, are far as I am aware maybe even several times a year. In my 4 years as a PSU athlete we got enough new jerseys one year to cover just the men, not the women (they got new jerseys the next year) but that means for one year we were mixed and matched on the mens and womens side. You try to make a team feel like one when we dont even have the same color jerseys on. I am not a angry little brother type but these kind of discrepancies become very apparent in this situation. Its a case of the haves and have nots, not to say that Oregon does not earn everything they get as they are a spectacular program, but being on the haves side encourages better recruiting being on the have nots discourages better recuriting and that is just the facts.

Top that off with our coaching situation. I was recurited on coach (1), coach (1) then quit and that job was taken place by coach (2), coach (2) was then fired/let go and coach (3) took his place with assistant (1), Coach (3) at the end of my time at PSU quit and now assistant (1) is now coach (4). That makes 4 coaches in just under 5 years. Team unity is never easy, then you add in changing coaching alliances amongst teammates and you can see where I am going with that. Oh and this year they also hired a Co-Coach for Cross country/ long distance track, so make the grand total 5 coaches in under 5 years. Another thing explain to me how a Co-coach is supposed to work? Making teams work a one is possibly one of the hardest things to do, stability, trust, unity are things you need, explain to me how that works with out stable coaching?

PSU has its problems, and to respond to your accusation, yes PSU does party. But I ask you this, name a school in the nation that has a year long dry season (minus BYU obviously and extremeist religious schools) and does not take atleast one night after a season is over to cut lose. I have talked with people from teams from all over the country (UP, Oregon, Duke, Stanford..etc) who have serious progreams and the one thing they all have in common is that they all like to party. Ryan was a guy who got mixed up in the wrong crowd, and trust me we tried time and time again to get him back on track. The kid had endless potential even when we knew he was doing drugs. The PROGRAM that "sux" tried to pull him up from the hole he was digging for himself...we woke him up in his dorm when he slept through practice, we took him back when he asked our coach for help and we invited him on team events to make him feel like a part of our group. HOW DARE YOU say that our program sucks (LEARN HOW TO SPELL) and it explains why what happened to him happened. If you have ever had any hardship in your life you would know that its never the symptom of one specific thing, its always a combination of personal choice, your surroundings and the circumstances you find yourself in.

I ran for PSU for 4 years, I gave up the chance to have a full time job and take more credits to allow myself to get in the training and the time you need for threapy and rest (I took summer classes to make up for the shortfall and graduate on time). Sunday long runs after saturday meets, weekday workouts with midterms or finals that night and hours and hours spent with a greater purpose. Sound an awful lot like the program you are on? And yes, I partied, I partied more than many schools do, but I dont for one minute regret it, because with all the problems that PSU faces by the end of my time there I was proud of what I had accomplished given the most dismal of situations. And yes I would have liked to accomplish more, but I wouldnt trade anything I did for another chance. I was one of the few that actually made it through that program, I was not one of 100 that tries to make its way through UP each year. PSU is not a factory, you have to really want to be there and love running to make it work.

I AM PROUD OF MY VIKS!

I'll keep it short and sweet:

Personal experience-Started drinking at 13, smoking pot and cigarettes and 15 and really got drinking from 19 to 28. Started throwing up blood, crapping bile, BP through the roof, 89 resting heart rate. Quit drinking just before 29. Quit cigarettes at 30.

Started running at 31, now looking to be one of the top 20 masters in the country as I turn 40 next month.

I mention the running because of this:

No one was directly responsible for my becoming an alcoholic other than myself. My choice, my life, my move. Still, some people help and some hurt.

No one made me run like I do. My legs, my lungs, my getting out there and doing it. Still, I got here with a lot of love and advice from friends. But remember, there's no one in the shoes but you, there's no one picking up the bottle but you.

I've had a lot of friends die from drugs, from AIDS, from booze, from just hard living. I can't even tell you how many opportunities they all had to get it together and they didn't.

Their drugs, their lives - their fault. My drink, my life - my fault. My running, my life - mine (with a little help.)

False you CAN get hooked after doing heroin once. Can being the operative word.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Very informative post but don't agree with this bit:

'Sometimes it's just a disease obtained with one really poor decision'

You don't get hooked on Heroin having taken it just once.

nice - well done (the writing, the clean-up and the running)

I know Ryan from high school XC/track, I graduated a year after him so we were on the same team for three years. He was a great friend, but pretty much lost contact with everyone after his first year at PSU. I've been following his arrests, it's awesome that he is finally getting help.

I know Ryan from high school XC/track, I graduated a year after him so we were on the same team for three years. He was a great friend, but pretty much lost contact with everyone after his first year at PSU. I've been following his arrests, it's awesome that he is finally getting help.

PSU Alumni - I think your post is fair, and I too, would find it difficult to believe that a distance running squad, composed typically of some pretty hard working and disciplined guys, wouldn't give some pretty fair efforts to save their teammates.

I am reminded of Pat Summit's comments on her troubled players. She related that in the end she is only their basketball coach, but she can't solve, or be responsible for, all of their problems. And this from Pat Summit, who has a reputation for watching her charges like a hawk.

This shouldn't be laid at the feet of PSU.

If someone is bound and determined to go off the rails, guess what? They will.

Look, no doubt addiction has a strong genetic component. But that is why a street drug like heroin is such bad news, because its reaction is so uncertain. And many posters here make the correct point in stating that it does indeed involve a choice. No one knows how they will react to such a drug, until well, they begin taking it.

It is also my problem with pot, although one can be sure that many posters here, typically younger without much life experience, will object. Yes, pot is hardly heroin. And yes, there are a lot of people who use it for recreational purposes without much impact. But a minority really gets hooked and dependent on the stuff (irrespective of whether the dependence qualifies as an addiction), and it causes a great deal of havoc in their lives, which, of course, others (most often family) must take care of.

PSU Alumni wrote:

The truth of the matter is that PSU, like many schools in the nation can not finance a serious program, if it were not for title 9 both mens and womens track and cross country would be long gone.

Yeah, right, Title 9 has been nothing but a plague. Anyone who has a single good word for it deserves seeing their teams in uniforms that don't even match, etc.

iwrotemynamebutchangedmymind wrote: I've never written about this, but, I suspect it would ring true with lots of folks if they actually thought about it enough...drug addicts or not...workaholics, runners who escape reality by running too much, control freaks. You name it, and there is more likely than not a socially acceptable drug of choice to go along with it.

Now you have. I have to disagree with you about "runners who escape reality by running too much"....I run because it helps relieve stressors in my life, I think its better than doping up or drinking too much on a daily basis.

I had a pretty crappy childhood and I never used/abused drugs or alcohol, instead I sought out sports and exercise to relieve stressors back then and when I found "running" as an adult, again it's helped me to be a better person, mom and a wife and keeps away my demons.

To the Poster who said they didn't have sympathy for this guy in the article because of the choices he made, I agree with you--it was a choice made by him and he will be THE only one who will get himself out. It was noted that he had started out using "pot" before the heavier stuff, so for some reason he was destined to get 'hooked' on it. I was merely reacting to the fact that this kid seemed like he had his 'stuff' together while on the XC team and yet he steered into self destruct. I initially felt bad because if that was my child, I would be devastated. When you have children not too far from his age, makes you "pay attention" as a parent and have some empathy, that's all. Now, when I dated a guy who was on drugs back in college, I had no tolerance for his behavior and probably didn't help the situation when I argued or bailed him out and although it was tough to leave or get away from the situation, it would have been more tough if we married or had a child together.

I believe that claiming to be an addict, most of the time, is a cop out way of absolving oneself from the responsibility of their own actions...tiger woods, anybody?...sex addict, or narcissist? In the case of drug users coming from affluent backgrounds who clearly have a lot going for them and a lot to lose, as in this case, the effect that his usage was having on him had to be obvious...especially over such a short period of time, yet he is still choosing to continue to do this to himself. I would bet that this kids' problems didn't start the day some guy got him high...probably more just an underlying lack of self-respect, not addiction. Hope he gets it together.

I don't agree. Yes it was his fault, but we can still feel sympathy for him and help him or people like him recover. Pretending all you want that H addicts are going to quit on their own, but it just doesn't happen. They need help to quit, just like serious alcoholics, because they are physically addicted. As in, withdrawal can kill you.

Listen, I did not state that it was HIS fault but merely pointing out that in the end, it will be up to him to quit.

Trust me, as a Health Care Giver, I gave and found myself feeling sorry for my boyfriend on numerous times, to the point I almost jeopardized my own college degree. I went to AAA/NAA with him on several occasions. He went to SEVERAL rehab centers (the best) and yet he still relapsed. He came from an affluent family, very smart--I think his degree was "Genetics"? I dated him for 4yrs. When I first met him, I thought he had it together. He would do "pot" occasionally and some other recreational drugs but never to the point I thought he had a problem until.....he was introduced to "HEROIN' at a bar and ever since, he was never the same...

I can't explain why some "kick" the habit and others not but I do know, if I had stayed with him, I would NOT be where I am today and to think I ALMOST married him twice! I guess you can say, at the time--he was my "drug" but I evidently kicked it, otherwise I would not be successful as I am today.

Dang, one of these days I WILL write a book about my life. I will just need to find a good editor...:)

My brother ran at PSU, both XC and track, in the late 80s and early 90s. One year, I was just out of college myself (not PSU, but Oregon) and lived with my brother and one other roommate who also ran on the team. Because of that living situation, I went to lots of PSU "runner" parties and met the rest of the team many times.

Those guys partied quite a bit, but nothing outrageous for college kids. They partied more than I guessed college athletes would party, but they partied less than my friends and I did at UO. I remember plenty of drinking contests were I dominateded those wimps and showed them how it was done Eugene style!

No hard drugs, nothing too reckless, just the odd hangover, or having to do a workout at Gabriel Park on three hours sleep... not the end of the world. If some kind of epidemic of drugs and excessive partying took over the PSU running programs, it was after 1991 or so.

Who the hell are the artsy rich?

Ouch.... wrote:

Yeah, heroin isn't something you easily bounce back from. It seems to be the drug of choice amongst the artsy rich set.

ever met a hipster?

Letsrun Hero wrote:

Who the hell are the artsy rich?