Cody’s story

Adversity is a blessing because it builds character.

my battle with addiction started when I was 14 years old. I started out like most Millennials that grew up in Canada in the early 2000s. I drank on the weekends to fit in with older friends , and impress girls at school, I also started smoking cannabis a year later, it didn’t take long for that recreational cannabis use to become a daily ritual. Once I hit high school , I had dreams of becoming the biggest , most hardcore drug dealer in my town, I knew this would require me to be fierce and intimidating , and that I would need to take steroids, I always looked up to the local gangsters that were hardcore into the gym and steroids from my town , so I was able to keep the cannabis behind closed doors , I would smoke at night , and on the weekends , because from a young age I discovered smoking cannabis made me feel like a bitch. Cannabis would cause me ultra paranoia , anxiety , being wrapped up in my feelings instead of taking the action I need to take , yet despite cannabis always making me feel this way , I have gone through plenty of periods in my life where I’m fully addicted to it, I guess you could say I’ve always loved torturing myself. I would go to some pretty extreme lengths to get my cannabis and nicotine fix back then , despite it being behind closed doors. I started hitting the gym , taking steroids (testosterone & anadrol & DBOL, skipping school to sell cannabis and workout all day, smashing people out who tried to sell cannabis on “my turf” .Eventually I got connected with the right people , who I already had a connection with via my parents (my dad was a hardcore crack smoker from when I was born , until he eventually got clean around 2011) and my mother started smoking crack when I was 13 years old with a man she met , who was like a father to me, more than my biological father ever was. So with these connections I re established, I started pushing coke and heroin at 17-18 years old, mostly at nig