About 6 years ago I started to suffer from extreme panic attacks, I'm 18 years old right now. I would be completely engrossed in my studying for school and I never looked anywhere else, studying and gaming were my life. I lived life like that until I hit High School, the work load increased and I felt myself falling from my usual habits of studying. Reading had been one of my favorite pastimes, I would wake up for school at 8 at 6 in the morning and read until I had to go. Mid-Freshman year I could bring myself to open a book. Reading and concentrating became arduous tasks and I could not bring myself to get any help from anyone. I had always been independent minus the fact that I had been under the shadow of an overprotective mother since birth. I started looking for openings and barely made it through Freshman year (I had a fully paid scholarship and needed to maintain a 92). Beginning of Sophomore year is when my trouble started, in October of that year I began to suffer from severe bouts of pain in my stomach and back, I wasn't sure what was wrong and I was hospitalized several times at the beginning of the year. During my last hospitalization I was given intense doses of a painkiller called Dilaudid that is much stronger than morphine and is basically a heroin synthetic. I was on it for 2 weeks in the hospital until they sent me home still with no clue as to what was wrong with me. At this point I had already missed near to a month of school and I was behind by a lot, I didn't know what to do, couldn't concentrate on anything and just laid around all day. In late November I was hospitalized a second time after 5 nights of screaming on the bathroom floor. They gave me more Dilaudid to calm me until they found that my gall bladder had failed. I have a liver disease called spherocytosis which causes my blood cells to be malformed meaning that if an infection was bad enough I'd need dialasys and a transfusion. The gall bladder was removed and the pain ceased but several weeks after being home on pain medication I didn't know what to do about school and problems at home. I started to sneak a pain pill here and there because I remembered how it made me feel. I went through two months of being high every day and doing well in school. I used the medication as a means to concentrate and calm myself (I had never told anyone about my panic attacks). Near the end of the year I started to take Xanax, I went to a school popular with party drugs and a large drug culture. I began to take my mother's prescription for Xanax, and by the end of April I was taking 6 a day or more, mixed with several other drugs. I started to search in my house for all kinds of drugs. My grandmother had a mastectomy and she had tons of valium and vicodin and percocet laying around the house so i began to take it. I finished over 500 valium and 200 painkillers, until one day my mother found that most of her pain medication was missing. She asked me about it and I was so miserable that I confessed immediately. I was taken to the hospital and hospitalized for 3 days where I spoke to counselors about my problems. When I got out, I had no want for the drugs and no need for them, I finished the year well on prescription anti-depressants from a psychiatrist. By mid Junior year I was at it again, finding more drugs and bringing them to school to sell them for money to buy more powerful version. I quickly became a major drug supplier for many kids at school. I stole 40 vicodin from a friend who kept them in his bag for leg surgery. That same day my mother searched my bag and found them. I was taken again to the hospital and went through the same ordeal. In May my psychologist put me through several tests and it was found that I had ADD. My panic attacks were self induced by the fact that I knew something was wrong but didn't know how to fix it. I managed to do well and finish up Junior year. Senior year in October I went out in the morning during a mass that we didnt all have to attend and was caught smoking pot by the school officials with a group of kids with over 2 ounces of high grade pot. I wasn't suspended but got off with a warning. The drug use had worn off until that point. I had started dating a wonderful girl named Jessica, a family friend and a personal friend. She had changed my life. After that incident I stopped my habitual drug use. I still haven't weaned myself completely and every so often I go through a period of days where I use. I drink on occasion and get drunk as some of you may know. It's not a healthy lifestyle but I'm struggling to remain as sober as possible until I can pinpoint my problems and fix them. My drug use had cost me the trust of my parents and the loss of many friends and the respect of their parents. No one knows what I go through daily because I don't share my feelings. I have infinite faces that I put on to hide the pain that I deal with inside. This is my life for the past 6 years. MY mother developed breast cancer and went through a radical mastectomy which was later found out to be unnecessary and my little brother was diagnosed as having Aspergers. All of these things mixed with self imposed stress have made my life a living hell.