“First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits or they will conquer you.”

In 2012, I was promoted and given the opportunity to move to Houston and start up a local Houston office for my department. As a Wealth Manager, my job was to advise rich people on how to invest their money and plan for retirement and estate settlement. I managed a book of over 160 households each holding a minimum of $1,000,000 in investable assets with my company. I worked for a company with probably the best reputation in the industry. My clients held absolute trust and confidence in my advice and I was good at what I did. I was also the youngest one in the role out of over 60 advisors.

I had my process down pat. Every client went through the same analysis and interview before I presented them with my recommendations. I provided actionable advice and put up good numbers. I had started with that company in 2004 as a junior advisor and climbed the corporate ladder to this senior role.

My introduction to meth came as a result of boredom and hyper activity mixed together. To give you some background into my mindset at the time, it would help to explain my daily routine at the time. From 2010 to 2014 I studied at least a few hours every day for the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exams. This is on top of my full-time job. For those that don’t know, the CFA is the premier global investment designation. It’s a series of 3 exams offered once a year all over the world. The pass rates for each exam are typically in the low 40s, so a majority of test takers fail. Only 18% of people that start the process actually finish it and become a charter holder. Google “average CFA salary,” to see more. The exams are brutal. You are going head to head against investment professionals in London, Tokyo, India, and many other places. The worst part of the exams is that they are only offered once a year, so if you fail, you have to wait an entire year to try again. I only failed Level 2 once and it absolutely devastated me. After failing once, it became personal and I decided that I would ramp up my efforts and do whatever it takes to pass Level 2. For many years, my daily routine was as follows:

5:30 AM – Turn the alarm off and up and swallow a 30mg non-time release pill of Adderall and spark up a bowl of weed first thing before hopping in the shower. The Adderall takes 30 min to feel so I would smoke weed before it came on for two reasons:

First, I absolutely love loud music and had an amazing sound system in my car. I would blast rap on my morning drive to work and pump myself up thinking about how I was about to absolutely murder the study material I was about to read. The music would give me goose bumps. Listening to music high off weed in a car with a bad ass sound system is one of my favorite all time activities.

The second reason why I would smoke weed first thing in the morning is to develop an appetite so that I could eat and get something in my stomach before taking the Adderall. I would get one scrambled egg and one slice of bacon for breakfast and then join my co-worker for a morning study session in the work cafeteria.

I studied everyday for years in the mornings with my best work friend, Rodrigo. Rodrigo was the other young advisor in our group. Same age as me, also a Hispanic, but he was able to get there without the help of drugs. He was the real deal in my opinion. This motherfucker was born and raised in Ft. Worth and received a full athletic scholarship to the University of New Mexico to play D1 football. He married his high school girlfriend and graduated summa cum laude. Not only was this guy an accomplished athlete, he was also very smart and capable of working hard without drugs. I envied the fuck out of him. I wanted so bad to be able to sit there without the help of drugs and study the way he did. I don’t know how he did it, but either way he motivated me to step up my level of commitment hours-wise.  For years we met in the mornings and studied for the CFA exams together.  He is still employed with that same company and working in a dream role we both aspired to get at the time.  He is going on his 15^th year with the company.  He is probably a millionaire by now.  We started at the same time in the same role.

6:00 AM to 8:30 AM – Study intensely for the CFA exams with Rodrigo. Minimum discussion. Maximum time with the nose in the books.

8:30 AM – Leave the cafeteria and head to work upstairs. We worked in the call center most of this time. This was before we both moved up the corporate ladder.

10:30 AM – Take another 20 to 30 mg of Adderall as the first one started to wear off. I am completely engrossed in my work during this time. Absolutely focused on doing my job perfectly and absolutely loving the way I was feeling.

1:00 PM – Right around this time, the second dose of Adderall would start to wear off. You have a couple of choices at this point. Either take more Adderall and kick it up a notch, or start to come down off it and start to get that cracked out feeling. The thing about taking more Adderall at this point is that you haven’t really eaten since morning and won’t eat until much later if you keep taking it. The come down off of more than 60 mg of Adderall for me is an absolutely terrible feeling. However, I discovered the magic secret to combatting this terrible comedown was another illegal substance; opiates. Preferably OxyContin or when those were unavailable, Norcos (hydrocodone.) Lol, when texting about re-upping our supply our codewords for the Oxys was “Bunyans.”  As in Paul Bunyan and he had his faithful Oxen sidekick.  Oxen…oxy…Paul Bunyan…so “Bunyans.”  The Norcos we code worded “schmellows.”  They were yellow, hence schmellow yellow…you get the point.  If neither of these were available, we would go to “Rangers.”  As is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers…for “Morphine.”  So it was “bunyans,” “schmellows” or “rangers.”  My favorite was the oxy. Small, hit you quick and hit you hard, and fuck it lasted a long time.  I would often take a stroll down to the lower level of our building to an obscure bathroom I had found in the Operations center. No one was ever in there. It was my private island of solace. A sacred place if you will. I would take a hard covered binder with me and go in the stall and shut the door. I would have grabbed a straw from the cafe on the way down and use the jagged edge of my house key to cut a short piece off the straw to use for the railing process.  I would extend my work badge from the elastic string holder mounted on my belt and place it over the pill on top of the binder. I can still hear and feel the distinct sound of the pill crackling and being pulverized into pebbles, then dust. Through the work badge the first smash would crack oxy into small tiny oxy pebbles. The second smash was all it took to smooth out those rocks. These particular pills turned to a fine dust with minimal effort. Like they were meant to be snorted. Like they were begging to be snorted. I would cut up a couple of small lines and close my eyes and snort the powder go up through my nostril and feel the dust hit the back of my throat. A little swallow to taste the bitterness. Anticipation of the oncoming warmth and jovial attitude the pills brought out in me would get me so excited for what I was about to feel. Just typing about it right now I can almost feel it. Snorting oxies hits you pretty fast. I would then flush the straw, lick my badge (I know,) and then exit the bathroom in just the greatest uplifted mood ever. I would start to feel it right as I was getting back to my desk from the bathroom stroll. The seriousness and ice-cold feeling from the adderrall would be overcome with a warm blanket of happy opiate love. All was right in the world. Everybody was my friend and I wanted to be nowhere else in the world doing nothing else, but being at work on that day and present in that moment.

The beauty and attractiveness of the opiates was that they also let me continue loving studying if I needed to. It was like taking the crash down from Adderall and completely reversing the ride and making it an absolute blast to come off the Adderall. The best word I can think of to describe the feeling is that after snorting the oxy, I would “flutter” around the office. Joking and laughing with my bosses and coworkers. Being positive about any situation happened to be going on at the time. Big ol smile on my face.  If I needed to keep studying, I was back with my nose in the book and fully engaged for at least a couple of more hours.

Our leadership saw me as an intelligent go-getter. Not only was I putting up numbers and engaged in my job, but they saw me there studying with Rodrigo every day and laughing and having a good time later in the afternoon. I got promoted consistently and quickly. Getting promoted during this time fucked with my head and thought process.  It affirmed that whatever I was doing was working and to keep doing it. Yes, I was doing drugs all day every day, but I was getting promoted and getting more money and succeeding so why would I want to change anything? If it’s not broken don’t fix it right?

5:00 PM – Work ends. It’s alcohol and weed time. Smoke a bowl on the ride home with the music and start drinking immediately. I noticed after a while that if I purchased the 750 ml or Liter of Crown Royal (both bigger bottles) that I would drink too much and feel like shit the next morning. My solution to this was simple, but it took me a long time to conclude this was the best strategy. Every day I would just buy one 200ML of Crown and then drink beer after slamming that. On my way home, every day, I would stop at the liquor store and pick up a 200ML bottle of crown. I found that drinking that amount of liquor provided me with a good base level to start drinking beer at. A nice buzz. Mixed with constant weed smoking of course. I would usually have anywhere from 3-6 beers on top of the crown every day for years.

10:00PM/11:00PM ish- On weekdays around this time if I was still wired, I would take OTC sleep aid to fall asleep. I remember at times feeling the wired-ness from the Adderall, the warm body-feeling of the opiates, the head high from the weed, some looseness from the alcohol, and finally the drowsiness from the sleep aids. I could literally feel a little bit of all five. If it was a weekend, I would just keep drinking more until passing out.

My wife at the time knew I was drinking and smoking weed and taking Adderall but she didn’t know the full extent of what I was doing. She didn’t know I was slamming the 200 ML of crown and only assumed I was having a few beers. I wasn’t slurring or fucked up. The Adderall dominated most of the other substances and I definitely did not appear drunk or unstable.

I repeated this for years. Daily. Getting promoted and killing it. Rising the corporate ladder as a young whiz kid along with Rodrigo. It’s just Rodrigo was doing it the real way. I just had to take a bunch of drugs to hang with him.

So around 2014, I completed the 3^rd level of the CFA and received my charter.  All of my daily working and studying had paid off.  At this time I had been relocated to Houston to start up a local Houston Wealth Management office.  Myself and a junior advisor were the only ones in the office for a couple of years.  I was away from the home office and pretty much on my own.  I saw my boss once or twice a month when he would fly in, take us out to lunch, and then take off.  As long as my numbers were swimming with the fishes I could do whatever I wanted.  When I passed the exam, I all of the sudden had all of this “free” time available it felt.  Idle hands became the devil’s playground and I eventually started going to a strip club at lunch.  One random day at the club an Adderrall pill fell out and it struck up a conversation with the stripper than ended with me smoking my first bowl of meth in her car.   That first high was familiar.  It was very much like Adderral but hit a bit stronger and lasted wayyyyy way longer.  No sleep for two days. When I came down off it, I didn’t know much else than it was fun and that I wanted to do it again.   In summary, I like to think that my meth addiction snuck up on me, but I was playing with fire for years.  If it hadn’t been the meth, one of the many other substances I was taking would probably have played a prominent role in some other type of short or long term downfall.  With meth it just happened to happen quickly.