This is not a story of hugs and happy endings. It is the voice of a boy who is right now standing up to that voracious scourge that is drug use. 26 wish him the strength so that each morning is a decision to never again, and we thank him for sharing his truth with us.

He fell in love with a little pill when he was 13 years old. She was just a year older than him, and quite a sweetheart. “If the problem to get in there was that he liked carbamazepine, then he had to put that pill in, without thinking too much about it.” And so he did.

From there to tramadol (that kind of expensive whiskey that gives a lot of “happiness”) and to marijuana later, it was not a very long stretch; And together, while the family believed they were weaving a noble teenage love, they took drugs before going to high school and began to live increasingly turbulent episodes.

Among the first was when, at 14, he decided to mix the pills and ended up with a cardiorespiratory arrest that almost killed him; something that he repeated, by the way, when he was already 16, with the same scares around him and managing to make no one suspect the real cause of those blunders.

Then he had a stroke (he thinks he remembers that he was not yet 18 years old) and ended up with half his body paralyzed, suspected of schizophrenia and a terrible fear that they would discover the true reason for the event and then he would have to explain where he got the tablets, where they were selling them. "That's a pain, but a big one. So it's better to keep quiet."

He speaks easily, and claims to be an expert in the art of dissimulation, and that if he wants to, he can "hit" the little chemical in front of us without us noticing. However, he no longer wants to, "because I gave up the other stuff (pills and marijuana) of my own free will, but the chemical stuff, I have to let go of it because of the twists and turns it gives me, I'm very scared and also because the 'churrocitos' on the street call me 'churrocito'. What is that?"

He constantly interlaces his hands, and rubs them over his face, as if he were trying not to fall asleep, and his physical deterioration is evident, especially in his teeth, which are worn down.

He says that the drug kills your love, and your conscience, that you don't care that you can't leave a thousand pesos anywhere in the house, because "the child steals them"; that the grandmother's shop window is always locked, and that the 12 pairs of shoes and the Louis Vuitton clothes that the family sends her "from outside" have been replaced about 14 times because when the desire comes, she sells everything, changes everything, steals everything, needs everything...
Nothing is stronger than the call of the addict that you are, its effects, its burning.

It was a local drug dealer who told him one day: "Partner, if you like pills and all that, you'll get this size," and he gave him the chemical to try, the drug that is in fashion now on the streets, it generates addiction from the first taste and can be bought very easily these days.

He tells us that each "little piece" costs from 150.00 to 300.00 pesos and that the "jibaros" (the name given to those who sell them) are everywhere; he says this because he knows them. He left that day after the conversation with his partner to look for one, to buy, to learn about routes and hiding places: "A chemical fanatic, from the first 'kick'."

And from there, with that certainty hunting his jugular, the road went downhill at a terrifying speed; nothing, but nothing of what he had lived until that moment, compares with what was coming to his torrid existence.

"One night I was with two partners giving me one of those 'chivaprieta' and madness broke out. One of them threw himself on the ground and bit his dog, he fought with it. Imagine that, the dog grabbed him on one side and he grabbed the animal on the other."

"Meanwhile, the partner who was with us began to walk backward, he got into it, like Michael Jackson, and he walked 14 blocks like that, in reverse. They say that I stayed seated, and calm; but I have gaps in that, I don't remember."

"The next thing that comes to mind is being in front of a doctor. He asked me what my mother's name was, if I knew my wife's name; and I had them on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't pronounce them."

"Another night I gave a piece of paper to a drunk. He was sitting on the street near me and I offered it to him. The effect lasted for about seven minutes and he was completely sober, as if he had never taken anything."

His flood of experiences takes us from stupor to sadness, rage, and the whys. How do you get out of something so strong? Is there really a way?

"My mother began to suspect when things were already disappearing from the house; I finished off everything I could to be able to consume and consume. I took between 57 and 58 a day and each one cost 150.00 pesos, to set a low price. Do the math on how much money I spend in a day. I didn't steal on the street, it wasn't necessary, but in the 'gao' and with the family I got into a lot of trouble, of all kinds."

"One day, the old lady grabbed me by the hand and brought me here (she refers to the hospital where we are talking now). She couldn't take it anymore. I was here and I came back home with treatment. We had an agreement and I stayed in the room, I couldn't go out; but, through the window, the partners agreed to give me a 'little chemical' a day, just one. I gave them the clothes or whatever I found in there and they brought it up to me with a little thread."

Then she went back to her old ways, to the fear, to the attacks of repentance that lasted an hour in the middle of some gloomy dawn; and once again, he walked around in borrowed flip-flops, sweaters full of holes, and with fewer friends every day because even some consumers rejected him: "You're too much of a mess, man," they would say to him, who had always been a "vitiligo" guy.

"On my birthday I came to the front of the Psychiatric Hospital at 4:30 am. I knew I couldn't take it anymore and I'm afraid, very afraid of the twists that the chemist leaves behind. I saw a lot of young people, almost boys, with part of their body twisted because the paper says that, and that can't be recovered.
"Standing there, all alone, I said goodbye to the little chemist. I took 14 in a row and said: get up, I'm ready! So I went in."

He is terrified of injections, but he puts up with the ones for the drugs that control his anxiety and help him eliminate the tightness in his body that he is already feeling. He says that he will get over it and that he will never, ever again, go near the "Mexico" or the "Marabú." He already has a "little pinch" in mind for when he gets out and, he clarifies, "It's not out of necessity, but it's because I have to keep my head busy; sitting all day, with nothing to do, I fall back into the trap."

He knows that "he's in a mess," the doctors explain it to him all the time; that his intellectual capacity is no longer the same because that bug eats away at your intelligence, your feelings, your future...

"Look, when I feel like consuming, I'm going to run to the doctor's office, I'll sit in front of the doctor and I'll tell him to do something with me, that I'm crazy for taking a chemical; I'm going to do it like this, at whatever time."

He knows that you will never get out of it completely. If you are already addicted, you will be addicted for life, it is a disease like alcoholism, that is why he assures that the best phrase that has been invented in the world is the one that says: "Better not to start."
"I have said it to about 300 people already, and I will continue; if they offer it to you, say no, but find a problem with the one who offers it to you, because that is what they want to screw you, but screw you.

"I tell the doctor that he has a job for a long time because the number of young kids who are 'giving' to the chemist in Las Tunas is very high. The same girls as boys, from Basic Secondary School, they start there, I have seen them myself, nobody has told me. They do whatever they can for a piece of paper, I even saw a 12-year-old boy in one of those places that I cannot tell you about, but they give whatever they have, they do not control themselves."

That phrase shakes us: "Give whatever you have"; and then you think of the robberies that in the neighborhoods we call "by petty thieves," of the virginities lost without possession, of the violent little deals for a few pesos... of so many things.

He laughs and assures us that we can publish this story. "After all, when have you seen a criminal reading a newspaper? The people around me are not going to find out about this, even if they have him in front of them. And it is good that my story serves, at least, to teach what cannot be done; as an example, bad, but an example nonetheless."

At the time of the interview he had been about 15 days without taking drugs and he felt strong, but he was convinced that the worst had not yet come because the road to detoxification is like a roller coaster and you never know at what moment the adrenaline current will return to stir your body, mock your limits and demand from you, like an august curse, what you have decided not to give it anymore.

The fight against internal demons is immortal, devastating, and cruel. I hope he finds the inner strength (balls and jaw, he told us) and so does his family and the many people who love him well, from the soul, to move forward; and I hope these lines encourage those who, wrapped up in chaos, have not found the depth that helps them take the first step, and others, not to start.