WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A MAN? It was a terrible feeling, addiction. The pull was so strong. The feeling, so sublime. I tried to resist it but I knew that it had the best of me. I was its slave. At first I was just doing it once a weekend, but then I started doing it twice per weekend, and then I started doing it every other day, and pretty soon I was doing it every day. I would tell myself, "I'm never going to do this again, this is the last time," but then I'd find myself scoring from some dealer, sneaking into some back alley, squatting down and shooting that amazing elixir into my arm. I had lost complete control of myself. There was an impulsive urge within me that I could not resist. I would try to fight it but then all of a sudden, in a rush, I'd just give into it. In an impulse, I'd rush into the garage, get on my bike, then ride furiously across town into the ghetto, to the places where I knew I could score. Things stopped mattering. I'd stopped going to school. At the end of it all, I'd even stopped going home. I was on the streets, destitute, driven by one thing and one thing only: my next fix. It was better than sex, better than masturbating, better than anything I'd ever experienced. It was pure bliss, the greatest feeling of peace and contentment. When I was high, I was completely at ease and without a single concern in the world: all of that from a little vile of that magic clear fluid. Vile - it was vile, all right. To pay for it all, I started doing crime, and that's how it all came to an end, the life I'd been living. That's how my new life began. That's how I met my uncle. That's how I learned the greatest lessons that life has to offer: how to find true peace for my body, my mind, and my spirit.