Not long after my mother recovered from chemotherapy, my grandmother passed away. I was tasked with disposing of my mother's morphine, however I decided to take it for relief.

I was addicted not to the feeling of being numb so much, but the initial euphoria. I would snort the morphine in powder form. I know I did some rudimentary conversion, however after kicking it I forgot every single step and cannot remember a lot of that time.
Over a year had passed, yet my knowledge of it is very little. It feels as though I have lost parts of my life... Like I mean, literally lost.

The euphoric kick got less and less prevalent, and I felt as though I needed more in order to gain that initial kick - however I wasn't even aware of this effect happening, despite all manners of media being rife with this step of opiate addictions. The act of increasing dosages came so naturally I don't even think I made a conscious decision to, yet my tolerance rose to points where I was taking multiple times the lethal dose (for someone with base tolerance levels).

I saw what it was doing to me at one point, just by happenstance of looking into the mirror for a moment longer than usual.

I went cold turkey, and it was... Well, hell doesn't even describe how this felt. It took about a couple of weeks, with the first being the worst.
I had locked myself up in my room, telling some folks to check up on me periodically, online friends mainly, and what to do if I don't respond within a given time. I recall a moment where one of my friends was about to call an ambulance, because I was one minute late to answer (I was probably vomiting profusely).

The very last time I did that was in the second or third week of November, 2012.

I understand that going cold turkey could be very dangerous, especially with a built up tolerance, however at that point I would not have been able to wean myself off of the stuff. I was too far in, and without going extremely hard into it I probably would have died not too long after.

If you have a friend going through opiate addiction, please be there for them. That's all I can say.