Boy Who Lost Himself To Drugs - A

The drug of choice was not some exotic, cinematic poison. It was pills. Leftover opioids from a grandfather’s surgery, bought from a classmate who had a cousin with a prescription. White, small, unremarkable. The first one made Liam feel like he had finally arrived home to a place he never knew he was missing. The second one made the world softer, blurring its sharp edges. The third one made him forget, for a few hours, that he had ever been anxious or lonely or afraid.

If you want to find Liam, do not look in hospitals or jail cells or cemeteries. Look in the gap between the boy he was and the man he became. Look in the silence at the dinner table where his chair used to be. Look in his mother’s eyes when she drives past the science fair, years later, and sees another boy grinning over a volcano. a boy who lost himself to drugs

There is a photograph of him from the seventh-grade science fair. He is grinning, holding a volcano that actually works, red vinegar and baking soda frothing over the rim. His eyes are clear, curious, full of a light that hasn’t yet learned to be afraid. That boy—let us call him Liam—was a collector of things: insects, constellations, the names of clouds. He wanted to be a meteorologist, or maybe a geologist, or perhaps a poet. The future was a wide, open field, and he was running through it. The drug of choice was not some exotic, cinematic poison

That boy is still out there. But he is fading, second by second, like a photograph left too long in the sun. And no one knows how to stop the light. White, small, unremarkable