Frankie’s Story

My name is Frankie. I’m 55 years old. I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I’ve lived in Lawrence for the last 22 years of my life. My life was pretty good in childhood, you know, but I had a lot of childhood traumas. I lost a lot of family to drugs and addiction. I grew up in the fast lane. Drugs were all around me my whole life. When I was seven years old my life started twisting around. I wanted that fast life. I was going to school but cutting class, playing hooky. I wanted to be like some of the other guys along the way. I was looking at drug dealers making money. I was curious at the time. I liked their clothes, the fashion, the music. I decided to go hang out around them. It kind of hypnotized me — the money and the clothes and the fashion. And I wanted more of that.

When I was a teenager I was under a lot of peer pressure. Join a gang or you’re a punk. My mother told me I was smart, so don’t ever be a follower. The guys would tell me, “Go steal that radio so we can sell it,” and I told myself I’m not gonna do that for nobody. If I’m gonna steal something I’m gonna steal it for me and sell it myself. I wasn’t gonna be recruited and be somebody I wasn’t.

At that same time I loved going to school. I did my homework at school. I was bad but not that bad — I was just growing up. I couldn’t talk to my parents. My mother always worked and my father, he chose drugs over me and my brothers and my sister. It was hurtful seeing him in the corner just nodding out. I couldn’t help him. My dad was everything to me. I looked at him like he was the strongest man ever.

I had my little brother, and I used to take care of him, making sure he went to school and didn’t get bullied on. Early on I was quiet and I used to get bullied on and pressured for a long time. I had a lot of anger. And then I had an abusive stepfather who used to pound on me. He was on methadone. At that time I had nightmares. I started sleepwalking. I had depression. I seen something I didn’t want to see, and I started to get visions and hear voices. I kept this to myself. I never talked to my mother about it. Never talked to anyone. Who would believe me? I was about 13.

I wasn’t sleeping, so I started seeing how alcohol tasted, thinking it would help. Then I started getting into drugs. I seen this white stuff everybody was taking and staying up. It was cocaine.

So I decided to start doing cocaine so I could stay up all night because I was scared to sleep. I thought the problem would go away, but it got worse. Sometimes marijuana helped me doze off and drift away. I kept smoking, and I was drinking more heavily. I started to become another person. I looked in the mirror and said, I’m changing. I’m looking older. I was young but felt different. The nightmares kept coming. So I kept doing cocaine to avoid sleeping. I’d stay up three or four days. I kept sniffing because it was free — I was taking drug dealers’ stuff, trying to rob drug dealers. My mother taught me never to steal. I wasn’t a thief. I was doing it to support my habit.

Growing up in Brooklyn, the crack epidemic was rising. People in gangs getting robbed and shot. I found myself drifting more and more. I felt like I was just a piece of gum, a small piece of this world. So I had to protect myself. I started making a few right decisions, even though I knew I was doing wrong. I tried to take care of myself a little bit.

After a while I went back to school. School helped me. I stayed after in the library just to read. I liked it. I always wanted to write, but I never put in the effort. I didn’t do the work to write my stories.

I was into a lot of girls. Then I got a job, and when I finally got a job I felt happy. I was making money, supporting myself, giving my mother money, helping her out.

My mother was falling into a deep depression. We were living in an abandoned house. The neighborhood was getting worse. Friends were getting killed over drugs. The crack was killing people I knew. I was finding dead bodies. I seen somebody get shot right in front of me. I stood there for half an hour looking at him on the floor. I froze.

Something came into me at that time. I didn’t want to be that victim on the floor. I thought, if I keep going like this, I’m gonna wind up dead like him. He owed people money. They came after him. This was back then. I was changing, trying to fix myself. I was still a teenager going into adulthood. I was working but still hanging with the wrong crowd. Hanging with drug dealers. Getting money. I liked the money, the fashion, the girls.

So I didn’t really clean up. I was making more money, buying more drugs. The more I sold, the more I did. I wasn’t making any attempt to fix my life.

At that time, my whole family decided to move to Massachusetts. I stayed in New York three years by myself, maintaining an apartment, working, trying to finish school. I did my junior year. But I was still selling drugs and I got busted by police and went to jail for three years of my life. 

I went to Brooklyn House and then they shipped me to Rikers Island. In jail there’s no drugs and I started getting healthy. I was working out. And I started thinking and I went to church and stuff. And when I talked to the pastor, the pastor asked me, “What are you going to do with your life? Are you going to choose to come back to jail after you get out? Are you going to change your life?” And I said, no, I don’t want to come back to jail. So something has to happen. And right there and then, like a lightning bolt, I had to change. It’s not going to get better if I go back in the streets and go right back to the neighborhood that I lived in and do the same thing.

After I did my time, I was healthy. I felt great. So once I came out, I went back to my old neighborhood and the first thing that I was gonna do was go straight to a liquor store, get me a beer, go cut me a 20 because I had money.

And something just went into me. I heard this voice, “No, you overcame a lot of obstacles in your life.” Something just clicked in me right there and instead of me going right to the drug dealers, I went left and said, “Fuck this, I don’t need this no more in my life.” Right there and then, I changed. I was doing so great. I decided, it’s time for me to go with my family. So I came down to Massachusetts. Now, at the same time, when I’m in Massachusetts, I’m clean, but everybody around me is dirty.

So here I am as a young adult trying to help them. I was doing good and then when I came to Lawrence, here we go again. Back into a place all around me filled with drugs, trying to stay clean, and my family asking me for drugs, my cousins all high and on dope. I decided, okay, I’m gonna go make some money again. So I’m going to become a drug dealer again.

I was making money again. But then once I got the drugs in my hand, I said, hey, you know, it’s been a long time. Probably this is like, you know, it’s not going to do nothing. Now I know how to control it. I can do one and that’s it. But I thought wrong. I did one bag, then another bag. I went in more, more, more. I lost all the weight, all my muscle strength. Again I’m back into a habit. Drinking again, smoking again, sniffing again, doing the same shit I was doing in New York. I relapsed because I didn’t have the willpower to say no.

But then I started going to funerals again, seeing what the drugs were doing to people. My grandmother was the strongest rock in my world. She understood. She was the only one I could talk to. She knew I was trying to do something right and she always welcomed me with open arms, never treated me different, never judged me. She loved me the same no matter what I was on. She asked me, “What do you want in life?”

So when I’m in Lawrence I went back to school. I did my junior year and my senior year. But in my senior year I was selling drugs in school. A kid I sold drugs to got caught in the bathroom sniffing and ratted me out. The principal and officers came to my homeroom and told me to go to my locker. When I was going to my locker, I disappeared. I ran out of school.

They knew where I lived, but my house had burned. My mother lost everything. I was living across the street, so I used to see the cops coming to the burned house looking for me. They were looking to take me in. They had warrants. So I decided to go back to New York. I lived with my sister. I was going back and forth, back and forth. I was like the gingerbread man, running. 

The last time I stayed three years, but when I came back to Lawrence, I got picked up on a warrant. They told me I was gonna wind up doing a lot of time. “You’re gonna do five years.” When I heard “five years,” it hit again in my life. I said, “Fuck this, I gotta turn the tide.”

When I was in jail I used to go to the shower room with a razor and a toothbrush, and I used to shave in the shower because I didn’t want to go in front of the mirror no more because I was disgusted with myself.

I went back to New York after. I was working in a pizzeria and what really changed my life is when I got shot. I came out of the pizzeria. I was closing down getting ready to go home. It was 11:00 at night and I had just got paid and five guys came out of nowhere. “Give us your money and give us your jacket and bag.” And I said hell no. I’m not gonna give you shit. I started fighting. I had one guy on the floor and I hear this voice say, “Shoot him.” The first shot went off and I didn’t feel nothing. I just felt the biggest throb and like my head was ringing. It was snowing outside and I fell into a snowbank. And when I tried to breathe, the snow went up my nose and I had a brain freeze. It got me up. And when I got up they must have got scared because they said, “Shoot him again.” That’s when I heard the second shot go off in my back.

I ran three blocks to the train station, and I was blacking out. The next thing I know, I was in Bellevue Hospital, butt naked with tubes stuck inside my privates and stuff and I’m looking at a light and I couldn’t move. And I’m like, is this heaven? Is this heaven?

So I’m looking up at this light, and I have a neck brace on, and I’m begging God, please do not let this happen to me. I’m like, I don’t deserve this. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I kept on asking God for forgiveness and to give me another chance.

So I’m thinking I was going to the light but it was the big-ass light in the hospital. I’m hearing voices around me, but I’m drowsy. Fear hit me again. Somebody talking, “You have to change. You have to change. If you keep on going this way, you’re not going to make it.”

So I decided it’s no more, it’s no more. But at the same time, my family was dying around me, but I refused to. I went home, taking my patches off, cleansing my mind, knowing I was hurt and messed up, looking at the mirror knowing what this leads to — prison or death.

Before I tried to recover myself. Thinking I didn’t need no help. I didn’t want anybody to know. Fuck it, I could do it by myself. But you really can’t. You need someone to talk to.

But I got referred to programs that sit you down, give you coffee, and give you a fucking coloring book. I don’t want a fucking coloring book. I want to talk to somebody that’s been through the war. Not a person staring at a computer taking down your name. Here we’re talking one on one. We’re actually looking at each other. This is what I want.

I’ve been sober now eight months. I’m in my 50s. But I still need help. Since I’ve been sober I fell into a deep depression. I went into a mental institution. I tried to commit suicide. I cut my veins. I was self-mutilating. I lost a lot of family. I felt lonely and depressed. But I didn’t drink, smoke or do coke.

And that is why I am in this program. My life is turning around. I’m not going back to any substance abuse. I am here for my mental health and to help others.

I feel so wonderful. I’m still here. There’s no stopping me now.