Article February 24, 2003 Issue

Why I know I'm clean and free

By Kenny Simmons

The years that I was homeless, jobless, and addicted to cocaine and alcohol were a time of hopelessness, of living from day to day in fear. That was my life at that time.

As I explained in the earlier article about the changes in my life ["A walk out of darkness into light," January 27, 2003], I was living with a young lady who was a drug pusher. It made everything pretty convenient, but at the same time it only heightened my sense of misery.

My first encounter with drugs happened when I was eleven years old. I actually snorted my first bag of heroin at that age. I also began smoking marijuana and using other drugs around that time. So my struggle with addiction started at a very early age. But I would say it became really intense after I was freed from prison in 1979. In the same year, six months later, my father was murdered, and I began to use drugs really heavily. So from 1979 to 1999 my life was pretty much controlled by drugs and alcohol.