The Manic Candice Podcast
When It's Time To Quit Drugs
[MUSIC] Rest in peace to Rich Homie-Quan who passed away today due to an alleged drug overdose. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, good night. Whenever and wherever you're listening, my friends, this is Candice with the Manate Candice Podcast. Thank you for joining for this episode. If you're new here, welcome. If you're returning, welcome back and thank you for listening. Thank you for coming back. Go ahead and follow the podcast, rate the podcast, and share the podcast with your friends, family, and your followers. Today's topic is when is time to quit drugs? Like how do you finally know when it's time to quit drugs? Or what realization it's going to take? And we're going to talk about one realization that I promise you, it takes just one realization for you to quit drugs. And that realization is that you are going to lose your life. So this is a public service announcement to quit drugs. I don't care what drug you're on. All of them are bad. One drug leads to another. It leads to secrets, it leads to overdoses. It leads to death and mourning and institutions such as jails. Rich Homie-Quan is leaving behind not only a legacy, but a lot of fans. I grew up with this guy, he carried some summers through middle school, middle school, mainly high school, and like through college. He was the sauce behind a lot of songs that we take for granted. But today we're going to celebrate Rich Homie-Quan's life by featuring him on the podcast as the first song in the background. So we're listening to Flex. I have another song on here by Rich Homie-Quan. It's pretty popular called, "Type Away, Feel Some Type Away." And he had a verse on lifestyle with Young Thug. And I just, my heart goes out to his family, his friends, his fans, you know, me, like all of us, we lost someone. He was only 34 years old. He's very young. And, you know, I felt really tugged on the heartstrings today to talk about death and addiction and what's killing us right now. You don't have to be a full-blown drug addict to die from fentanyl. You don't have to be homeless to die from fentanyl. You don't have to be, like, considered a real addict to die from fentanyl. It doesn't fucking matter these days. And back then, when I was growing up, if you did drugs, like, it wasn't immediately, "I'm going to die. I'm going to overdose," because everything on the street is pretty much tainted. It was like, "Is this going to work or not?" Like, you were just worried that the drugs weren't going to work, not if you were going to die. You're playing with your life. If you're on drugs right now, you're playing with your life. I don't care if it's ketamine once a month. I don't care if it's cocaine on the weekend. I don't care if it's a molly pill once a year. I don't care if you're buying weed off this. You're just fettin' all everywhere. Every drug on the street is cut with something. Not because it's part of the recipe. It's because it's part of how you make profits. Let me tell you something. When you sell-- I used to sell drugs. I'm not proud of it, but I'm just telling you. We would sell you anything if it meant we're going to make our money for the rehab and for our collecting. If we got stuck with bad drugs, if we got stuck with drugs that didn't work or drugs that were dangerous, we had to move it anyway. We're not going to just throw away all that money. So people who are pushing fentanyl and they're knowingly pushing fentanyl, they deserve to die. They deserve life in prison. They deserve to get beat up and they deserve to die. Because if you're out here providing the streets with the number one killer in the United States right now, you deserve to die, in my fucking opinion. There is this YouTube channel called Tales from the Streets. And I laugh and kick. But it's very serious because this YouTuber talks to Phoenix prostitutes, Phoenix homeless people, Phoenix fentanyl addicts. And he almost has a million subscribers of scrolling on Instagram where he has a page as well, where he shares the clips from his YouTube. And I saw this girl that I went to school with. Her name is Brittany. She's on the street. You guys, she's selling her body to provide for her fentanyl addiction. You guys, fentanyl, I don't know how long it lasts, but it's $7 a pill. That's what I heard. I don't do blues, I don't do fentanyl, I don't do opiates, I don't do any of that shit. But that doesn't mean that the drugs that I use don't have, isn't cut with fentanyl. Like, I know it is. We'll talk about what goes through my mind as I use still knowing, knowing what I know now. But seeing Brittany, a girl that I went to high school with on this YouTube channel, on this YouTube page, she's facing seven years in prison for a kidnapping related charge. And I'm like, I'm not shocked because based off the person she was in high school, like, I'm not shocked, you guys. And it's so sad because, you know, she has twin sisters. They're not her twin, but she has a set of sisters that are twins. And they've admired my work and they've admired my art. So this really hit home when I saw their older sister on this YouTube channel being interviewed about her struggles with being on the street and being addicted to fentanyl. And people in the comments like commenting like what they would do to her if they hired her as a prostitute. And it was just so like, the disconnect from being like a decent human, you know, it was really apparent. And this could have been me. In high school, Brittany was known as a drug user, a partier, a girl that skips class a lot. She was a great above me. But she was known as being the bad sister out of like her set of brothers and sisters. Like she was known as like the bad kid. And she set herself like the black sheep or the family. And, you know, as unfortunate that we have examples of those of what a black sheep is. But black sheep, they can always, they can always, they can always rise above. You know, and I wish her nothing but the best. And that she's the reason why I'm making this episode. It put things in perspective for me. And I'm like, Candice, it's time to quit drugs. It's time to quit anything that could be coaffet at all. Because it's just, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. It's not worth being on the street. It's not worth selling my body. It's not worth everything I have right now is because I worked for it. And what if I just don't feel like working because I have an addiction that's too demanding that I'm, I don't ever want to try fentanyl. It's just straight fentanyl or straight opiates. I don't ever want to be so high that I don't give a fuck about anything going on in my life. Anything I built for myself, the goals that I set for myself. Like, because that's what you're doing when you choose to use. It may not seem like a conscious choice because it isn't, but it's a subconscious choice when you choose the drugs. When you choose to spend that $25 on a gram rather than gas or like rather than something for your kids or like, like something important, like a bill or something you need like food. You really put things in perspective for me when I saw her homeless and I'm like, this is a second person I've known from high school to be homeless on the streets, on drugs. Came from the same neighborhood I came from, came from the same high school I came from. I got lucky. I got lucky with my mom. My mom was a federal officer. She's retired now. She taught me everything I needed to know in order not to get arrested. She didn't sit me down and say, this is how you avoid getting arrested. She sat me down and said, this is what's going to happen if you get caught with drugs since you want to use drugs. So I told myself, I'm like, you're not going to get caught with drugs. Like caught by the police because I knew it could happen. I go to federal prison. I'd be in an auto rehab, I'd be costing the state a lot of money to rehabilitate me and to house me in prison. I wouldn't be able to get a good job because of my record. I probably wouldn't be able to get a degree because of my addiction and my record. Things would be a lot harder for me to do because of my record. Honestly, Walgreens and CVS should have banned me. They should have banned me. I was robbing CVS and I was robbing Walgreens and it just amazes me that I was spared. I was spared going to prison because I was caught selling drugs and when I say robbed, I was faking prescriptions for 60, 90 pills at a time of narcotics. And I would sell them to people my age, people older than me, but like I was young at the time, I was 20, 21. I thought I knew it all. I thought I had life figured out. I thought I was the shit. I thought I was detectives, Candice Banks. Well, no, they don't show up. They call you first on private ID, private caller ID. Man, I'll never forget that day. They called me. I was in my grandma's house. I knew it was a detective. I just knew it was a detective. So at that point, I was on my own and I was like, "Okay, you're either going to get charged or you're not." One thing about law enforcement, you guys, is they know when you're lying. They're not expecting the truth from you. They're hoping for it, but once they get it, if they get it, you're going to get a break somewhere. You're going to get a good judge. Maybe the police officer is going to mention to the prosecutor that you were honest, completely honest. Maybe they would recommend to the prosecutor or whatever to just ease up on you. I was honest to the detectives. I said I had a problem. I said I found a loophole in the system and I exploited it because I have a problem. That was true. I thought I was lying at the time, but no, it was true I had a problem. There is an arrogance with addicts. We have this arrogance that, "Oh, it couldn't happen to me. I know my drugs. I know what I'm doing." A lot of us have that attitude, like I know my drugs or I know my limits. Do you? It takes a pinch of fentanyl to die and it could take down a 300-pound man. It's taking out police officers during raids. This is no joke. This is no joke. This is something I haven't lived through the crack epidemic, but I've lived through the meth epidemic, living through the opiate crisis. This is unlike the fentanyl crisis. This is unlike anything that has ever happened. It's unlike anything I've ever seen. I could remove my blinds right now. I live downtown Granite, but I can lift up my blinds and look at it on the street and see addicts, high on fentanyl. It'll take me more than 30 seconds to go down the block where I live, and it's been gentrified. But still, there's still addicts and it's downtown because there's still addicts all over the place, searching through trash cans for food and money, searching on the ground for buns, for butt to cigarettes, doing missions with each other to get drugs. It's crazy. It's crazy. There are people that prey on these addicts to exploit them, for them to do labor for them or for them to have sex with them. Like I said, fentanyl has like $7 a pill, and it's like these people are selling their souls for $7. I don't ever want to know or feel a high that would make me sell myself for $7. I'm not above an addict. I'm not above Brittany, just because she's homeless and I'm not just because she's selling her body for drugs and I'm not. I am like, I am one high. I am one trip to the drug house. I am one hit of blues away from being in her position. And I'm just not going to make that choice. As an addict, you got to take accountability because no one else is going to take accountability for you because you're the only one that can save yourself. You have to take accountability for your addiction. You have to say, I started this, this is my fault, and I'm going to be the reason why it ends because I am the only reason why it's going to end. I'm the only option. It's going to start with me. My mom tried her best to get me off drugs. Spent a lot of money, a lot of prayers, a lot of reaching out for extra prayers, a lot of hope, a lot of disappointment, a lot of acceptance. She did everything she could, but it comes down to the individual. It comes down to me. I have to want it. I have to put the foot in front of the other one and wake up every day and carry that weight of sobriety because it's heavy. I haven't carried weight of sobriety, 100% sobriety since I was 12. 12, I'm 29, but you get to a point in your addiction where you're either selling yourself, you're facing charges, or you're going to die. If you're not selling yourself, you're stealing, or you're homeless, or you're something to feed the addiction because that's how addiction ends when you don't get sober on your own. You're going to get sober one way or you're either going to die, you're going to go to prison because it's something you did on drugs or because you had drugs. The first and only time knock on fucking wood, the first and only time I went to jail was because it's something I did on drugs. I drove 17 pills of bad Xanax, aka fentanyl, lace Xanax, later I'm on the highway, on the fucking freeway on the overpasses, driving to work, hitting another car, that poor lady at T-boned her, fucked up her back, I have a whole episode on this, I have several episodes on this, go back and listen DUI, listen to that episode. You don't want any of this, I promise you, but if it hasn't happened and you're an active addiction, I promise you, this is what you can expect next, you can expect to die, you can expect to go to jail and get caught, like you can expect to go to rehab. And as an addict, death should scare you, it should absolutely scare you, if fentanyl overdose is the number one killer in the United States for the ages 18 to 49, and if it's killing 100,000 people a year, like I said you guys, you don't have to be like me, like a full blown addict, like someone who's tried all the drugs or someone who's high functioning and still does drugs, like you don't have to get to this point in your addiction, or you don't even have to have an addiction to die of fentanyl, you could just be curious, you know, a rest in peace to those that were just curious, didn't have a drug history, didn't have any mental health issue, they were just curious and they ended up with one of those bad pills was fed on them, you know, I hope the cartel realizes that they lost almost half a million customers since 2019, as half a million, I'm sure they're feeling it in their pockets, so that's half a million customers that you eliminated yourself out of the market, they don't think, and that's the one thing I want you to get in your head is that your homies, your dealers, your friends, if you're an active addiction, they don't give a fuck about you, they're not going to be at your funeral, they'll be too damn embarrassed and too damn, you know, they'd rather get high than to see you buried, to be honest, like none of those drug friends, those dealers, I promise you, they don't give a fuck, every addict in their active addiction is so inherently selfish, it's ridiculous, they will steal from you and help you look for it, damn. If you find that your tolerance for drugs, whether it's cocaine, meth, pills, if you notice that it's starting to cost you more money to get high, pay attention because your dosage is going up, your body's threshold to handle a higher amount of these drugs doesn't change, you're going to go over a limit and the scary thing is about an overdose is it's on accident, granted there are people who choose to overdose as a way to commit suicide, but the addict that dies of an accident or overdose, I could see how it happens, you take one pill, you're tolerant to so high, you might need a second one, you've been doing these for years now, right, you take a second one, you don't feel anything, you take a third one, you don't feel anything, but unbeknownst to you, the high, the half life of fentanyl is so short that you're getting doses and doses and doses of fentanyl, the more pills you're popping because you don't feel it, but then it accumulates in your system and next thing you know, you're fucking dead. Next thing you know, you're on the highway, you hit somebody and then you're fucking dead and they're dead too. Next thing you know, nothing, blank then and I just, I, I, you know those people that do drugs and they die and you're like, oh damn, we all knew it was going to take her out one day, don't die like that, don't make people satisfied on the day of your death when they say I knew it, I knew she was going to die. Amy Winehouse, we could all see that. We all knew one day, especially based off her live performances, what one day that this alcohol, this, these, whatever pills she mixed with it or cocaine was going to get to her and it got to her and when people would wonder why, how she died, they would predict, they'd be like, was it drugs? And it was, you don't want to give people the satisfaction of being right about how you died, about how you left this earth, about how you left your legacy. If you're an addict, don't die of an overdose. That is your greatest gift. You can give yourself and sobriety and recovery is the satisfaction that knowing I didn't die of drugs that this didn't take me out in the end, that I won. Because recovery and sobriety, it's not about being perfect, it's about living because you spend so much time trying not to live. It's been so much time escaping. And at some point, you got to ask yourself, like, what am I running from? You know, it gets away from us. The reason why we started drugs becomes the reason why we stay on drugs. But sometimes the reason why we stay on drugs is we're just so used to it. And we need more and more to feel what we felt originally. And the more we do it, the more the greater the risk of an overdose that we have, especially towards, like, our mid-lives, like, I'm about to be 30. How many, how many addicts do you know, active addicts that are 30 and above, that are alive? How many heroin addicts do you know in their 40s? Who started using heroin in their 20s? Like, you don't, like, time's up for me. I started drugs at 13. I started smoking marijuana, that turned into cocaine, that turned into ecstasy. Marijuana makes it okay for you to think about trying something else. It makes you go, maybe drugs aren't all that bad, expand your mind. You know, that's the, that's the fruit of the poisonous tree. You know, marijuana is the fruit of the poisonous tree because it's like you smoke it. Your mind's open, you know, you're cool and like you just get it. Now you get the vibes, like you're in it, you're connected. And then your attitude towards other drugs may change. They become more acceptable. They may even become more accessible because that's how dealers work. They'll sell you weed, yeah, but they got something more expensive for sale that they're trying to sell you, they're trying to hook you on. So they'll give you, they'll break you off a pill a couple times, three times, four times, they'll give you free lines all night as long as you buy a sack the next time, which is going to be 75 to $150 for cocaine. Let's be real. Like, you know, if there is a God and they have a judgment day for all of us, we're fucked. Don't die like this. If you're an addict and you're listening and you're scared, good. We lost a real one this morning. Allegedly to a drug overdose. Thirty four years old, just like that. And that's how people are going to remember him. He died of a drug overdose. Like I said, there's an arrogance amongst addicts that we could never overdose because I know my drugs or I know my limits. Happens to the best of us a hundred thousand times a year now. Do you want to be another statistic? You got to ask yourself these questions. You know, the next time you buy a sack, I hope it's not a happy time. The next time you hit that thing or snort that thing, I hope you fucking think twice. I hope it bothers you to the point where you quit. I really do. I hope you are scared to death from this fucking episode of using drugs. I really, really, really, really hope you are more scared to die than you are scared to go through a draw. I really hope you're more scared to die than to go to rehab. I really hope you're more scared to die than to go through programs than to quit than to cut off those friends and then delete that dealer's number than to block people. Your life matters over everyone else's when it comes down to quitting drugs. When it comes to quitting drugs, you're allowed to be selfish, 100%. Cut off those friends. Change your number. If you can, change your location. Change your environment. Change fucking hurts to us as addicts. It really does. We love our routines. You know, we hold onto the past. We dwell in the past. We love the past. We romanticize the past. That's what we do when we're high in our heads. It's time for us to let go and embrace change. Change is going to happen either way. It's going to hurt either way, but you can choose your battles. You got yourself in this mess and you're the only one that can save yourself when it comes to being a full-blown addict. Know your triggers. Know what makes you want to get high? Is it a certain time of the day? Is waking up a trigger for you? Because for some of us, for a lot of us, for most of us, that's all it takes is waking up. Oh shit. It's time to do that thing. It's time to get high. This is where you need to establish routines in your day-to-day life that don't include anything drug-related or don't involve anyone that uses drugs. Because when you quit and get sober, you can't be friends. You can't be half-friends. You can't be acquaintances. I'm sorry. I'm going to hold your hand when I say this. You can't have friends that use drugs or get high if you want to get sober. These people will resent you. They will try to bring you down by offering you marijuana. Every time I've done an announcement, and if you're going to quit, do as silently. Don't make an announcement. Don't post on social media. Don't tell your mom. Don't tell your dad. Even if you think that they'll wish the best for you because the evil eye is real. People's doubt can be projected on you and you take that on. So don't announce your sobriety. Keep it within yourself. Keep it precious. This is going to be the best gift that you're going to give yourself. I promise you, if there is something on your mind that you really want a family or you want a master's degree, a law degree, or you want a job or you just want to level up in life, this is going to do it for you. If you don't think that's possible for your life, no, it's definitely not possible with drugs. You're not going to get there with drugs. So just leave the drugs behind and get where you never thought you can go before. So I promise you, it's the drugs that are holding you back. I promise you. Take it one minute at a time, one hour at a time, and then one day at a time. It gets easier. Don't die like this. Don't die like this. Don't die like this. This has been Candice with the Manic Candice podcast with their public service announcement. When it's time to quit drugs, it's now now because your next high could and will be your last. And that's it for you. It's a good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. Good night. Whenever I'm wherever you're listening, my friends, I bid you a do me some ease. Bye-bye.