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When she was 18, Arielle would come home every day
and embark on what she calls an “Easter egg hunt.”
She wasn’t looking for candy.
Arielle was hunting behind stairwells and inside closets in her
suburban Long Island home for
the OxyContin bottles her cousin
brought home from work at a
pharmacy and was hiding from
her mother around the house.
“I found them one day, and I
wanted to try them because all of
my friends were already hooked,”
said Arielle, who asked that her
last name be withheld to avoid
hurting her chances of getting
a job. “I would see [my cousin]
nodding out on the couch and
not really being present, and that
was how I wanted to feel. My best
friend had just passed away, so I
was numbing out the feelings.”
It took about a year before Arielle
moved from prescription painkillers
into the illegal drug that killed her
best friend: heroin. She snorted it
for the first time after tagging along
with a friend who was going to buy
some. “I was like, ‘I love it,’” she
said. Heroin was cheaper than prescription pills — about $10 a bag,
compared to $60 to $80 per pill —
and gave her a more potent high.
Her friend helped her inject the
drug. “It was a feeling that I don’t
think anyone should experience.
Because once you experience it,
you want to experience it over and
over again,” she said. “ Next thing
I know, I’m addicted.”
Arielle landed in a Long Island
jail last year after she was caught
breaking into a house and stealing