I met producer and DJ, Neuport around the time of January's KAHLON. He came down to DJ that night, played a great set and kicked it in Baltimore for a little while. We stayed in touch and I eventually asked him to submit a diary for True Laurels Vol. 3. He sent it to me within days and, because of Neuport's transparency, it's one of my favorite True Laurels diaries, to date. Read the full entry below.
Thursday Night / 11:28pm / March 7, 2014
I'm smoking a newport and looking down at Bushwick Ave from my 4th floor Brooklyn apartment. The air is cold coming in from the open window. My stomach hurts. My boy, Tony bought me dinner tonight, Indian food. I wanted to get the most of my one good meal of the day. The feeling in your gut when you've ate too much food feels similar to anxiety. I know that feeling well. I've always physically felt anxiety in my stomach. Its a sensation that I hate. The sensation that heroin and pills always took away.
I haven’t used heroin in years now. It almost killed me. It did kill me. I woke up in the back of an ambulance one summer night, in a grocery store parking lot. "Woke up" to the medics asking me if I knew my name. It took me a moment. I was drenched in sweat and the front of my t-shirt was cut from top to bottom, exposing my chest. They cut my shirt open to resuscitate me. The lady medic told me I was purple and not breathing when they arrived. I had OD'd in my car and somehow had the sense to get out right away. As soon as I opened the car door everything turned black. Someone saw me fall in the parking lot and called 911. I can say for certain that if I didn't open my door and get out of my car I wouldn't be here right now.
At the time I didn’t see this as a blessing. Now I do. I was pretty miserable after the incident. I was facing some pretty major legal charges and my family wanted to send me to a treatment center in Minnesota. I eventually obliged. If I thought I had bad anxiety before, I was in for a rude awakening. One thing about being sober is you don't have those tools you once had to cope. Those tools that worked. Not having control of your emotions is very real. Learning to deal with these emotions is a struggle. Someone asked me a question that helped me a lot with this process, “What made you happy before you started using drugs?”.
As a kid I always loved music, skateboarding, and drawing. It wasn't exactly easy to just jump back into but I knew it what I had to do. Somehow I got linked up with some pretty like minded people going through the same shit that I was. Its crazy to look back now and see what some of us have accomplished. For others its a revolving door of jail, drugs, sickness, and treatment. Others have sadly passed since. For me, I had a second chance to do something different. Sometimes it's easy to forget this. I have to remind myself now and then.
My anxiety hasn't gone away but facing anxiety and fears is the best way to overcome. If you're scared to do something, do it. You realize it's all in your head. You move forward. You have nothing to lose, only so much to gain.