LHS graduate talks personal battle with substance abuse

March 3, 2016 | Chris Goudreau
cgoudreau@thereminder.com

Nik Kroisi, a 2008 graduate of Longmeadow High School, struggled with addiction during his teenage years while attending the school. Kroisi, 26, who has been sober for seven years told his story to an audience attending an opiate and heroin symposium on March 1.
Reminder Publications photo by Chris Goudreau

LONGMEADOW – Nik Kroisi, a 2008 Longmeadow High School (LHS) graduate, started using drugs at 14 years old. His first high quickly led him to a path of addiction and substance abuse. Now, at 26 years old he is seven years sober.

Kroisi shared his personal story of addiction and recovery at LHS during an opiate and heroin symposium hosted by the Fire and Police Departments, which also brought state and local officials together to discuss the opiate epidemic affecting the region.

Kroisi said playing hockey was a passion in his life prior to his addiction. When he was 14 years old he tried marijuana and alcohol, which acted as gateway drugs to prescription pills.

“The first time I got high, it was like I was on top of the world,” he explained. “It was like a missing piece of the puzzle and it filled that missing piece. I literally remember thinking, ‘I need to feel this way all the time.’”

He said the next drug he tried was Xanax, followed by Percocet, which led to him abusing benzodiazepine.

“When I was in eighth grade, I was playing for the junior [hockey] team,” Kroisi said. “I was 15 and playing with 20-year-olds, 16 and playing with 20-year-olds. My junior year came along and the drug addiction took flight so much that I quit that team because it was interfering with my drug use.”

He added he was taking 10 to 20 Xanax a day, which amounts to 20 to 40 milligrams of the prescription drug. The normal dose for Xanax is typically between 4 and 5 milligrams of use per day.

“If you mix that with 10 Percocets a day ... or the [Oxycodones], 10 of those a day and then doing [cocaine] here and there to stay awake so I’m not falling asleep,” Kroisi said.

He added he doesn’t know how he was able to graduate high school during his senior year and doesn’t remember his high school prom.

“I remember actually right before my prom I only had a certain amount of pills and I was going to wait to the last second to do them and I was actually withdrawn before I threw up on the living right before I got in the limo to go,” Kroisi said.

After high school, Kroisi’s addiction became an even more dominant force in his life. He was arrested several times for drug possession and the first time he ended up in a jail cell, the only thing that was on his mind was how he was going to get high.

“That was the beginning of the end,” he explained. “That’s when getting high became hard because before then was easy. There wasn’t any consequences.”

Kroisi avoided serious prison time, but was put on probation.

“I went to treatment for the first time after that and really it wasn’t to get sober, it was just to get the probation [officer] off my back [and] my parents off my back,” he explained.

He said the night before Thanksgiving in 2009 he was using heroin in a hotel room and went back home the next day for the holiday.

Around Easter that same year, Kroisi said he hit rock bottom. At that point, he didn’t even have the strength to leave his house to go get high.

“I was like, ‘What is that even going to do anymore?’” Kroisi explained. “The one thing that makes me feel okay and makes me feel whole doesn’t even do anything for me anymore, that’s a pretty terrible place to be at.”

He said hitting bottom allowed him to follow the path towards recovery and sobriety.

“I started volunteering for the Special Olympics [after obtaining sobriety],” he added. “I’ve coached specialized basketball for the past five years in the winter ... I have real friends. Real friends will take the shirt off their back for me and I’d do the same for them. I have real relationships today.”

State Sen. Eric Lesser, who spoke prior to Kroisi, said he believes the opiate crisis is the most urgent issue in the Commonwealth.

“An average of four people a day are dying of opiate related overdoses,” he stated. “That does not include everyone who suffers from addiction ... In 2014, which was the last we have concrete data [for], more than 1,200 people just in Massachusetts died from heroin or opiate related overdoses.  To put that into perspective, that’s more people in one year dying from opiate related causes than from guns and car accidents combined.”

He added Narcan, which in most cases revives individuals suffering from overdoses, has a 97 percent success rate.    

Police Chief John Stankiewicz told Reminder Publications prior to the event his department has yet to deploy Narcan in an overdose incident. The department’s officers first started keeping Narcan on hand in February.

“In the Police Department, Narcan is really a second line of defense,” Town Manager Stephen Crane said. “The primary line of defense is through our paramedics ... When there’s an overdose situation, time is of the essence, so this is another tool we have in the bag to help prevent the loss of life.”

Stankiewicz said officers in his department have responded to calls of overdoses where Narcan wasn’t required.

“We’re starting to see an uptick of it, but it isn’t to the level where we’re deploying this on every regular occasion,” he added.

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