A story written by Buffalo State student, Kelly Khatib:

"In a small house in South Buffalo, 29-year-old former Buffalo State student Julie* looks out her window at the street below. Despite the August heat, she is visibly shaking, as if she's cold. Her skin is pale and her lips are a light shade of blue. Sweat beads pour down her face. Track marks are visible on her arm, and she idly reaches down to scratch one. Her eyes glaze over as her nails sink deeper and deeper into her skin. She is in need of another fix. Julie is my friend and has been addicted to heroin for more than two years.

“The first time I tried it,” Julie remembers, I called a friend that knew where to get dope and he brought me some. I sniffed it, I didn't inject it and it tasted like vitamins. But the feeling was unlike anything I ever felt. I instantly felt a wave of happiness rush over me and all my sadness was gone. Then I spent the rest of the night throwing up.”

Julie was not always like this. When I met her in my first year at Erie Community College she was your typical South Buffalo girl. She spoke loud and fast like her mind was in a race and her words couldn't catch up. Her hands gestured wildly to emphasize whatever point she was trying to make, a trait she would laughingly attribute to her Italian heritage. Her grey eyes exuded confidence, and her favorite line was "I’m kind of a big deal.”

Being the only other person in the class who liked to talk as much as I do, we instantly became friends. Our personalities were so similar that we spent that year joined at the hip. Many days we spent studying, laughing about our kids and talking about our future. We stayed up late at her house watching Netflix and eating popcorn. I went to her daughter’s birthday party and she showed me all the good New York music I just had to have in my catalog.

We made plans to go to Buffalo State together after graduation and had our playlist ready for our morning car rides to class. But everything changed when her uncle died during our last semester at ECC. Julie lived with him and her grandmother in a duplex and now she was left to take care of everything.

“When my uncle died, I couldn’t take it,” she said. All the sudden I was in a house responsible for all my bills and my grandmother’s. bills because she can't work. I just couldn't do it.”

Julie graduated with honors but she did not go to the ceremony. She gave me her extra tickets and instead went on a job hunt. She needed money and she needed it fast. She talked to a friend who knew a friend who got her work at a strip club on the east side. The heroin came soon after.

“It started off recreationally,” she said. “Once or twice a week I would go to my girlfriend’s house and get a bag of dope, but it was only two bags at the most. I would never do bundles because I was scared to overdose. Then, after a couple months, I started injecting to get the high faster. Once that snake bit me, I needed more and more each time,” she says.

Julie and I made it to Buffalo State but had different majors so, unlike we hoped, our classes did not coincide. She worked late nights at the strip club and slowly school started to take a backseat to the money and the drugs, so she dropped out. Having no idea, she was on drugs, I told myself this job was only temporary and I was sure I’d see her next semester. But she was not there in the fall, or the semester after that.

In the year Julie and I spent apart, her drug use got worse.

Stripping was not covering the bills and her now three bags -a- day drug habit, so Julie started selling her body. She met a 21-year- old pimp and began taking clients in her apartment. Her daughter, Heaven, moved downstairs with Julie’s grandmother. I ask her if the drugs help her deal with her new-found profession. She breaths out a deep sigh and says, very quietly, “Yes, yes it does.”

She tells me that in April she overdosed. “I hadn't slept in two days and I just wanted to take a nap, so I copped some shit and I used half of one bag. I went in the bathroom, mixed it up, stuck the needle in my arm and shot it up. I vaguely remember walking out of the bathroom and the next thing I know I'm surround by cops and paramedics and there are needles all over. It took four bottles of Narcan to bring me back. Thank God Heaven found me passed out and called the police. If it wasn't for her I would've died.”

I look over at Julie sitting in the chair and I don't recognize the person staring back at me. The confident girl I knew with golden bronze skin that lived for the gym is gone, replaced by this diminutive, pale stranger. I ask Julie if she thinks things will ever be the same for her.

“When I overdosed, when I died that time, ever since then I don’t know what it feels like to be happy," she says. “I don't know how long I was out for, but I know I am not the same person. That feeling terrifies me and makes me never want to do drugs again. But I just can't stop.”

Julie does not want to go to rehab. She says she’s seen too many people go in and fail and she doesn’t want to feel like a failure. Julie hopes to get the Vivitrol shot, a monthly drug that is said to help wean addicts off opiates. Her main goal is to return to school and pursue a degree in Sports Journalism so she can be a correspondent for ESPN. When she talks about it, she gets excited, and I can almost see the girl I once knew.

“I want to interview the players in the locker room,” she says. Then, just as fast, her eyes dim and her face changes. “I don't want to fuck for money anymore.”

As I walk down the narrow staircase to the outside porch, my mind races with a million thoughts. I think about all the things I see on television about the opioid crisis facing the U.S. and how the Center for Disease Control says 91 Americans die every day from opioid overdose. I think about all the comments on social media saying it’s not the taxpayers’ responsibility to take care of junkies. But all that is drowned out by the foremost thought that races back and forth in my head. I just don't want my friend to die.

Driving home, I can only hope the world can find compassion for people like Julie. They are not just addicts. They are mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins and friends. I hope Julie will find the help she needs and make it back to school. I hope and pray this won't be the last time I see her alive."