LAFAYETTE — If he's lucky, John starts the day at 5 a.m. by getting high — enough to keep his sickness at bay while he earns cash working odd jobs.
If he's lucky, the day ends the same way it began: with a dose of heroin to ease him through another nearly sleepless night.
But if at any point his cash runs low or his stash dries up, withdrawals leave him shivering, sweating and unable to function.
"I guess a heroin addict would want their first one in the morning and their last one at night, so they can sleep and they can kind of function," he said. "Because if you don't, you'll literally throw up and s--- on yourself."
The Lafayette native started with painkillers prescribed after a surgery nearly a decade ago and quickly progressed to stronger synthetic opioids. Now in his 20s, he's transitioned to shooting heroin, spending hundreds of dollars every day to get his fix.
"I am a very severe addict, but I haven’t always been like that," he said. "I was a crazy kid, but drugs were never in the picture. This was never my intention to end up like this. ... I never thought this little pill was going to take over."
But his story is no longer unique in Lafayette, where a drug crisis is taking its toll.
John, who asked the Journal & Courier not to use his real name to protect his identity, is one of many people addicted to heroin who have relied on Tippecanoe County's controversial needle exchange for clean syringes and other items essential to cooking and injecting the narcotic.
The J&C spent several days with John to gain a first-hand perspective of the needle exchange and to better understand Lafayette's heroin epidemic.