Philly.com
MATTHEW ELLIS started popping painkillers as a teenager and switched to heroin a few years later. It was simple economics, and a common progression among today's opiate addicts - the recreational drug dabbler turned full-time junkie. That's usually when the nightmare takes hold. You start living life one injection at a time. Everything else - career, family, self-respect - is prioritized behind the next little wax-paper bag of dope.
