For many teenagers trying weed for the first time, the kid selling was placed on a pedestal. Girls who had never even noticed me before started asking me to hang out or come to a house party because their parents had gone to the Caymans for the weekend.
One night, I went to a party with more than four hundred people in attendance. It was at the home of a girl who went to our town’s all-girls Catholic high school. It was a Cape Cod style house on a one-way street with a huge backyard surrounded by woods.
The music was blaring, and people were getting blackout drunk from kegs and an endless supply of jungle juice, a concoction of grain alcohol and fruit punch that had probably killed a few people in its time. Everyone was smoking weed, and some of the older kids were doing coke and other drugs.
I’d spent most of my night in the bathroom, weighing out bags for people, making and taking phone calls, and counting money. I’d run through a quarter pound of weed and was finally taking a break to smoke a joint on the pool deck with some friends. It was a cool, crisp autumn night and everyone was filled with a youthful, upbeat lust for life.
“Hey, man, you see that airplane?” a buddy said to me, pointing at the sky. “One of the guys on that plane right now is trying to talk to me, but I can’t understand what he’s saying.”
People would say all kinds of shit like that to me when they were high, but even this seemed a little out there.
“Are you good, man?” I asked.
“I just did two bumps of ecstasy,” he said. “I’m rolling my fucking face off.”
It turned out he’d taken a pure form of ecstasy called molly. Long before it made its own rise to drug superstardom, kids in my hometown were mixing molly with mushrooms and LSD for extremely intense trips. It would be another year or so before I would have my first experience with ecstasy or any other major psychedelic drug.
My friend and I both started laughing hysterically at his hallucination. I then shrugged my shoulders and passed him a joint, and we carried on as if nothing strange had happened.
A bunch of dogs began barking in the front yard. I thought little of it and went on chatting and smoking with my buddy. The barking grew louder, so I peeked around the corner to locate the source of the sound.
Twenty or more police officers were charging the yard with four large baying German shepherds!
Shit.
“Milford Police; nobody move!” the lead cop shouted through a megaphone.
The cops showing up at a party filled with drugs meant only one thing: Run for your life. We did just that. People bolted in all directions, dropping plastic keg cups and other things they shouldn’t have had in their possession. Hundreds of kids scurried into the dark woods behind the house chased by cops and K-9 units…a typical end to many Foran parties.
That was how I spent my sophomore year of high school: selling drugs and attending parties. I began to have less time to complete homework or focus on my studies. Slowly but surely, my grades began to plummet.
My GPA dropped from 3.3 to 2.0. I began getting into more trouble at school and often spent Saturdays in my school’s extended detention period for troublemakers. I was always in good company. Alex was basically rewriting the record on suspension and detention. He probably spent more time in the principal’s office than in class. Jeff and Kenny weren’t too far behind.
All four of us had come from decent enough homes, but within a short run in high school, we’d built a reputation for trouble and disobedience. We’d become the “bad kids,” and it was no secret. The parents, administrators, and cops all knew who we were. I, especially, was in the crosshairs for my associations with potheads, users, and dealers.
Unfortunately, all this unwanted attention and punishment did little to deter me from the path I was on.
seven
As much harmful activity as my friends and I were involved in, we still found a way to stay engaged in some positive pursuits. Alex and Kenny started for the Foran Lions football team, and all of us maintained a strong passion for basketball. We participated in a rec-league team that my father coached.
We liked to tease my dad because he wore a suit to games and carried a clipboard like Pat Riley of the New York Knicks. He did his best to discipline us at practice and teach us about hard work and leadership, but we were becoming unreachable. We went to most of our practices high on weed or too drunk to stand. Some of the kids in the league took an over-the-counter drug called Coricidin, which, when taken at very high doses, would mimic the effects of acid.
Outside of basketball, Kenny and I also shared a common interest the rest of the group didn’t—a love for skiing. During cold months, we often drove from Connecticut to Vermont to ski the fresh snowfall at Killington or Mount Snow.
Kenny would bring weed, and we’d smoke in the woods with all our ski gear on. We explored the whole mountain, taking in the beautiful views offered from a mountain peak in the upper Northeast. We would stand there and look out over the open land, breathing it all in. It was a natural escape for me, and I felt as though I was a million miles away from my problems back home.
Even with all the partying and dealing, I tried to stay connected to the things I loved from my childhood. When I was a kid and my family was still intact, we used to take trips together to Vermont to ski. As I got older, going to those same places was a way for me to hold on to pieces of my childhood that I remembered fondly.
In mid-December of 2000, my friends and I boarded a bus to Killington, Vermont, for a day trip run by a local ski shop. The bus left Milford early in the morning and was supposed to return that evening. My mom was worried and told me to be careful.
It was extremely cold on the ski lift going up the mountain. The anticipation of fresh snow was the only thing keeping me warm.
As the chair approached the top of the mountain, I was filled with excitement. Kenny and I disembarked and started our run. Without hesitation, I led him toward the terrain park filled with big jumps. With the popularity of the X Games, the jumps had been getting bigger every year.
I spotted a massive jump in the middle of the trail. It was my first run of the day, and I’d entered an expert-level terrain park. As a teenager, the last thing on my mind was to heed my mother’s advice to “be careful.”
“Yo,” I shouted to Kenny as adrenaline pumped through my veins. “Come hit this big one with me.”
Usually, skiers will “spot” a jump before going off it, meaning they will go past the hit and get a visual idea of what to expect. In my youthful ignorance, though, I decided not to take this precaution.
Instead, I pointed my tips downhill and charged full speed at the enormous wall of snow that stood before me. I rolled off the transition and felt my skis leave the snow.
I knew I was in trouble as soon as I lifted off. The steep angle of the takeoff awkwardly threw my legs out from under me. I was completely helpless, flying through at the air twenty feet from the ground. I flailed wildly. I felt airborne for eternity.
I crashed to the icy surface with a shattering thud. The rest is only a hazy memory. From what I heard from others after the accident, I lay on the ground motionless for many minutes. When I regained consciousness and slowly opened my eyes, I could barely make out the group of people—silhouettes against the sky—surrounding me.
I blinked a few times. I wiggled my fingers. The ground was cold against my back. The sharp wind burned my face. I looked to my right, trying to get my bearings. When I glanced to my left, a bolt of sheer panic hit my heart. My left foot with its ski boot was twisted into view, no more than an inch from my face.