Kriston Feleccia, 37, who has struggled with addiction most of her life, said her opioid addiction began when she was prescribed Vicodin after nearly cutting off one of her fingers.
“I always had issues with alcohol, and I even got into cocaine when I was really young – 14 or 15. I needed something to help me get away from the alcohol because I was wrecking my cars and doing a lot of stupid things,” she said.
Feleccia said at first, Vicodin seemed like what she needed. “It makes me feel great. I loved it.”
Feleccia didn’t initially realize there were side effects, until she began to get extremely ill when she didn’t take more.
“One of my buddies called me and said, ‘Want to hang out?’ And I was like, ‘Dude, I got the flu. Man, I feel like shit, I haven’t felt good for days.’ He laughed at me and said, ‘You don’t have the flu. You’re going through withdrawal. I said, ‘You are such a liar.’ I thought he was messing with me. So, he came over and he brought me some Vicodin. I took them and I felt better, and I was like, ‘Holy shit. What have I done to myself?”
She spent more than a decade after that chasing highs, fleeing withdrawal symptoms and escalating to morphine, heroin and finally fentanyl.
“It’s very potent. It’s better than sex, that feeling. When it hits, it’s like, ‘Oh god, where have you been all my life?'” said Feleccia, who said she last used in 2019.
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Supporting her habit cost between $200 and $500 a day, she said.
“I was a stealing freak. I would go out in the middle of the night and break into cars. I would usually go to the smaller towns, like Riverton, Rochester, Williamsville, because those people are a little more trusting. … I would do my first shot of the day, and then I’d start planning with my junkie friends, and we would go and steal from stores, and then take that stuff to the pawn shop. Or I would break into houses.”  
Feleccia said when theft wouldn’t cover the cost of her daily fixes, she resorted to prostitution. Although she is gay, she said she had sex with men in exchange for money and pimped out her girlfriends to support her habit.
“They were drug addicts, too, and they knew that we needed money. … I have really short hair, and I wear boys’ clothes. The girls I date, they are usually girly. So, they have a better shot at getting these dudes. … It was awful watching them get ready and watching them walk out that door. God, it’s heartbreaking. But I didn’t stop them.”
The consequences of her opioid use continued to mount. Feleccia contracted hepatitis from sharing needles with other drug users. The crimes she committed while supporting her addiction resulted in numerous incarcerations in the Sangamon County Jail, she said. She did multiple stints in drug rehabilitation facilities as well.
“Rehab helped me make connections for people to get high with. … I’ve gotten high in rehab. I got heroin snuck into me. And then I sat there in the classes like, ‘Oh, yeah, I want to be sober.'”
It was jail, rather than rehab, that finally brought her to sobriety.
“They throw you in a cell with five, six, maybe even eight other girls. And you have one toilet. I’m fuckin’ throwing up in between my legs as I’m shitting. And all these girls are talking mad shit to me, because I’m so sick, and they’re not. They’re in there for some other stuff. But they gotta deal with my fuckin’ nasty ass, because we’re all in there together and I can’t help it.”
After being released from jail, she moved into an apartment with her wife and quit using.
Feleccia offered this advice for others facing addiction: “Even if you believe that you are just the most horrendous, ‘I’m gonna die this way,’ hopeless junkie, you still have hope. Because I was there. That’s what I thought. I really accepted the fact that I was going to die a junkie. And I turned it around.”
This article appears in Opioid overdoses increase.
