article_snippet.sent: Sideri was your average student in high school playing on the hockey team, occasionally drinking and smoking weed until Sideri began using drugs on a daily basis.
article_snippet.sent: Sideri can't pinpoint exactly when it started or how or why, but it got to the point where Sideri was smoking marijuana before, during and after school, and experimenting with mushrooms and acid.
article_snippet.sent: Sideri grades dropped, Sideri lost Sideri eligibility to play sports, but when Sideri was drunk or high, none of that mattered.
article_snippet.sent: After graduating from high school in 2000, Sideri began abusing Percocet and OxyContin, opium-containing painkillers.
article_snippet.sent: As Sideri tolerance to the pills built up, Sideri began snorting the drugs to feel the effects faster.
article_snippet.sent: Then Sideri moved on to snorting heroin.
article_snippet.sent: I wasn't getting the strong effects of OxyContin anymore, and I was already sniffing something else, so the strong effects of OxyContin didn't seem like a leap," Sideri said.
article_snippet.sent: By 2005, Sideri had been snorting heroin daily for two years.
article_snippet.sent: Even as Sideri was doing more and more drugs, Sideri was in denial about Sideri addiction since Sideri had a job with Sideri family's wholesale snack supply business and a second job as a nightclub bouncer, worked out at the gym and had Sideri own car and a place to live.
article_snippet.sent: Once Sideri started shooting up heroin, Sideri life spiraled downward in only four months.
article_snippet.sent: Sideri was hiding from Sideri loved ones and Sideri drug problem was obvious to everyone around Sideri.
article_snippet.sent: Sideri still thought Sideri could control Sideri drug use and quit on Sideri own.
article_snippet.sent: Sideri describes the withdrawals as like "having food poisoning for three days straight," combined with a burning, tingling sensation in Sideri bones.
article_snippet.sent: Once released in 2010, Sideri vowed to never let drugs influence Sideri life again.
article_snippet.sent: To those trying to recover from drugs, Sideri offers two pieces of advice: .