Donald Prosperie
February 5, 2020
Rosalie Mejia Duet
February 5, 2020
Before he got clean, a Chauvin man encountered heroin that was gray.
Now eight months clean, Dino Livingston said no one ever called it “Gray Death,” but it was gray, and very potent.
“They did have a gray substance that people were using that was knock down powerful,” said Livingston.
The drug was gray, but it was never referred to as “Gray Death,” said Livingston. He explained that people seek out these powerful drugs they want to get as close to dying as possible, “the closer to death you get, the better it feels,” he said.
Livingston had lost a child and was in a bad car wreck, which he was prescribed increasingly stronger painkillers until eventually he was on a fentanyl patch. He said it was so strong he had difficulty going to work.
After missing an appointment to renew the prescription, he said he was cut off and this led to extreme illness, which he described as like the flu. This led him to seek drugs “on the street.”
Drugs are abundant in Terrebonne, according to Livingston, and he began purchasing and using Meth which was much cheaper than his prescriptions.
Eventually, someone offered him Heroin.
“I might have did a taste, about the size of an eraser on a pencil,” he said. “I was hooked.”
He lost his family, and his business, and didn’t seek recovery until a friend died to overdosing on Heroin.
He was able to reunite with his wife of 17 years, and his brother is now speaking with him again. A commercial fisherman has become his mentor, and one friend who stuck with him through it all. According to Livingston, he no longer affiliates with any of his former friends who use – he said when he was getting clean they’d try to peer-pressure him.
Responsibility, said Livingston, drove him to recovery.
“It was responsibility for me,” he said. “I have four other children and a wife.”
Livingston currently attends meetings at Start Corporation, and hopes his story can encourage others to seek help.
The Start Corporation is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1984. It began with a focus on assisting the homeless populations and eventually branched out into mental and physical treatments. The main office can be located at: 420 Magnolia St., Houma, LA 70360. It can be reached by phone at: (985) 879-3966.
