For eighteen years I was on and off drugs. For almost six years out of eighteen I was hooked on heroin and crack, prostituting myself to support my habit. I hadn’t planned it that way, nobody ever does.
Born in 1968, I was raised by my Japanese-American parents in a middle-class family with a younger sister. At the age of fifteen I had dropped out of high school and joined an Asian gang. At the age of 20, I was shot in a West Covina shootout with a .38 in which the bullet entered my upper left arm, shattered the bone, went through my arm, and entered my left side where the bullet passed through my heart and then through my liver, left lung and diaphragm and lodged in my back, ½ inch from my spine.
The shooting happened in a Catholic church and there was a priest who gave me the last rites with holy water, so I got very angry and told him that I was not going to die. Twenty minutes later I was taken to the hospital by ambulance. In the ambulance I tried to pray (I didn’t know how) reciting the ‘Our Father’ and the ‘Hail Mary’ over and over again in my head. But the whole time I was in the ambulance there was a figure sitting on my right side, and he gave me peace. I knew it was not my time yet.
After I was released from the hospital, I kept running with my gang members friends who had started using harder drugs, both cocaine and methamphetamine. We had always gotten drunk, smoked marijuana, and taken LSD, but once we started using cocaine and meth, getting high became a priority.
I started dating in Hollywood with my sister, and soon after I decided to leave my husband (we got married when I was 17) and since I thought he really loved me, he let me go without too much trouble. (looking to leave the gang)
After leaving my husband, I got more and more into cocaine and smoking crack, and lived with a couple of my old ‘home boys’ who were always more into the drug lifestyle than fighting. gangs and car rides. One day, after staying up all night, one of my roommates came home – ‘glow’. I thought he had been taking some big drug and I asked him what he was taking. He said “I got ‘saved’! (Oh no) and told him I didn’t want to hear it. But I saw him change before my very eyes, and one day I prayed and asked God to forgive me for everything.” the shit he had done and to free me from drugs and smoking cigarettes.
I started going to church, got married, went to Beauty College and got a great job. Then I got pregnant and had a wonderful, beautiful son. But things were hard, and everything that went wrong, I blamed on God. Long story short, the pressure of being a new mom and being upset that I had just started my career and it had been cut short: I started smoking and drinking again, and before I knew it, I was using cocaine again. I was angry that God didn’t ‘fix’ my life and make it better.
Before long, I was a MESS. I don’t blame my husband at the time. He needed to get away from me before he hurt my son. He had started taking it with me to the drug dealer and I couldn’t believe what he was starting to turn me into. (He only got worse) he told me he was leaving me one night when I got home from work I freaked out and left. I literally had to pull my son off my neck as he cried, “Please don’t leave me mommy.” I went out and only came back once while no one was home to shop for clothes. Since the day I left he would not allow me to sober up or literally FACE. The guilt I felt about leaving my son was so overwhelming that I kept a bottle of Vodka near my bed wherever I ended up the night before so I could drink as soon as I got up and if possible a line of cocaine or crack crack to wake me up. .
To get off cocaine, I started smoking heroin and before I knew it, I was exhausted and needed it to ‘get better’ and function like a normal human being. I couldn’t work ‘drug sick’ and one day my boss noticed me after he had been out all night and had me high and had to go to work sick. He thought I was drugged. (On the contrary: I NEEDED to get high to become normal!)
After losing my job, I started prostitution to support my habit. I would get so scared every time I got sick from the drug that I would become suicidal. When I first got high, I didn’t know it: when I didn’t do heroin for 24 hours, I got sick and thought I had the flu. I called a friend (who soon became my boyfriend) and he told me that he was high and he brought me some drugs. Once I started smoking it, I felt good and swore I’d ‘never get sick like that again’. He had a saying: “I’d rather be dead than drugged.” It wasn’t long before he was using the needle.
I have attempted suicide several times, overdosing and slitting my wrists. I was SO MISERATED. I hated myself for leaving my son, but I couldn’t stop using drugs. The heroine had become my god, I was her slave and I would do anything for her.
My boyfriend was all I had and he stayed with me through it all, even after all the times I’d gone to jail and found out that I prostituted myself over and over again. Yes, we had a seriously codependent dysfunctional relationship at the best of times, but I loved him dearly, so when I found out that he cheated on me with my best friend while in jail, I was UNDRESSED and became even more suicidal.
My superior court judge, Stephen Marcus (who started ‘Drug Court’ in Los Angeles and with whom I still keep in touch and who even came to my wedding two years ago) had threatened to send me to jail if I left the court. fifth rehab he sent. because I left everyone else he sent me to. Well, I left again and the judge issued a warrant for my arrest for $200,000. I didn’t want to go to prison, so I decided that it would be best to end my life for good this time.
My boyfriend and I lived in an 8 (eight) story apartment building where we could go up on the roof and hang out. I would sit there whenever I was upset and smoke cigarettes, and ‘plan’ to jump off the roof. I thought it would be a sure thing.
One day my boyfriend and I went and got 16 klonapins (sp.? anti-anxiety pills that put you to sleep or at least take away your sleep) and decided to ‘quit’ heroin. Apparently we each took one, my boyfriend fell asleep and then I took the other 15. I took a train to a friend’s house, called my drug connection, got some heroin and cocaine, and shot up a bunch of speedballs. I then called another friend who picked me up and took me back to the train station, where I caught the train back home and went up on the roof. It’s unclear if I jumped or fell, but either way, I hit a tree on the way down, breaking my fall before I hit the ground. I completely shaved one CLEAN side.
I woke up in Cedar Sinai hospital four days after being in a coma and after a craniotomy. I was brain damaged, my motor skills were in poor shape, and I could no longer read or write. I was in the hospital for almost a month, but about a month after I was released, I jumped out of the second story window of a Christian women’s home (The Walter Hoving Home in Pasadena, ‘Mom B’ and her husband, who started the home still remember me) while kicking the heroin and methadone. This time I broke my back. I broke it again when I was in county jail and jumped off the second level to be sent to the hospital for drugs. (It worked!) While in the hospital I was told I had a full blown staph infection from not being ‘stitched up’ properly – the hospital had left a 1 inch by ½ inch hole in the back of my head here infection entered.
To finally wrap this up, I ended up in the middle of Skid Row, where God spoke to me, “Look around you Laurie, you’re going to die here anonymously if you don’t turn around and serve me.” I went home to an Orange County ministry where I got clean and then I went to the LA Dream Center (you might remember them, they helped some Katrina victims and they were on the news and Dr. Phil) where I started getting close to both of them. prostitutes and pimps.
One of the reasons I finally decided to write is because I want to give hope to people who are involved with drugs or prostitution or are suicidal. I have been off drugs and alcohol for over 5 1/2 years now and am reaching out to other people who are living the same way I used to when I was high.
I have remarried to a wonderful husband whom I met at a tattoo parlor while serving people in tattoo shops on Hollywood boulevard. He gave his life to Jesus, and now he is serving God with me. (He also used to use drugs, has been to prison, etc.)
We are starting a nonprofit ministry to specifically reach out to pimps, prostitutes, drug addict gang members, and convicts. I would also like to write a book (but I’m not exactly sure how to do it) and a friend of mine has been working on an independent film/documentary about some of my experiences and the power of God to change lives.
I am honored to share my life with you and anyone else. You can ask me anything – I’m very open about the things I’ve done, the mistakes I’ve made and the PAIN I went through because of my own stupidity. I feel like if sharing my mistakes will help even one person, it’s all worth it. People, especially young people, who are dabbling in drugs and alcohol need to see that there are consequences for our actions, not just physical, but also spiritual and emotional.
People also need to know that there is HOPE. When I was hooked on heroin, I thought I could never, ever get off it. Heroin is SO hard to quit. I have met numerous heroin addicts, who believe the same thing I used to believe: that I would always be hung up and die a drug addict, either by overdosing or killing myself one day. I want to show people that there is hope! If God could set me free, He can do it for anyone!
God bless you!
laurie ishii
213-399-0057 (cell #)
Daryl (husband’s cell #) 213-361-0057
749 east 84th street
Los Angeles, CA 90001