An "opioid zombie" dad from the "overdose capital of US" has transformed his life after getting clean.
Hunter Michael Shepard, 28, from West Virginia, US, was smoking and experimenting with drugs when he was just 12-years-old after getting addicted to marijuana and alcohol.
His addiction soon led him to fall in with the wrong crowd and he ended up taking much "harder" substances which saw him get into trouble with cops.
He even spent time in the juvenile detention centre after a fight with his dad but, despite his troubled upbringing, he was able to pass his GED exams.
However, by the age of 18, he ended up taking heroin and meth which left him homeless and living in the back of a car.
Hunter was admitted to rehab five times but it was a "scary" experience which changed his life forever after he entered into an erratic-zombie-like state.
Hunter was left homeless, covered in scabs and addicted to drugs but since his rehab experience he has completely transformed his life.
He said to the Daily Star: "At 12-years-old I really started to realise I hated who I was."
"I was overweight, I dressed really different to everybody else where I'm from, my hair was awful and my teeth were awful – I just hated who I was.
"At the same time, I got diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and some other mood disorders.
"So the doctors medicated me from 12-years-old. I mean, in America they just throw medication at everything, right."
He told how he hated who he was.
He added: "So I hated who I was, I was very angry and upset about who I was as an individual, then I get prescribed medication that I probably should have never been prescribed.
"Then I start to hang out with people that are much older than me because I felt that they were more accepting of who I was.
"And by smoking weed and drinking, I felt comfortable enough to feel like I fitted in.
"So all of this stuff happens and at the same time my dad realised what was happening so tried to discipline me and I would try to fight back.
"I got arrested for being disorderly for the first time at 12-years-old."
He grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia, which was once dubbed the "overdose capital of US" where addicts are referred to as "opioid zombies." His worried parents feared they would be burying their son.
He admitted: "I grew up in a place that is the epicentre of the opiate epidemic in America - it's one of the most poor places, the most obese, the most depressed, least educated.
"All of these things where I'm from kind of set me up for that because it was just like 'normal'.
"Smoking weed introduced me to other people that did drugs – and smoking weed at 12-years-old is never normal.
"It introduced me to people that were older and that had other drugs.
"So by the time I was 16 I was already introduced to heroin."
Since his parents took him to rebab for the sixth time, he's been clean ever since February 21, 2018.
He met his wife Kyra, from Essex, on a video call for recovering addicts in 2020 and have a son together.
He has now built a massive online community of 500,000 people – and he helps others seek the treatment they so desperately need.
Hunter said: "I feel like there's a lack of education that comes with it because at the end of the day, addiction is not specific to drugs," he said.
"It is a chronic and progressive mental health condition, or illness and disease – essentially it's a compulsion. So it comes down to like fight or flight, you know, and you feel like Without the drugs, you're you literally can't survive.
"You feel like you're going to die, you know - it's kind of it's a really complex thing. Because I get it like nobody should be using drugs, you shouldn't be addicted to drugs.
"And it's just not as simple as being like all, you know, 'I'm gonna quit'. Social media is by far one of the best things that's ever happened to me.
"And it's allowed me to connect with people and help people from around the world.
"I think everybody deserves to have somebody that cares about them and cares about the treatment that they receive.
"At the end of the day recovery – genuine recovery – is about being of service to other people. That's what it's all about.
"You have to care and and commit time and effort and energy into helping people that are still struggling.
"It feels amazing to be able to help people."
