I Lost Both Feet to Addiction | Bud's Recovery Story

I Lost Both Feet to Addiction | Bud's Recovery Story

Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of addiction and survival as Bud shares how heroin, fentanyl, tranq dope and meth took him from a small-town childhood to seven brutal years on the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia. You’ll hear how substances crept in early – cigarettes at 11, weed at 14, pain pills at 16 – and how opiates quickly became the ultimate escape: heroin wasn’t just quiet, as he says, “it was silent”.

From stealing his grandmother’s medication and his mum’s jewellery to cooking meth, endless detox attempts, and short bursts of sobriety in AA, Bud paints a picture of a life built around the next hit. Things escalate as he becomes a corrections officer while secretly using, then spirals into Kensington’s open-air drug scene, where he becomes a sought-after “hitter” injecting others for cash.

Tranq dope ravages his body, leaving huge open wounds, sepsis scares and what he calls hovering “on that life and death state” for years. The turning point is stark: severe infection, kidney failure, a tracheotomy, frostbite and the moment a nurse looks at his feet and says, “you’re going to lose your feet”.

Faced with gangrene and sepsis, he chooses amputation: “I woke up and, you know, my feet were gone.” From there, the conversation shifts to accountability, rebuilding trust with his family, grief over what’s been lost, and the surprising healing power of writing his story. Now a year sober, Bud talks about choosing action over self-pity, owning his choices, and learning to live out of survival mode. His message to anyone still using is blunt and compassionate: “Don’t lose your legs.

Don’t end up like me. Do something different.” If you’re teetering between using and change, how long do you want to wait before making your own different choice?