My Last Hit

By Divine Ortiz

His drug addiction began in Fayetteville, NC in the early 1990s. For 15 years he battled his addiction, landing him homeless on the streets and in and out of several different penitentiary systems. But he eventually overcame his demons and June 18th, 2018 marked the 11-year clean date for the author and publisher. My Last Hit will be Divine Ortiz's tenth solo book release under the ZitrO Publications label; a fast-growing publishing company owned by Divine Ortiz himself and his wife Nikki Ortiz.
One needs only to Google Divine OrtiZ or ZitrO Publications to read of the many accomplishments and accolades attributed to this Urban publishing company (with over 50 books published to date in English, Spanish, eBook and paperback) and its CEO, Amazon best-selling author Divine OrtiZ.
But what you will never see in any Google search results are the details of Divine OrtiZ's 15 year on and off battle with crack addiction that took him on a journey through state after state and prison after prison. Those who know Divine Ortiz know him as the controversial and outspoken owner of one of the fastest growing urban publishing companies in business today, but with the coming of his ten-year anniversary of being free from drugs and cigarettes, Divine has decided to share a part of him that he has kept close for so long.
    After a 15-year drug addiction, over 15 years in over 35 different prisons all over the country, Divine Ortiz stepped out of the United States Penitentiary in Pollock, LA on March 7th, 2012 with a duffle bag full of handwritten novels and a dream to be a published author and to one day own a publishing company to help the authors that are incarcerated. Having once signed a multi-book deal with bestselling author and publisher Teri Woods that went sour, Divine was determined to overcome. 
And overcome he did.
Seven years since his release and Divine has not looked back. On the verge of opening a ZitrO Publications office in Fayetteville, NC he wanted to "get it off his chest". He wants it to be known that not all addicts remain addicts. Some convicts can indeed change. He wants this to be a message to anyone who ever thought that they couldn't do change. It is never too late.
Read his amazing and inspirational story on Feb 1st, 2019 when his book is released on eBook and paperback 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zitro Publications
• Release date: Jan 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781948091442

Book preview

Divine OrtiZ

ZitrO Publications

PO Box 25043

Fayetteville, NC 28314

This is not a work of fiction. Any character references or likenesses to persons living or dead are completely intentional, except in a very few cases where names were changed (out of respect). Actual people and places have not been needed to give the story a sense of reality. This was reality. My reality.

Copyright© 2019 ZitrO Publications/Divine OrtiZ

ISBN: 978-1-948091-23-7

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above. No part of this book may be reproduced into any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written consent from both the author and publisher, ZitrO Publications, except brief quotes used in reviews, interviews, or magazines.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact ZitrO Publications at:

919-904-8414

[e-mail]

www.Zitropublications.com

Instagram @Zitropublications

Twitter @AuthorDivineO

FaceBook pages: @Divine Ortiz, @ZitrO Publications, @ZitrO Books, @ZitrO Graphics

Cover Design by Nikki Ortiz/ZitrO Graphics

[e-mail]

Introduction

You know, when I first thought about writing a nonfiction book about me and/or about my life, my first dilemma was...how? What kind of format did I want to use? How much did I want to tell about myself? Did I want to use real names? Has my life been exciting or entertaining enough for anyone to want to read about it? Well, the answer to all of those questions is simply, I don’t know.

I wrote this because I needed to get it out. It was a personal form of therapy that I needed to subject myself to so that I can better understand how I allowed myself to fall so weak to a substance that I thought had no power. I thought I could deal with my addiction and keep on maintaining my life and lifestyle without anyone knowing what was going on.

I was so wrong.

I read a book in 1988 while incarcerated in the North Carolina Department of Corrections called Vinnie: Journey Through Hell by Vinnie Marino. It was an autobiography about a lifelong heroin addict who (at the time that he wrote the book) had finally gotten clean. The book chronicled his life on the streets as well as his fight to get clean as he went in and out of various rehabilitation programs. I only mention that book because as I look back at Vinnie’s journey I see so much of myself and the paths that I have travelled in his own. Definitely a book worth reading if you haven’t read it.

I decided a few things concerning this book.

First, I didn’t really want to tell my entire life story. A telling of that caliber would take volumes. This book isn’t about my entire life. What this book is about is a specific period of my life that occurred over a specific time span of approximately fifteen years. A time where I fought my own demons. Demons that kept coming back to haunt me, take over my life, and drag me down to points in my life that, if I didn’t think anyone gave a damn, I would have taken my own life.

Time and time again.

Fortunately, I realized at some point that someone did care if I lived or died; even if I didn’t.

Well that’s also who this book is for. It’s for the people in my life, past and present, who have ever cared enough to notice that something just wasn’t right and who cared enough to stop and ask themselves, What’s wrong with Divine?

This book is for the people who loved me so much that they unknowingly and unselfishly saved me from the street. At times, kept me from going hungry more than once and saved my life with their love.

If you’re reading this, then you may just be one of those people who have in some way significantly impacted my life. I say that because those of you who were there must still have a lot of unanswered questions. It’s not that I wouldn’t have loved to sit down and talk about it, but as opposed to doing that over and over again, with every single person I’ve hurt over the years, this is how I have chosen to speak to you all.

I did decide to use real names. Not to hurt anyone, but just to keep it all the way real.

For now, if you are reading this, then maybe I’ll be able to impact you to make a change...if you so need one. If I hurt any of you in any way, I hope that you will accept my sincerest apologies and know that I just wasn’t myself.

Love, Peace and Happiness,

Divine OrtiZ

"If God created anything better than crack,

He kept it for Himself."

Unknown

1

I don’t remember when or where I first heard or read that phrase before, but I’ll be damned if there weren’t times when I had that stem in my hand and took a big ass pull of some of that hard, beige, scaly, shiny shit that I didn’t feel the exact same way. I’m talking about that shit that makes you wanna throw up and take a shit simultaneously when you take that first good hit of the day. That good shit that makes you wanna hold that smoky death deep in your lungs until you damn near pass out. That shit that makes you put the pipe down, back up a foot or two from the table and just look up to the ceiling.... until you finally exhale.

Yeah, that’s that good shit.

I’m talking about crack cocaine.

I’ve smoked weed almost my entire life, probably since I was about eleven or twelve. I’ve done acid a few times. Not that PCP or Angel Dust shit. Just the paper blotter kind. You know, the kind that makes you laugh all night at the most inappropriate things, with absolutely no regrets nor regards for anyone’s feelings. I’ve done powder cocaine a few times but didn’t like it and it was never my thing. Though, there is something about licking some good coke off of a female’s clit that just gets me all crazy. Other than the occasional Ecstasy pills, I’ve never been a pill popper of any kind and I’ve never done heroin in my life.

I’ve always considered myself a strong and intelligent man. I’m book smart as well as street smart and feel like I am the most intelligent person in the room...whenever I walk into any room.

But at some point in my life I was forced to reevaluate how I saw myself. There were times in my life when I looked at myself in the mirror and I had to ask myself, "Who the fuck are you?" These were the times when I allowed crack to take control of me and make my life a living hell.

I’ve never hated anything or anyone more than I hate the drug called crack.

I hate it...because I can’t control it.

I hate it...because I can’t stop once I start.

I hate it...because it brings out a someone in me that I detest and despise.

I hate it...because I love it.

I love it so much that I can remember times when I would lock myself in a room with lighters, stems and an ounce of crack, and I would smoke until my throat hurt so bad that I could barely talk and every time I spit I would spit out black mucus the size of an egg yolk.

I hate it...because I fear it.

I’m not the baddest man on the planet and I don’t fear much.

At least I thought I didn’t.

I’m scared to death of crack.

I’m scared because I know what it has done to me, time and time again and I know what it has the potential to do to me once again.

And all it would take is one single hit.

I hate it because I love it...so fucking much!

One hit would turn my life around and destroy me.

Before I really get into this story, I want to give you a brief bio of my life. No, I’m not going to make this a full life story book. I just wanna give those of you who don’t know my background a short history lesson. I promise, I’ll be as brief as possible, and I’ll try not to bore you too much. I’ll give you the super short, condensed version.

2

I’m gonna speed through this part as accurately as I can, so if I get an exact date or a year wrong, charge it to my memory (and too much good weed), not to my heart. I just don’t remember things too well anymore.

I was born in The Bronx, NY on a Friday night. May 31st, 1968...at about 11:58 pm to be exact. I was a breech birth (which means that I came out of my mother’s womb feet first) and I was told that I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck.

Ain’t that a bitch? I came into this world in a choke hold! They should have known then that I was gonna be a problem. They say that I was a miracle baby. Though a lot more probably feel like I’m the anti-Christ I'm sure. I feel that I was born on my feet and that’s why I’ve always been so good about getting back on my feet every time I fall off.

But anyway...

I can’t honestly say I that I had a fucked-up childhood or that I came from a broken home, because I didn’t. Well, my first half a dozen or so years weren’t the greatest, but that was mainly due to my biological father. He was a chronic heroin addict whose favorite pastime seemed to be getting dope sick and beating my mom and I like we stole his dope or something. I never could understand back then what his fuckin’ problem was. I just knew there was no way that I could have deserved every one of those beatings I got from him. I know for a fact that mom didn’t deserve what she got, but that didn’t matter, because she caught hell too.

She just caught it a lot worse.

The one person who hardly ever got beat, (that I can remember) was my sister. Not by him anyway. I was glad that she didn’t get the beatings mom and I received though. She was my little sister and I felt protective over her.

As a matter of fact, one time that I can clearly remember he did try to beat her, I jumped in and tried to stop him. I don’t remember if I got in the way of a blow or if he just got so mad at me for getting in the way that he punched me in the side of my head, but the blow was so severe that to this day, I can only hear with about 50 percent capacity out of my left ear.

I remember the day he left us. I don’t know what sparked the argument, but I remember the end.

I remember him beating my mom so bad that she was lying on the ground, bleeding.

I remember him throwing my little red thirteen-inch color television set out of the apartment’s third floor window and when I cried about it he beat me for that too. When he left, I was on the ground with my mom.

What I could never understand is why, even after all that happened, like less than a year or so later, I was sent to live with him in Florida for the summer.

I felt like I was being punished or that my mom was getting rid of me.

There are three major things have always stayed in my head about that trip to Florida. The first of course were the beatings.

The beatings were always a constant.

The second was that it was in Florida where I found out that there was no Santa Clause. One of my Christmas presents had a Kmart price sticker on it. My Nana tried to tell me that Santa Claus may have bought some of his presents there when they were on sale.

Really Nana.

The third thing about that trip to Florida that has always stayed in my head was me losing my virginity and being molested and raped by my older cousins the entire time I was there.

My female cousins.

All three of my cousins lived there at my grandmother’s home. Hedy was about five or six years older I think. Amy was maybe two years older. And Wendy was my age.

The first time it happened, Hedy came to me alone and made me do all sorts of things with her. But before long, Amy joined in and later they were making me and Wendy do things together, and with them too.

By the time the summer was over it was like the Playboy Mansion in that house...and I was Hugh Hefner.

Now, most men can only dream of being with three females at one time. Trust me, it’s not the same when you’re only seven or eight years old. I honestly couldn’t tell you if I liked it or not. I guess when I think about it now, over forty years later, I was too young to know if I was supposed to enjoy it or not. It was just a thing to me.

Something that was just happening.

Like going off to school in the morning. I just remember that anytime I was left alone with them I would brace myself for the expected.

It would start with Hedy or Amy calling my name. Baby Junior!

They called my name a lot.

I returned to NY around Christmas time.

Anyway, that was around the time my mom met my dad.

Now just to be very clear and so that there’s no misunderstanding from this point on and throughout this book. My dad is my dad. My pops. My Father. Victor OrtiZ. The man whose name I carry proudly. The only man that I will ever recognize as my father.

The person that donated the sperm needed to bring me into existence is and always be just that; a sperm donor.

But my dad...the man I love and call Father on a daily basis, now that is my Father for real...and he is the only man I will ever recognize as such. So as you read these pages, just know that anytime I make reference to my dad, pop or Father I am speaking of the man who raised me and is still in my life today.

Mom met him, and not soon after that, our lives changed. I remember him making a promise to me in the beginning.

He said, I’ll never hurt your mom or you guys.

That’s a promise he has always kept. They are the happiest couple I’ve ever seen and I love them both more than life itself. Those two have been my rock and my foundation and on more than one occasion they have been my saviors as you’ll later see.

I almost caused them to break up right there at the beginning with my bullshit though.

***

I have no idea where mom went to or why I even needed a babysitter at that age, but that’s neither here nor there. She left me with this girl named Pigtails who was about 15 years old and lived upstairs on the 5th floor. Well, I can’t remember who initiated it but I do remember that neither of us heard when my mom came back into the apartment, nor did we hear when she came into the bedroom. We might not have heard her but I sure as hell saw her.

Well, I saw her feet.

We were lying on the floor and I was on top of Pigtails just humping my little happy ass off. Then I saw my mom’s feet at the door of her bedroom across the floor under the bed. Don’t ask me why we were even in her bedroom but when I saw my mom’s feet my entire body went limp. I mean I was like complete dead weight on that girl.

My mom came around the bed and snatched my body off of Pigtails so fast that I didn’t realize that I was being pulled up until my mom smacked the shit out of me and told me to get into my room. She beat Pigtails all the way up to her apartment.

When she returned, she wanted to know where I had learned to do that. I told her that I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell her that I had had more sex that summer while I was in Florida than most men could have only dreamed of. My mom thought that I had perhaps seen her and my pops getting intimate and that that was where I had learned that type of behavior. She said that she was gonna break up with him. I cried and screamed and apologized. I begged her not to send him away.

Needless to say, she didn’t.

Thank God.

***

Ok, so pop joins the U.S. Army (82nd Airborne Division) and him and mom get married on December 21st, 1979.

We left New York later that year and the first place we ended up at is Fort Bragg, NC. We were there from 1979 to 1983 and I can’t really say that anything eventful happened during that time. It was all about sex, drinking, and smoking weed for me at the time; and I was always fighting.

In and out of school.

I got kicked out of one school after another. Mainly for fighting. It seemed that every year since probably the fourth or fifth grade, by the end of the year, I would end up in a special ed class somewhere because of my behavior issues; and I stayed seeing a shrink. Even as a kid I saw a psychiatrist. Back then I was just classified as hyperactive and of course, just plain old bad. Later on in life I would officially be diagnosed as having ADHD, as well as being bipolar. I also have a mild case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, anxiety and suffer from severe depression. After over 15 years in and out of various state and federal prisons I also developed PTSD. My anger management issues progressively escalated and kept me in trouble throughout my life. Several attempts have been made to medicate me over the years, but I’ve always refused and rejected all efforts.

As messed up in the head as I am, it’s a wonder I didn’t end up bugging out and becoming a serial killer.

Not too late for a major career change though.

***

1983

I started tenth grade at E.E. Smith High School in Fayetteville, NC. I really didn’t expect to last too long but didn’t expect to leave for the reason that I did. About three weeks after I started my tenth-grade year I was told that we were moving to Holland.

The Netherlands.

I was like, Where the hell is that?!

Once we got there though, I was in love.

Holland was the fucking bomb.

And I was like a movie star there.

Imagine being the new kid in school, overseas, in a school that was predominantly white. Not only was I the hot new eligible bachelor, but I was from New York, which as we all know, is the capital of the world. Not only that though; I’m Puerto Rican, and I was the only one in that school back then in 1983.

I was a fine ass motha fucka back then too.

So, I ran through the eligible bachelorettes in school; the couple of pretty young sisters that were there, some Dutch girls, a Captain in the Army and a white girl or two.

It was because of my constant fighting and an incident that could have led to my pop’s court martial out of the Army that I was eventually kicked out of the country.

Yes, the country.

I was expelled from school, exiled from the country, and sent back to New York.

The date was February 25th, 1985.

***

New York, 1985

I first moved in with my Titi (aunt) Lorraine. Pop’s sister. He told her about my situation (I’m assuming he did) and she agreed to let me stay with her and her girlfriend until pop finished his tour of duty in the Netherlands. But that didn’t work out so well so I ended up at an old friend of mom’s named Gerri (short for Geraldine)

Gerri was one ugly and mannish woman. Me and her nephew Supreme were really cool though, plus we were both Five Percenters, so we hung out and kicked it. One morning, Gerri got pissed off at Supreme about some bullshit and kicked us both out.

I tried to go back to Lorraine’s, but she wasn’t having it.

The original reason she put me out of her home in the first place was because she thought I stole money from her. What’s fucked up is that I didn’t. I never took a dime from her. What I did do regularly though was help myself to a little pinch of her weed stash (that she kept hidden on a shoe box top under the turntable in the living room) from time to time; it was never more than a blunt worth, but that she never noticed.

Anyway, I talked my Abuela (grandmother) on