Gabriel Nieto

The arduous but sweet journey.

So it all started with a bit of curiosity that me as a good kid began following through my instincts in something I could not ignore. I found a love that I knew I couldn’t pass up. I was in high school with my mind geared towards a bunch of political and historical interests. In a time where history was being made it was hard for me to keep my feet on the ground. I was growing up with two siblings (one brother and one sister) in a 3 bedroom house. I carried throughout my days with what I could say was a very active mind. You could imagine late nights with hardly any sleep to carry myself with the next day. I remember it took me hours in the morning to wake up before I was fully awake. A funny habit I kept through my high school years that I found later to actually be taking adverse effects on my grades and body altogether. I was a quirky individual who liked to dress to impress. I had braces and as you could imagine and was very prone to falling into different scenes. I was a dancer who took to nightclubs and parties to show off my moves. The realities around me slowly began colliding and as you know I began experimenting with drugs as a young teenager.Not the healthiest choice but the funny thing about is that I always told myself I would never fall to this type of negativity. But my thoughts then were somewhere along the lines of; hey what do I got to lose? Except a few brain cells. But anyways the point is that I myself could not believe that I somehow fell into these drugs that were pretty mad now that I think of it. I was taking MDMA/ecstasy about every month with major events. As a side note I always kept the strange truth floating in my head that MDMA was the first drug I ever tried and it being one of the strongest too. (Talk about a leap into the deep, BIG.) Carrying on, I was big into the EDM scene. I had caught a fever for the music and dancing altogether. Along with it the drugs followed. I and my friends had gathered a group of dancers who surprisingly became internet famous through our dancing aka shuffling. That was rare back then and boy was I happy to know we had caught steam. Our videos were gathering thousands of subscribers and even more viewers from all over. But the beautiful thing about it was the fame itself opened my eyes to what was truly happening. In my heart I knew I had to be responsible about what was taking place. It was drugs, music, and a whole lot of temptation that I luckily had caught onto. I wasn’t a heavy user at all in fact I was the least subject of focus amongst my friends. Altruistically, I became the leader of our dance crew sort of the eyes of the group and what we called the “Main Head” of EIU. One of the most talented crews in all of OC. You can even look us up on YouTube our videos are still there. Everyone called me Acidoser which is funny because I never tried acid in my life and still to this day I haven’t touched the substance. Moving through the years from where this started to when it ended between the years of 2011-2014 now aged 17 at the beginning of 2011.I found myself in one of the happiest state of minds I had ever been. I made a ton of friends and met tons of people through my days and everyone knew my name. It was strange times for me. Imagine walking out in public and having dudes and girls alike calling your name out. This was very striking to a humble person like me. It was like the world was screaming for me to break out of my shell. One side would scream dancing and drugs and the other half of me still trapped would say no stay down. Guess which one I chose? It payed itself in respect down the line but further down that road I started trying other drugs to go along with what I called “experimenting”.