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Joe went years without touching heroin, then one day he received a call that would alter his life forever.

Joe was in his 30s at the time and he and his wife had become fairly well off. They “had a lot of money,” he told ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio’s Dori Monson.

Then Joe got a call from a friend. There was a great batch of heroin in town.

“The next thing I knew, I was strung out,” he told Dori, emotionally.

Joe got to the point where he was spending between $300 to $500 a day on heroin. His addiction was at the point where he had to have it on the night stand, otherwise there was panic.

“The sick is terrible,” he added.

Joe’s wife eventually found out. She cried.

“She knew she couldn’t compete with it,” Joe explained.

He spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” Once being able to describe himself as well off, Joe became focused on one thing: heroin. He showed up to a drug deal with a gun because he couldn’t afford to pay for his addiction any more. He was determined to get a fix one way or another.

And it’s not just heroin that causes the behavior Joe described to Dori. It’s opiates. It’s meth.

“It can turn you into a total animal,” he said.

Joe’s story follows the announcement that deadly heroin overdoses are on the rise in King County. Heroin deaths rose 58 percent from 2013 to 2014.

Though they are still friends, Joe and his wife divorced.

Joe said anyone involved in drugs shouldn’t be sent to prison, but put to death. It is that terrible on society, he added.

Dori asked if he still has that much bitterness toward drugs and drug dealers.

Clean again, Joe has turned his life around and is involved in the hotel industry. But he still can’t shake his despise for the drug that caused so much pain, he told Dori.

“People have to be careful,” Joe said. “No matter if it’s illegal or legitimate. [Drugs] can take you to different areas you didn’t know existed in your mind.”