Life is inherently pain.
Perhaps the only currency humans truly possess is pain, used to purchase fleeting happiness. Most people live this way.

They endure the pain of labor and exchange it for the happiness that money can buy. Pain comes first, happiness follows. But some purchase happiness on credit. And eventually, the debt must be repaid.

A debt of pain.
I, too, am deeply in debt.
The pleasure the drugs brought me came without any price paid in pain.

It feels like an inherited debt, one impossible to renounce.

Since I was already ruined, I kept …