My name is Chris Hopkins. I’m 34 now and my whole life I’ve had Tourette Syndrome. From 2020 to 2025 I was homeless on the streets in Las Vegas. In early 2025, I basically gave up. Had to put my dog down on New Year’s and then my girlfriend left me so I didn’t see much to live for at the time. One night I was walking around chasing a silhouette of my girlfriend because I was going nuts! Everyone in the distance and everything looked like her. Every night for 5 months I would walk around all night till the sun came up…constantly thinking that I’ve spotted my ex-girlfriend. I just wanted to talk to her. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. So, one night somebody offers me fentanyl and it wasn’t the first time anyone’s offered it to me. It was a constant thing. People were always offering but I usually said no! Until that night and from then on I sought it out like it was air. The fucked up part is out of all the times I’ve done it; I’ve only paid for two times. All the other times I would always end up finding it on the ground. One of the times that I overdosed the paramedics had to Narcan me five times while doing chest compressions before they had a pulse. I was essentially, literally 100% dead for about a minute they told me.
33 Resurrections (The Glitch and the Grave)
My body is a record player
with a scratched-out soul.
Click. Pop. Twitch.
I am a collection of uninvited movements,
a symphony of “not now,”
a lightning storm trapped in a ribcage that refuses to be still.
My nerves? They are live wires dancing in a puddle,
and some days, the electricity is just too loud.
So, I looked for the Mute button.
I didn’t find a dial; I found a ghost.
A white-powdered silence called Fentanyl.
It promised to settle the riot in my hands.
It promised to turn the “glitch” into a “glow.”
But Fentanyl doesn’t just hush the tics;
it hushes the heart.
It doesn’t just stop the twitch;
it stops the time.
Thirty-three times.
That is not a statistic.
That is a chorus of sirens.
That is thirty-three times my lungs became heavy luggage
that my chest forgot how to carry.
Thirty-three times the world went gray, then blue, then…
nothing.
And then
The Burn….
Narcan is not a gentle wake-up call.
It is a riot act read to a corpse.
It is a chemical lightning bolt up the nostrils,
ripping the peace out of the marrow,
dragging me kicking and screaming
back into a body that still won’t sit still.
Imagine the irony:
I spend my life trying to control a body that jumps,
only to end up in a gutter where I couldn’t move a finger.
Thirty-three times, the paramedics played God
with a plastic spray and a prayer.
Thirty-three times, the “Me” that was gone
was forced back through the keyhole.
They say a cat has nine lives.
I have outlived three cats and a miracle.
I am a walking graveyard of “almosts.”
People look at my tics and see a broken machine.
They look at my history and see a lost cause.
But I look in the mirror and see a Survivor.
Because my heart is still ticking
even if it’s ticking off-beat.
My lungs are still gasping
even if they’ve been drowned in the dark.
Thirty-three times the void said, “Stay.”
And thirty-three times, the light said, “Not today.”
I am still here.
The glitch is back.
The twitch is back.
The riot in my nerves is screaming at full volume.
And for the first time in my life…I think I’m okay with the noise.
Story & poem by Chris Hopkins