Three years out of Nashua High School South, Tyler Letourneau was on a fast track to success.

He said he was earning more than $30 an hour and promoted to a manager at Amazon.com. His company sent him all over to set up warehouses and train employees. He bought his first house by time he was 20.

"I grew very fast in the company. I was doing very well. They were sending me all over the world – London, Germany, Kentucky and Ohio," the 2009 high school graduate said.

"I always had a good job. I never missed a day (of work) in my life," he added.

The good life Letourneau built himself evaporated like so much dust after a friend gave Letourneau his Percocet prescription.

Letourneau said he took the "Perc 30s" for back pain.

He liked it. He liked it way too much.

He didn’t know he was in trouble until the script ran out.

"Then I realized I was addicted to it," the athletic 24-year-old said last June, more than a month after he was accepted into the Nashua Drug Court to serve a sentence for his April 29, 2015, convictions for felony heroin and cocaine possession.

"It was impossible to work without them," he said of the prescription opioids. "You felt like you were dying."

So Letourneau turned to the streets, where he said opioids were in ample supply in 2010 and cost about half what they do today.

"They were all over the place for a while," he said. "They started becoming really big around here, so a lot of people started selling them."

He turned to heroin about a year later. It was cheaper, and the high was bigger.

"You felt like you were on top of the world. You felt unstoppable," Letourneau said. "It got a lot cheaper, but it got a lot more expensive because I picked up a bigger habit."

He perfected a cocktail of cocaine and heroin that got him going from the moment he hit the ground in the morning until he went to bed at night.

"The heroin brings you down and makes you sleepy, and the cocaine wakes you up and gives you energy. If you mix them both, it kinds of levels you out and you get a nice, consistent balance. I would take it all the time," he said.

His cocaine and heroin habit soon was costing $600 and getting more difficult to conceal. It also burned through his all his earnings. He lost his house.

"I was bringing home some serious money. I couldn’t even cover my $1,600 mortgage," Letourneau said. "All my money went to drugs."

Letourneau bought his drugs in Lawrence and Methuen, Mass., where he said the quality was better and price cheaper than in Nashua.

"I went down to Lawrence myself because anything you bought in Nashua was garbage. It had been cut and tampered with," he said.

Letourneau said he quit his job and turned to shoplifting from department stores to make drug money.

"I got caught a few times. I did a few months in jail here and there," he said of previous sentences served at Hillsborough and Rockingham county jails.

According to the New Hampshire Judicial Branch, Letourneau was arrested on Aug. 6, 2014, on felony heroin and cocaine possession charges.

Letourneau called it a "wake-up call."

"I was just so sick of it. It was all fun and games when it first started, but it turned into a full-time job, honestly, just to be sane or be normal and not sick," he said.

Letourneau pleaded guilty to the charges on April 29, 2015, and received an 18-month to three-year state prison sentence, suspended on condition of his completion of the drug court program.

He was among 14 members of Nashua Adult Drug Court’s inaugural class who helped with spring cleanup last May at the Greater Nashua Mental Health Center at 440 Amherst St.

Taking a break from clearing leaves and winter debris from the grounds, Letourneau pointed across Amherst Street to a ridge in the distance. Over that hill, he said, was the house he once owned along with the dreams he left behind.

"If I could go back and change time, I would," he said.

"I never thought I’d ever end up (a drug addict) from where I came from. I never expected it," he said in a later interview.

"I came from a really loving family that was down to earth and very successful," Letourneau said. "They were very supportive."

Nashua Adult Drug Court "really keeps you grounded. It teaches you there are consequences for every one of your actions," he said.

It also provides structure and support through counseling, case management, intensive outpatient rehabilitation and life skills training. Letourneau must appear in drug court once a week and call in daily to find out if he must report for a random urine test that screens for drug use.

Any infraction could send him back to prison to serve out his sentence.

"I’ve been good and clean a year and a half now. I’m turning my life around. I got a job at UPS," he said.

His message to anyone who might be in his shoes?

"Don’t do drugs. It only takes once. You try it once, and you can be addicted instantly."

Kathryn Marchocki can be reached at 594-6589, kmarchocki@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_KMar.