I moved to New Mexico from Illinois in 2010. My parents had found a new place and the opportunity to escape my reckless life was too good to pass up. Sleepless nights in Chicago nightclubs, permanent cocaine nostrils, and driving home inebriated five nights a week took its toll on me. New Mexico resembled the highway out of hell I was desperately wishing for. Friends told me it was a gorgeous state. I fell in love with the thought of a sun-drenched paradise.

I was a certified optician in Illinois and transported my skills to an Albuquerque optometry office that provided me with a stable income. Initially, I made new relationships with sober people, but the negative forces of my drug past soon held me hostage. By the fall of 2010 I met Brian. We immediately became friends. Brian maintained different connections with people from Albuquerque’s “War Zone” who sold him 80mg Oxycontin prescriptions.

Sleepy, a barber and aspiring rapper, cuts his hair. He lives in Albuquerque’s South Valley.

Left: Sleepy’s vision board contains his life goals. He believes that if he writes them down, he can achieve them. Right: Sleepy flashes hand signs for the New Mexican prison gang ‘Los Padillas’ while his daughter sits on his lap.

I was soon a beneficiary of these associations. I learned many new skills: how to spit off Oxy coatings, and how to smoke them on foil. I met faces of the War Zone unlike any I have encountered before. Some had New Mexico head, face and neck tattoos from prison –signifying state pride and family roots. Most were like me: Chicano or Mexican-American. Most were desperately trying to get clean.

Several Albuquerque squad cars called in for a routine traffic stop in the ‘war zone’ in May.

Young New Mexicans pulled over during the traffic stop. They were released after their vehicle was searched.

By the summer of 2011 Brian taught me how to sell blues (blue 30mg oxycodone tablets). I worked 9 to 5 at the optometry office and spent my nights near Central Avenue and Louisiana Boulevard; the War Zone nucleus. Brian introduced me to strippers at the local strip club “TD’s”. We spent the rest of 2011 rolling on white Poke balls (the popular ecstasy pills in Albuquerque at this time) and smoking Oxy.

This way of life bled into my professional life and soon I was getting terminated or resigning from numerous optometry and ophthalmology offices in Albuquerque. At my worst, I was smoking Oxy in the doctor offices while they were on lunch. I have no clue how they never caught me in the act.

Self-Portrait, Frank Blazquez.

Blazquez shows New Mexican symbols. His childhood portrait is included.

In late 2011, I met Mary in an apartment within the War Zone, and she introduced me to smoking black (heroin). She introduced me to people sharing similar stories: Latino addicts trying to extricate themselves from opioid addiction. I heard “I’m gonna enroll back in school” and “I gotta get this new job” repeated daily while we got high. After hearing these pipe dreams, I had an epiphany. I told myself I would amplify these pleas for escape if I ever got clean – and I would do this with a camera.

It was September of 2016 that I finally got clean. I called up my former college transcript offices from Illinois, transferred my previous credits and enrolled at the University of New Mexico. I majored in history and I graduated magna cum laude in May of 2018. I used my Instagram page to get started and pretty soon, locals and old friends started to message me asking me to take their portraits and tell their stories.

Serena is Mexican American. She is from Silver City, New Mexico.

My photos illustrate the blood pumping through Albuquerque. Most of my portraits reflect life in the War Zone (recently renamed the International District as Albuquerque is attempting to clean up its infamy) and Albuquerque low-income centers. They are an attempt to capture an authentic New Mexican love story. The self-punishment, anxiety and beauty come from a place that is all too familiar for those living in this Land of Enchantment.

Carlos was born and raised in New Mexico. He works at an Albuquerque homeless shelter.

For more images, go to Frank Blazquez or to the documentary series Duke City Diaries