Drug Addiction Stories & Info

This winter has been the craziest one snow wise that I can remember in 30 years. Still, it takes me back to being fifteen and stuck in a blizzard in Wyoming. Being from Texas, I was not used to such weather, our biggest weather enemy was a tornado, my county just weeks away from having the worst one in its history. Still, I remember that blizzard and being stranded in a hotel with my mom, aunt and younger brother. I remember the waitress at the restaurant in the hotel being so nice, not realizing back then that she must have been working for hours past her shift with the onset of a blizzard that allowed for no movable traffic.

I also remember the man that was going through asking people for money. The hotel was nice, not charging people for rooms that weren’t available and allowing everyone to have a dry, safe place to sleep even if it meant the lobbies were overflowing. Something about the young man had my mom and aunt being protective. When the young man asked me if I knew where to get some coke and I pointed to the vending machine, he got mad and called me retarded. My mama stepped in between us while my aunt went to the desk to ask for help.

Today, I know what he meant. He meant cocaine, something that was gaining in popularity at that time. Still, a country girl from Texas had not heard of it at that time. It was March, 1979, and what stands out most to this day now that I am a parent is that my mom and aunt were protective of me against a stranger.

Sometimes I wonder about that young man, like when I hear a story on the news or when I see my own children dealing with social issues with peers and every day life. I wonder if he had a mother as protective as mine was but somehow got hooked on cocaine anyway. I wonder if he had a rough childhood. I wonder if he is clean now, sometimes even if he is still alive.

I don’t know why that one short conversation stayed with me all these years. I only know that before that day I had no idea that coke was something other than a soft drink. I mark that as a moment in time where I lost a touch of innocence. To me, that was the day . It may not seem like a big deal to most people but I realize something. If that one question 30 years ago can stay with me, I have great empathy for someone who deals with peer pressure from close friends.

I watched the mailman walk away from my mailbox. I did not really want to go out there and get the mail. No, I wasn’t hiding from mounting bills or bugged about wasting my time wading through junk mail. It was a letter from my boyfriend. There was always a letter from my boyfriend in the mail, telling me how much he loved me and how much he needed me. He was not writing from a combat zone overseas. He was not writing from college. He was writing from the penitentiary. He was serving a sentence for armed robbery. He had been in for eight months and had a little over nine years to go. 

We had gone together since high school and gotten hooked on crystal meth the summer following our senior year. We had just thought to try it one weekend with friends but before we knew it, we were both hooked. Neither of us could keep a job for very long because when we got a fix we would miss work. Desperate for cash to feed our addiction, my boyfriend pulled an armed robbery and got caught.

He was inside and clean for the first time in three years. I was still trying to get a fix where and when I could. He was begging me in his letters to get clean so that when he was paroled, we could be together and start a new life.

Thanks to my own foul up by drinking and driving one night, I was clean and had been for about a month. However, I was also finding out through my counseling sessions that deep down, I did want to change and I wanted to have a real life.

The days went by, I got a job and I attended support meetings for my crystal meth addiction. I also attended alcoholism meetings as mandated by the court. I got a job and as the next month went by, I realized I had held the job past getting my first paycheck. I usually got high then and never returned to work.

I had shared with my boyfriend getting clean but as even more time went by, I found myself wanting to experience other things in life such as well, a normal relationship. I began dreading his letters more and more as I yearned to be out living life instead of letting it pass me by. Still, I opened his letters, read them and answered them. Then one day came a different letter. He told me it would be his last letter. He said he wanted me to get out and have a life not tied to him. He was giving me what I had been wanting. That was when I knew I still loved him. I told him I would wait.

Eventually he was paroled. He came home and began rebuilding his life. He got a job through a friend of his brother’s and we are living in a small apartment. We both go to meetings, sometimes together, sometimes separately. We take it one day at a time but we are together and we are clean.

People thought I had it all. No, that’s not true. People probably didn’t think anything at all. I was just a co-worker, just a neighbor, just the woman who came into the grocery store at the same time every Thursday evening and the liquor store at the same time every Friday afternoon after work. My shyness could probably be traced back to junior high. I never quite fit in. I wasn’t one of those kids who got picked on, I didn’t even rate that much attention. 

I can not recall ever really having a date. I was 26 and just going through the motions of living, waiting for Friday so I could indulge all weekend in my rum and coke, usually more rum than coke as I began buying two big bottles every Friday instead of one.

I’m not sure when I began sneaking a couple of shots into my carrying cup. I’d get a coke from the vending machine and enjoy the drink for as long as it lasted. No one noticed, that’s how invisible I was to everyone. Then my boss asked me if I could stay late for a few days one week to finish up the finer points of a presentation he needed set up for a board meeting the following Tuesday.

I was touched that he liked my work enough to pick me till his assistant caught me in the break room and thanked me also. “I have plans all weekend so I suggested you since I knew you had no family or anything.”

Those words hurt but I just smiled and went on. I was not going to be able to make it to the liquor store that Friday so I stopped in on Thursday after work. I drank some rum and coke Friday evening while working on the presentation and really didn’t feel affected. Saturday was a different story. The more I thought about how I was at work while everyone else was off somewhere with people who wanted to be with them, the more I drank. I stumbled through offices ranting and raving. I cried and apparently messed up my boss’s assistant’s desk.

Some where along the way, I passed out. My boss found me. He had stopped by to see how the presentation was coming along. Needless to say I was fired. I was also charged with public intoxication but the charges were dropped in exchange for mandatory counseling.

I have friends now. They are in my support group. I have a new job, too. Just yesterday, two of the girls at work asked if I wanted to go to lunch this coming Friday with them. My therapy and support group not only helped me with my alcoholism but it gave me some self confidence as well.  I don’t feel alone anymore.