Drug Addiction Stories

In the very back of my closet hangs a wedding dress. I picked it out seven years ago when my boyfriend proposed to me. We had gone together all through high school and college and planned to be married one year after finding good jobs. We had a plan for our lives and nothing was going to stop it. 

Something did.

We graduated from high school and college with honors. David got a job right away at the accounting firm he had interned with and I was hired as a nurse at our local hospital. I started out in the emergency room.

We picked a wedding date that coincided with vacation time from our careers and planned the perfect wedding. I had found the dress of my dreams and it hung in my closet with a promise from David not to see it until the day I walked down the aisle to him.

One night I was getting ready to get off when a three-car pile up was called in with multiple injuries. When that happens during shift change it is mandatory for all available staff to stay on. Rumor was coming in that one of the drivers was drinking and had crossed the center line, hitting another car and calling a serious accident. As victims came in, we got them into triage and worked steadfastly.

There were four children in a minivan involved as well. Children always have the hearts of hospital staff but we have to work diligently and concentrate on helping them immediately so it does not always show. Miraculously, they all made it. We were told that the car between the drunk driver and the minivan had taken the brunt of the hit.

Another team was working on that driver. As I walked out of the room where the last of the children had been checked over thoroughly, I heard a doctor stating the time of death. I looked over and screamed. It was my David!

David had been driving home from dinner at his parents’ house when the drunk driver, a man who had stopped in at happy hour four hours earlier, took it upon himself to drink and drive. The only person killed in an accident that involved eight people, David, the drunk driver and the family of six in the minivan, was my fiance.

That was seven years ago. Instead of a wedding, we had a funeral. Sometimes the pain is so great that I think about just forgetting myself in a bottle of pills or whiskey but that seems almost like it would be a sign of disrespect to David’s memory. So each year, on Valentine’s, his birthday, the anniversary of his death and what would have been the anniversary of our wedding, I go to his grave. I tell him in my heart he is a hero because he took the impact and four children are alive today.

I don’t date and I get that dress out from time to time and try it on. I know David sees me in it from where he is. If I could have anything, it would be for David to be here. He isn’t so I can only ask this. If you are reading this, please, PLEASE, I am begging you. Do not drink and drive. It isn’t always just your life you ruin.

Whenever I see a young woman acting a little off, I think back to Marci. I was in college and she was in the dorm across from me. Every time I went out to grab a smoke, she was there. She was watching me from her window. 

Marci was beautiful. I admit, I was into her. However, Marci had a bipolar disorder and when she drank at parties, it was even worse. As beautiful as she was, I could not see her for very long. After just a few weeks, it was getting well, sort of creepy.

I met her at a party one Friday night. We ended up hanging out all weekend together. She was beautiful and honestly, I could have found myself falling in love with her if given the chance. But her mood swings became apparent in just a couple of weeks. Her watching me seemed almost, well, as my mom said, like a stalking situation.

One night, Marci called me. I started not to answer but something made me. Her voice was slurred and I thought she was drunk. She was but there was something more going on. I could sense it. Marci mumbled something about her brother dying. She said she had no family left now and she wanted to die, too. She had taken all of her bipolar medication, a half bottle of sleep sedative and was on her fourth drink. She wanted to die.

I raced over but her dorm was locked. I called 911 while my roommate called Campus security. The paramedics got there and tried to revive her but they were too late. Her neighbor in the dorm said Marci had been notified earlier in the afternoon that her brother had died in a car accident. Marci did not have a roommate because she was hard to live with according to the girls in her dorm.

I think about Marci from time to time. She was so beautiful and had everything to live for. She was in college and wanted to be a journalist. She was always writing in a spiral. She could have gone places.

I was studying psychology and became more and more interested in bipolar disorder after Marci’s death. I did some research and saw that people with bipolar disorder who have a drug or alcohol problem have more episodes than those who don’t. Today I am a mental health counselor. When I see a patient with bipolar disorder, my mind goes back to Marci. When I see one with a drug or alcohol problem, I make sure they are part of a dual diagnosis program. Maybe, just maybe, if someone had done that for Marci, she would still be alive.  I feel like every time I help a patient, I’m doing it for Marci, too.

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.