Drug Addiction Stories

Even today I hear the whispers as I entered the classroom that morning.  It was 8^th grade and I had spent the summer with my cousins.  I had “blossomed” as we said back then.  By lunchtime, the whispers and giggles were no longer hidden as the girls glared at me and one of the more obnoxious boys came up to me and flat out said “So Dianne, where did you get the falsies?”  Without hesitation, I lifted my t-shirt and asked “Do these look fake to you?” 

That began three years of hell that I have not forgotten to this day.  I dreaded going to school but with both my parents working 12 hour shifts at the local factory, I did not want to burden them with my problems at school.  They let us know enough that we were burdens as it was, me and my two younger brothers. 

It was just a few weeks after school started that another girl, another “outcast” stopped by my locker and asked if I wanted to hang out some time.  That was how I got introduced to pot.  I loved how it made me feel able to drift away from the teasing at school.  During high school, we got into cocaine. I did my best to try to hide my figure and getting hooked on drugs helped me stay skinny but it didn’t hide certain attributes. 

I got clean when my aunt came to stay with us after her husband died.  She was alone as they had never had children and it did not take long for her to figure out what was going on, even though her brother (my dad) and sister-in-law were clueless to what had been going on. 

My aunt saved me in two ways.  She helped me clean up my act and get off drugs, but she also showed me what going to bat for someone means.  She had come to school to pick me up for a “girl’s day out” when classes were over and that same, obnoxious boy from the falsies statement three years earlier was making remarks about me again, only he had gotten louder and meaner over the years. 

Without batting an eye, my aunt looked at him and smiled.  “Are you Jerry B’s son?”  He nodded yes.  “I thought so.  He used to tease me all the time, too.  In fact, I remember the note he gave me asking me to go to the drive-in with him.  I turned him down flat.  You are definitely your father’s son, teasing the girl you are crushing on.  Just like your father, you are going about it all wrong.  She doesn’t date jerks, either.” 

The other kids laughed and he turned red.  Sure enough, he did end up asking me to prom a year later.  I said no without hesitation.  They say boys tease girls they like?  All I got out of remembering those years is how he acted that day in 8^th grade and a drug addiction that could have ended everything for me if not for the love and caring of my aunt.  Today, I am happily married with two daughters about to start junior high.  I am very actively involved in their lives.  I’m not going to let them be bullied by some boy who doesn’t know how to express himself in a positive way.  I heard the boy from my own adolescent years just had his third wife file for divorce.  Seems the girl I was back then got the better end of the deal after all.

I’m writing this as a person who knows what an addiction to drugs can do first-hand, both from the view of a family member and then someone who got involved with drugs myself.  My parents were drug addicts, both of them.  It was not hard for my older sister and I to get into drugs when we were around them 24/7.  Neither of my parents could keep a job.  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out they were dealing as well as using.

When CPS came and took us away, we were sent to live with our grandmother.  She constantly put us down, saying we were losers just like our parents.  My older sister took off the day after her 17^th birthday.  I was 14 and had no one left to turn to.  So I turned to drugs. 

The other kids at my new school did not seem to care about getting to know me.  It did not take long after my sister took off for me to get in with the outcasts, the kids who sat on the sidelines in gym, who sat on one side of the cafeteria, who did not go to the games or get involved with extra-curricular activities. 

I would get high and drink until I was numb, but some nights, I still cried myself to sleep, missing my parents, my sister and wondering why my grandmother hated me so much.  Then one day, I got up late.  She had not gotten me up for school in her usual loud way.  I went to see where she was and found my grandmother had died in her sleep.  I found out after the paramedics came that it had been a heart attack.

I cringed that day.  I had just turned 15 and knew I would go into the system as a foster child.  But as I sat in the apartment with the social worker, I heard my name called after the front door opened.  It was my sister!  She was 18 and working, had gotten herself off drugs with the help of a co-worker, gotten into church and was begging the CPS worker to let her move in to the apartment and take care of me.  She had her pastor and several church friends with her. 

I am now 22 and about to graduate from college.  My sister has been my rock and my shelter.  Together, she and I volunteer to help other kids who find themselves in turmoil thanks to drugs and alcohol and family problems.  They seem to listen to us because they know we have been there. 

If you find yourself in my position, don’t wait until a family tragedy befalls you.  Get help now.  Call a hotline, call a pastor, call a youth counselor.  People really do want to help and guess what?  I know you don’t believe you are worth it because I felt that way. But you really are.   Make the call.  It’s not too late.

I sat watching him as the monitors kept tabs on his vitals and his breathing. I had not seen him in four years when my mother got the call two nights earlier and I heard her cry out “Oh no!” My father was in the hospital, in ICU, and he was not expected to live. I was 17 and had not seen him since the week after my 13^th birthday.

My father was deeply enmeshed in cocaine, marijuana, heroin, whatever he could get when he could get it. My mother admitted that both of them had been on drugs in high school and during the early years of their marriage, but a wake up call when Child Protective Services took me and my older brother away from them did just that. It woke her up, she got clean and has been the greatest mom ever since.

My father couldn’t let go and my mom finally told him that he had to choose. Unfortunately, his choice was not us. Still, before he disappeared out of our lives, he did one thing right that my mother made sure me and my brother knew about.

My father was an only child and his parents’ home was left to him. He signed it over to my brother and me in trust so that we would always have a home.

Now, I sat there with tears running down my face. Before me, two parents who had each made opposite decisions. My mother chose me and my brother. My father chose a life of drugs even though he did do a wonderful thing for us by leaving us the family home. Still, there were times when I would have gladly lived in an apartment if I could only have my dad.

My mother has always been honest with me and my brother. She tells us that being addicted to drugs is hard to get over. Even now, she occasionally has to go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting when life gets stressful. I knew she would be going over the next few weeks for sure. My brother and I also went from time to time to the support group for family members of those addicted to drugs or alcohol.

The doctor came in and told us that there really wasn’t any hope. Everything had shut down and my father was breathing only with the help of life support. The three of us had discussed this and agreed to let my father go in peace. We all hugged and kissed him one last time.

I have learned that drugs affect everyone, not just the person doing them. As I hug my own four year old daughter, I have wished many times that my father could see her and my niece and nephew. I have learned from both of my parents and, while we learned that kids can often follow in their parents’ path, my brother and I made a pact with others in our support group to not fall into that pattern.

In the end, my father gave me two lessons, one in love and one in life. He gave us a home but he took himself away.