My best friend and my husband tried to talk to me about my addiction but I shrugged them off. What really got me to change was the evening I fainted at my daughter’s junior high play. I caused quite a commotion but seeing the fear in my daughter’s eyes was more than enough for me to finally admit that my addiction was not only a problem, but that it was affecting those I love the most.

I was quite active at her school and in our church. Some people seemed really surprised when I disappeared for a couple of months. It’s ironic but true: some people really do not know the face of addiction unless they are close to it, such as best friends and family members.

My daughter was terrified that I was having a heart attack or dying. It was simply the fact that I was over-taking my prescription pain medicine. It was simply my addiction coming first in my life.

I was in rehab for nearly two months. When I returned home, I had the best support system. When I returned to being active, I had support, but I also had surprised expressions at my confession of where I had really been, as well as some raised eyebrows. But one night with my daughter made all of that worth it.

She and I were watching a movie and when it went to commercial, she looked at me. “Mom? When you fell at my school that night, I was so scared you were going to die like Grandma did.” We had lost my mother the year before.

I hugged her close to me. She was twelve and knew the truth about where I had been and about my addiction to the prescription pain medication. I told her I was okay, that in fact, that “fall” when I passed out had been a life saver because I was clean for the first time in four years. I told her to learn from my mistake and to always know she could come to her father and me with anything, that we could handle it together, just as we were handling my rehab.

Then I hugged her again and told her that the look in her eyes that night saved me more than anything. She hugged me back tightly and we snuggled in together to watch the movie when it came back on.

He told me he had a friend from college stay with him for a while and he had noticed several changes in him during the four years they had not been around each other. He had invited his friend to stay with him while he was finding a job and getting his feet on the ground so to speak. It wasn’t too long though, before he began finding things missing and discovered his friend was on drugs and pawning stuff. He got his stuff back and talked his friend into rehab.

He seemed sad as he told me the story about his friend. I asked him what had happened to the guy and why the prescription bottles were still hidden. He said his friend’s mother had pleaded with him to let the guy stay with him after rehab. Things were going good until his friend met a girl who was on painkillers and before he knew it, his friend was back drugs himself and the painkillers my boyfriend had been given following a motorcycle accident were disappearing faster than he was taking them.

“I confronted him again. This time he wouldn’t be helped because his girlfriend kept denying they had a problem.” He ended up asking his friend to leave and had to change the locks on his doors and install a security system.

“The friend I had in college? He wasn’t the same one who was here. It was like they were two different people. He had turned into a stranger.” 

We flushed the prescriptions down the toilet as they were expired. I had only seen that look of sadness on his face once before, and that was when he talked about his parents’ passing. I asked him if he knew where his friend was these days. He nodded. His friend’s mother had called to tell him that her son and the girlfriend had committed suicide together by overdosing. They had left a note saying they couldn’t find jobs and there was nothing to live for.

I held him close to me as he told me the story about his friend. He had helped his friend before, yet this last time he refused help. I knew then what the survivors’ guilt felt like that I had heard about.  My boyfriend cared about his friend, tried to help him, yet still felt bad because of his friend’s choice not to get help a second time.  Now he was drowning in a feeling of guilt he didn’t deserve to have

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.

One night she called me and asked if she could come stay with me. She lived 400 miles away and had decided to leave her husband. She moved in and that is when another side of her that I had never seen emerged. Somehow, somewhere, Judy got hooked on prescription drugs. She had no ailments that I knew of so I did not understand all the pain medications I saw on her dresser in the guest room. I asked her about it and she said doctors give them out left and right to her. She even told me I should give them a try as they made her feel good. I was shocked. I tried to talk to her about getting rehab but she informed me she was not an addict and could quit anytime she wanted.

Still, for the most part, she seemed okay. I helped her get a job and we went out one night to celebrate. Beautiful Judy usually had no trouble getting guys and that night was no exception. She caught the eye of several guys. A man I had recently begun dating showed up at the club after work and we danced and played pool while Judy flirted with her admirers.

I went to the restroom and when I came back, the man I was seeing (Paul) was visibly upset. He told me he thought he should go and looking at the time, I felt the same way. I asked Judy if she was ready and she said yes. I said goodnight to Paul and Judy and I left for home. On the way she told me Paul had made a pass at her. I was speechless. Still, she was pretty so I was not surprised.

The next day when Paul called and asked me out for the following evening I said no. I told him I did not want to see him and told him what Judy had said. He told me she had actually come on to him after he caught her attempting to put something in my drink!

I confronted Judy and she shrugged and said “Yeah, so what? I just wanted you to loosen up some.” That conversation ended seventeen years of friendship. I found out through a mutual friend that her marriage ended because her husband could not handle her addiction to the pain relievers.

I miss the Judy I used to know. I heard she lost her job and took off back to our hometown where she got busted a couple of times for drugs before going into court ordered rehab. Sometimes, when I see two friends sharing a moment together in the mall or a restaurant, I think of her. I miss my friend, Judy.  I wonder if she ever thinks of me?

My battle with drugs began as a teenager

Somehow I made it through my junior and senior years. When the doctor and my grandmother decided I had been on pain relievers long enough, I found a new way to relieve my physical and emotional pain: crack cocaine. If my grandmother ever suspected, she didn’t let on.

After high school, I went to work in a call center for a major telephone company. I continued to live with my grandmother. While hitting up my dealer every chance I got for crack cocaine, I was also getting back into prescription meds. My grandmother’s health was failing and she began having a home health aide come in. It was this woman who would eventually answer my call for help and save my life.

One night I barely made it in from partying with friends. I took a couple of my prescription meds and dimly remember spilling the bottle of pills on the table. I began lining them up and playing with them. Then I passed out right there at the table.

My grandmother’s aide was staying over and she wandered into the kitchen sometime that night to get a drink of water and found me at the table surrounded by the pills and some white powder. She checked on me and found me to be breathing fine and somehow helped me to bed. The next morning when I got up, I went into the kitchen to find her at the table having coffee.

She sat me down and told me that she had a family member who had been on drugs and gotten clean at a local drug rehab center. She wanted to help me do the same. Seeing someone talk to me like they cared, having a conversation that was about me and my needs for a change made me break down and cry. She got someone to come in and watch my grandmother for a while and we went over to the drug rehab center. They helped me set up a leave of absence from work and helped me get off drugs.

My grandmother lived two more years. Her home health aide was there again for me as I was for her when my grandmother passed away. Aides become attached to their patients sometimes and she had fond feelings for my grandmother.

I did not slip into the abyss of drugs that time thanks to my support group and my grandmother’s aide who had become a good friend as well. I also met a wonderful man and I am engaged to be married. I still miss my family very much but now I know how to grieve properly without having a relapse. It is hard sometimes, but I know if I can do it, you can, too.

When my son was in kindergarten, I received a call one day from his principal. He told me that it had been decided that my son had a behavior problem and needed to be put on Ritalin as he suspected my son had ADHD. Now I was concerned and a bit aggravated that his teacher had not told me of her suspicions. I was a hands-on mom, I had all of my children involved in sports and I was right there with them as either a soccer coach or baseball or football team mom. When I asked his teacher why she had not said anything to me, she was shocked. She told me that she had never seen any behavior problems in my son other than those that normal five year old boys go through.

Still, I took him to his pediatrician who did a thorough screening and based on his knowledge of my son, the two conversations with the teacher and the principal and my own active participation in my child’s life, he said there was no need for my son to be on any form of medication. What I did not know was that there were other children in the neighborhood also being told the same thing who shared the same pediatric clinic and pharmacy as we lived on a military installation.

With the rise in prescription refills being requested by the parents of children attending that elementary school as well as the parents of those children not on medication being encouraged to seek it, it soon became apparent that someone was stealing the prescription medication that was intended for the children. When a person does not need ADHD medication, it can be crushed and snorted and acts as a form of speed.

To this day I keep my guard up where teachers and principals are concerned. I stay active in my kids’ academic lives. I know sometimes teachers say that they have to clean up a parent’s mess but in my experience, my kids had some really good teachers and even some good principals. Still, I will never forget that one principal wanted to feed his addiction at the risk of hurting my innocent five year old. He picked the wrong kid, though, because my son had a very involved mother who knew his personality inside and out.

The principal lost his job but I am thankful every day that it was not at the expense of endangering my child by putting him on medication he never needed to begin with. My advice to every parent who is told by a principal or teacher that their child needs ADHD medication is to make sure, know your child, check with the doctor and with other parents in the school to see if it is being requested of them as well. Your child deserves to be protected in case there is an ulterior motive.

I got depressed when the medical discharge came through.  I wanted to fight it, but the doctors said they would not sign off on returning me to active duty.  I began taking the pain relievers more than I should, but they were helping me to forget, at least for a little while until they wore off again.

My mom catered to me.  She tried to make me comfortable and do things for me but I just yelled at her to leave me alone.  She tried to approach me about the prescription medication I was taking when she figured out I was taking too much.  I told her to mind her own business.  I had never talked to my mom like that as a kid and I know she was confused and hurt, but I was too busy trying to figure out how to keep the medication coming and feeling sorry for myself.

Most of my wounds healed, but the memories didn’t.  I found myself feeling more and more sorry for myself and thinking everything was all about me.  Every time my mom tried to get me to do something I would just tell her to leave me alone.  One day she told me I needed to get on with my life because I had survived for a reason.  Then I did the unthinkable.  I hit my mom.  I did not intend to and I never would have thought it was possible, but I just wanted to be left alone in my medication-endorsed misery.

My younger brother jumped up and got between us.  He had gotten taller than me over the last year or so.  He looked me in the eye and said “I love you, but you will never touch our mom again, do you understand me?  You will get help today or you will leave.  Now be the man I know you are and let’s get you some help.  I want my brother back.”

As our roles reversed that day, I found a new hero. My brother saved my life, my self-respect and my relationship with both him and our mom.