Drug Addiction Stories

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.

Sometimes people do know that they have a problem with addiction. I knew I had a problem. I was hooked on my pain medication. Several years ago, I had a car accident. Every time I was taken off the pain medication, I claimed a recurrence, whether it was true or not. I even went to a couple of different doctors in other counties, even one across the state line.

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.

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.