Drug Addiction Stories

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.

I sat there with the other inmates and watched her walk out the door. People come and go when you are in the tank. I had been here myself this time about seven or eight weeks. I had heard all of the stories, nothing was ever anyone’s fault. I certainly played the blame game myself, having been an LVN and losing my license and control of my life to my addiction to heroin. 

She was different, though. She was actually a few years older than me. She did not blame society, other people or anyone but herself for what she had done. Her name was Nora and she also held her head high, saying she would do the same thing again. When her story got out around the tank, some people scoffed. Most of us who had been in repeatedly knew the score. She was definitely a different breed.

I stole drugs from the clinic where I worked. She wrote several hot checks. I stole prescription sheets from the doctor I worked for and wrote bogus ’scripts for non-existent patients, then traded them off for heroin. She fed her kids with the checks she wrote at grocery stores. She said it was wrong, but when you have a sick kid, you can not work because of his medical care schedule and no one is around to help, you do what you have to when it comes to your kids.  It was her choice.  She made no excuses. 

I stole to feed my addiction. She stole to feed her kids. I blamed everything else. She blamed herself. I looked around at those of us in the tank who had blamed exes, parents, friends, bosses. She quietly went about her business the few days she was there reading. One of the long term women began picking on her. She ignored it. When a young girl came in terrified and was picked on, however, the mama bear in her came out and she stood up to the cell block bully bitch and would not back down. The bully went to the guard to complain and was shocked when the rest of the women stood up for Nora. They were sick of the bully behavior themselves.

When Nora left, those of us left behind had the usual feelings of jealousy, wishful thinking and resentment mixed with being happy for her. I watched her leave, took a breath and went over to the phone and called my own mother collect. “Mom, it’s me. When I get out next week, will you drive me over to the rehab center? It is my fault I am in here and on drugs. I want to get cleaned up for good this time.”

My name is Joe and I want to share my story with you. Looking for a job is hard when you are a drug addict, especially if you have a record. It can be done but still, it is hard and it is stressful. People are getting jobs and I am sitting here trying but the minute I tell them I did time for dealing and using, I get excuses and sometimes even a blunt “No thanks”.   Sometimes, I feel like I am still in jail. 

I guess if I had any advice to give someone who is on drugs it would be to get clean now, especially if you do not have a record because once you get one, it is gonna be hell trying to get a job. My mom gripes that I need one but she does not understand how hard it is to try to get one after the stupid stuff I have done.

About the third or fourth time someone tells you no or you feel a change in their attitude towards you, then you just do not feel like trying again, you know? But I am about to get evicted and I know my mom and dad do not really want me moving back in.

Sure, if I had it to do over again, I would do it differently. But what is more important, the fact that I am honest on my applications or the fact that I made a mistake in the past? Are you telling me that no one else made a mistake, that everyone else is perfect?

So what did I end up having to do? I ended up having to lie. I got a job at a fast food restaurant because when it asked on the application if had ever been convicted of a felony, I marked no. I cook burgers and fries now for a living but hey, at least it is something, you know? I am thirty years old and dealing with teenagers and when I see them messing up, I take them aside and try to explain to them that one of these days they will regret the stupid stuff they are doing but they just laugh, look on me like some old geezer (at 30!) and call me Holy Joe behind my back. Yeah, I have heard them do it.

Trust me, if you do not have a record, go get clean before you end up with something that is going to follow you around the rest of your life. If just one of you kids listens, I will know I did something right and made a difference in at least one person’s life to the good instead of all the damn negative stuff I did over the years. Call me Holy Joe, call me whatever, just think that maybe, this old geezer does know what he is talking about.  You do not want to live the rest of your life in a prison without bars.