Drug Addiction Stories & Info

To a group of fathers that lie and cheat on their partners and spend the families money on drugs and alcohol.

This is the wrong road to go down. Be honest with you and your family or partner.  Do your best to help your children become morale and decent.  Enjoy your time with your children and partner, take them out to the park or beach, buy them some icecream, fries or pop.

These are the memories that will last with the family and make you a better loving father and honest with your partner.

JAMES, Father of four

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I am a mother who has three teenage children.

6 years ago I became addicted to narcotics prescribed to me for a back injury. I began abusing these drugs.  My drug use escalated quickly, and my parenting skills deteriorated just as rapidly. I am hoping that by explaining my story that I may be able to help you avoid some of the heartache that I have experienced.

Although I swore to myself that I would never forsake my children for the drugs, I soon found myself doing just that. I stopped being the attentive, involved, loving, caring, responsible, content mother that I had been for many years. I was able to hide the drug use for awhile, saying I was just tired, etc, but just never feeling 100% “there” for the kids. Then it proressed to that I started sleeping late in the mornings, neglecting to get them up for school or to make their lunches.  I was once actively involved in heading up every organization or team that they joined, and I quit doing all that because I was exhausting my body with the drug use.  I had no energy to involve myself with their lives, and soon found myself losing touch with what they were interested in or what their lives outside were like. I became very selfish, irritable and emotional. I stopped trying to even appear interested in them or what they had to say. I made errors, lost things, forgot to cook dinners, left them home unattended for extended periods of time, or spent excessive periods of time sleeping off the effects of the drugs while they were home, leaving them there to amuse themselves.  Eventually they would start looking after themselves as they couldn’t count on me. All these drugs did was make me tired and zombie-like, wanting to sleep. Not the picture of the mother I once was at all.

The end result has my life looking and feeling like a war-zone.  My children were taken out of my custody by my ex-husband who by this time had filed for divorce.  My eldest, a son, and I had so many heated and violent arguments and battles during the time of my drug abuse that he has completely cut me out of his life.  I don’t blame him one bit.   I have not spoken to him in 2 and a half years.  Thankfully I still have my two younger children who are still present in my life, but of course treat me as I deserve: without trust and at arms length to some degree.
I have been in rehab now for 6 months and am working towards building these relationships back up.  It has been the most difficult thing I have ever done and I have no idea how it will all turn out but I have hope and help from great people.

My children used to be the center of my world. Drugs took their place.  Not anymore.  I AM BACK and stronger than ever!!

I am hoping that by reading this you might see somewhere in there a little bit of anything that might resemble your life,  and then see what could happen, once the drug use gets out of control.  And believe me, it does get out of control. I managed to be the ‘weekend warrior’ drug user for a while,  always thinking I could control it, but it doesn’t take long until drugs are running your life.

L.V.

I remember the lady at the Youth Center like it was yesterday. I was a struggling single mom with two sons wreaking havoc as their way of acting out when their dad left. She was working there and come to find out, her kids went there as well. One day my younger son had a particularly rough day at school and was on the verge of being expelled. I went straight to the Youth Center as soon as I got off, ready to take the bull by the horns and whip some sense into him 

When I got there, though, he was putting some toys away and the lady at the Youth Center was givning him a high five. I watched him impulsively hug her and say, “Thank you, Miss Momica!” Wait a minute, this was Miss Momica? This was the lady who had transferred in from another state and had the kids all excited about soccer in the upcoming season?

I went over and talked to her and she really looked happy to see me. She told me my two boys talked about me often and she was glad to meet me. I told her about Johnny being called in to the principal’s office and she said he had told her about that. She said he had written a note apologizing to the principal and asking if he could make amends for throwing the rock at his car. She had called the principal and he was going to let Johnny make his apology and give him another chance.

I told her I left my husband because he was doing drugs and that one night Johnny had gotten into them. I couldn’t take chances like that with my kids. Now, I felt like I was never home, I was in a job I hated and I just wanted to be with them.

The next day Miss Momica called me and asked me if I was interested in working in the office at the Youth Center. She said I could also work with the kids in the afternoon if I wanted. I immediately said yes, making one of the best decisions of my life. I then asked her why the kids call her Miss Momica. She laughed and said her name was Miss Monica to the kids at the Youth Center till they heard her three kids call her Miss Momica. Then it stuck for all of them.

That was back in the 90s. Miss Momica and I became good friends and she told me she had worked in the Juvenile Division in California and decided to try to stay connected with her kids. She then went into any job that had to do with being hands on for her own kids and was the soccer coach for years at the Youth Center till her husband retired and they moved off to Alabama. I still see her influence on Johnny today; he volunteers with younger kids at the Youth Center. His favorite sport.  Soccer.