I have been on cocaine for years. I was married for sixteen and my husband got high with me, but then he cleaned up. He wanted a divorce because I would not get clean with him. We had two kids, a daughter 15 and a son 12. We were both fighting for custody. One night my daughter was injured in a car accident while out with friends. She lost a lot of blood and we both donated to help her. We found out that night that my husband was not her father.
That meant one thing. Our cocaine dealer from back then was her father. I tried to find him only to find out that he was dead. He had died four years earlier from an overdose. My ex told me he still wanted her, he wanted both of them. Then he asked me if I really wanted to keep going the way I was until she was essentially biologically an orphan. That was my wake up call.
I went into a residential treatment program. My ex came to a session once with me and told me with the counselor sitting there that he did not condemn me as we had both been on cocaine. The blessing of our daughter far exceeded how she truly got here. Yet he got clean and he insisted that our children also deserved a mother who was clean.
I was in the residential program for three months. It was hard but after I detoxed I began to understand what I had done not only to myself, but to my children. They never invited their friends over because they were embarrassed and now that I was clean, I understood that and didn’t blame them for feeling that way.
I am in aftercare now and I attend my meetings regularly. I have a job making minimum wage at a fast-food restaurant but I have barely worked my entire life so that is a blessing.
My ex still has the kids. I get them every other weekend and we are slowly re-connecting. We decided to tell our daughter about the past and instead of hating us, she has been really mature. Her father assured her she would always be his baby girl. I told her the dealer who was her biological father had died and she has no interest in finding out anything about him. Her daddy will always be her daddy to her.
Although we are divorced and will never get back together, my ex and I have maintained a friendship through which we care for our children. They live with him and I maintain a small one-bedroom apartment, but they come to visit and I am grateful that we all have been given a second chance at life and as a family.
My mom was always proud when people told her how lucky she was to have the perfect son. I wasn’t perfect but she was a single mom and she needed a lot of help. I was the oldest of three and she worked two jobs so I had to take care of my younger brother and sister a lot.
The neighborhood we moved to following my parents’ divorce wasn’t the greatest but it was what she could afford. I quickly became friends with some guys who introduced me one night to cocaine. Before too long, I was sneaking out my bedroom window and barely making it back in before sunrise. My mom never had a clue.
Or so I thought.
One night I climbed through the window just as my bedroom light came on. My mom was sitting on my bed. “David, you want to tell me what is going on?” she asked. I started to make excuses but my mom and I had always been pretty close. I hung my head in shame and finally confessed. She told me she had already suspected. She hugged me and told me we would get through it together.
The next morning my mom talked to me and my brother and sister. She told us we were a family and when one of us needed help we were a team. She said I had helped her a lot and now it was her turn, their turn, to help me. Then she went to answer the door. It was a man from a nearby drug rehab center. He came in and talked to my family and told me that I was only sixteen and needed to get help before it was too late.
I was in the program for three months. My family also sought help to better understand what I and they as my family, were all going through. That was two years ago. To this day I have been clean. The other day I changed a lady’s tire for her while at the grocery store with my mom. The lady looked at my mom and told her how lucky she was to have the perfect son. My mind went immediately to my time on cocaine but my mom hugged me and said to the lady “You’re right. He is the perfect son because he is perfect for me.” You know what? I have the perfect mom.
Hi, my name is Amber and Donna is my substance abuse counselor. I tell her often that she saved my life six years ago but she tells me it was someone else who did; someone very special. You see, I had been on drugs since I was thirteen and at twenty gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. He was hooked on cocaine, though, and that was totally my fault. They put him in neonatal intensive care and then told me he would be going to a foster home. I would be going to jail.
I remember I flipped out. I screamed and fought them from the hospital to the detention center. After finding out my son and I were high on cocaine, a search of my purse found a bag. I was arrested. I kept screaming while in a holding cell and eventually a guard came in with this woman in her mid-thirties or so. There was something about this woman and for the first time since my arrest, I quieted down and really listened to someone.
Donna asked me some hard soul-searching questions that night. She told me she was not a lawyer and not a guard but a substance abuse counselor and whatever I said to her would be confidential. I remember I looked her in the eye that night and told her I just wanted to kill myself because I had lost the one person I had ever loved. I fell in love with my son the moment I first held him and looked into his eyes.
Donna made arrangements with the judge to get me into a withdrawal treatment program and helped me recover from drugs. I was put on probation for five years. I have been off probation about eight months now. Donna helped me see how I could fight the urge for drugs and encouraged me to volunteer to help others when community service was made part of my probation. Because of her and my family and friends, I was able to get my son back. It has been six years now and I thank God and Donna and the drug rehab center I went to every day that I can hold my son in my arms and put him to bed every night.
