Drug Addiction Stories

I grew up being in the shadow of others. I was Donny’s sister, David’s daughter, Margaret’s daughter, Lisa’s friend. I was never just Tory. I was second to everyone else. I came up with a great idea for our history paper when Lisa and I were in junior high. Even as Lisa stood there and told our teacher the idea was mine, she applauded Lisa for “allowing” me to share the credit. 

In high school, Lisa was out sick for a week with the flu and I was invited by another girl, Stacy, to go to a party. ME. Not Lisa, not Donny, me. So I went. It was there that I became acquainted with a new world. It was there I met crystal meth.

When Lisa came back to school, she noticed the change in me immediately. I was dressing “goth” she said. I told her she was just jealous. She warned me to keep away from my new friends. I told her she was being spiteful because they wanted to be friends with ME.

As the days went by, I got more involved with crystal meth and my new friends. One Tuesday afternoon, I got home about an hour late from school to find my family, Lisa and a lady there. They told me they cared about me. Not because I was just a sister, just a daughter, just a friend, but because I was Tory. They said they missed me. They called it an intervention.

The lady told me she was a counselor and that it was not too late to get off crystal meth. She said I had a wonderful family and best friend who did not wait until I was hurt or in jail to get help. It had only been about six weeks. They were not going to take chances with me. As soon as they confirmed I was involved with drugs, they sought help.

Lisa was one of the speakers at our high school graduation two years later. She had been on the honor roll all four years. She told the audience she would not have maintained her high grades if not for the creative and inspirational ideas of one person, her best friend, Tory. She looked over at me and everyone stood up giving both of us a standing ovation. My parents were beaming from ear to ear even though I had not won any awards.

I am Donny’s sister, David’s daughter, Margaret’s daughter and Lisa’s best friends. My name is Tory and I am the luckiest girl on earth.

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.

Paula was the oldest of the five of us had always been a little different from the rest of us. She got into drugs while still in high school. We watched our parents get her out of situation after situation, everything from going to jail to accidental overdoses to relationships with guys. Each time she fell apart they would pick up the pieces.

I found myself getting aggravated with Paula’s antics as we got older. I had goals for my life and they did not include bailing her out and rushing to her aid in the middle of the night. One evening we had a particularly harsh conversation, much like the one I was witnessing between my neighbor and her brother. I called Paula a nut-case and told her the family did not exist solely to take care of her and her mess-ups. She was my older sister and I was embarrassed that she had no common sense.

Just three days later, Paula either accidentally or purposely  overdosed on drugs. She called our parents and told them what she had done only it was too late when help arrived. She told them on the phone that she could never see herself getting her life straightened out. She just wanted to end it but that if she could get help one last time she would stop.  My parents drove quickly over there while callling 911 from a cell phone.  To this day I feel bad about chewing her out but my time in therapy after her suicide helped me to understand I was having a normal reaction that day long ago.

My neighbor and her brother looked at each at each other.  She was crying and he looked like someone had just awaken him from a bad dream.  He walked over to her and kneeled down and said he would get help.  He told her that he never wanted her to get a call after an argument between them due to drugs.

I helped them get in touch with a drug treatment center.  Just the other day, I got a card from her brother telling me thanks because he had been clean for six months.  I smiled and in my heart thanked Paula for helping me to help another brother/sister relationship.  I know she was there in spirit, too, and that it was Paula’s gift to me as well as to them.