Drug Addiction Stories

Robin was beautiful in high school. She wasn’t the most popular girl but she had some friends. She wasn’t into sports or ROTC. She liked to party. She drank and got high. She had a single mom who partied all the time and we had it made because her house was known as Party Central.

I would drink now and then with Robin but for some reason, I never got into trying the drugs. Maybe it was because when I saw her doing them, something bad always happened. She would fight with her boyfriend, fight with her mom, get in trouble at school for not turning an assignment in. With Robin, life was never dull but it wasn’t always fun, either.

The summer between our junior and senior years, I went to stay with relatives. I loved being with my cousins and thought it was cool that my mom let me. She had an ulterior motive, though, one filled with love. She didn’t want me hanging out with Robin all summer.

When senior year started, Robin wasn’t there. She dropped out. She was pregnant. The baby was born with birth defects because of Robin’s history of drug and alcohol use. I went to see her and the baby in the hospital. My heart broke as Robin said she couldn’t wait to leave (the baby would have to stay a bit longer than her) because she was “dying for a joint”.

I stopped being around Robin altogether after that. Sure, we would run into each other from time to time. We each ended up having three children. Two of hers had medical or mental problems related to Robin’s drug use.

A few weeks ago I ran into Robin at the convenience store. I was literally shocked. She is actually a few months younger than me but she looked older than my own mother does. My fiance was shocked when I introduced the two of them. As we got back into his car, he said “That’s the friend from high school you thought was so pretty?” I said yes, she had truly been beautiful.

Even now, at 40, I am learning lessons from high school. My fiance had taken a picture of us standing together with his camera phone. We showed it to my daughter and her friends. He told them “If I had met your mom and this lady the same night, it would have been no contest. Your mom is beautiful.” The girls saw what drinking and drugs can do to age a beautiful young girl so that 40 looks so much older. While I felt somewhat sad about what had happened to Robin, I was grateful that my daughter and her friends could learn from it without doing so the hard way.

Sometimes I look back over that time and I cry. I remember Janelle and to this day I feel like I failed her. I even get angry, at her, at myself and at the people who make decisions about who can and can not get a donor transplant. 

I met Janelle through my daughter. She was the aunt of one of my daughter’s friends. Because Janelle and her brother had both been adopted by their parents, there were no DNA matches in the family when Janelle’s kidneys failed. My daughter came home upset because her friend’s aunt was in the hospital. She was close to Janelle because she lived in the house with my daughter’s friend and her family.

When the idea first occurred to me, I thought about it long and hard. Then I talked to my doctor. I was healthy and I could donate a kidney if I matched Janelle. It turned out that I did. I then went through the process of the mental evaluation and passed it. We were all delighted that I matched, although my daughter was a bit concerned. Still, I reassured her that I was healthy enough to do this.

It never happened. Why? Because Janelle was turned down. Her kidney failure was due to drug and alcohol use. It turned out that she was still drinking and heroin was found in her system during a blood test. The transplant was denied. A few months later, Janelle passed away.

Her niece and my daughter were heartbroken. Even as a supposedly mature adult, I did not understand why she was turned down when the decision was mine because of her being who she was. I had long been a registered organ donor. This would have helped someone loved by my daughter’s friend.

I felt like I had failed Janelle. I even felt like she had failed in this. In the end, though, I knew I could not continue to dwell on it. I do what I can just as I always have, I donate blood and plasma as needed, I volunteer in my community and I keep my organ donation registration updated every time I re-do my driver’s license.

Still, once in a while, I think about Janelle and I have talked openly and honestly with my daughter about the long term effects of drugs and alcohol. She seems to be a well-adjusted young lady and she proved it the other day when she told me she knew I had tried to help her friend’s aunt and for that, she loved me even more. Then she told me that the two of them had made a pact to never get involved with drugs or alcohol no matter what the occasion or what type of peer pressure they came in contact with.

I whispered in my heart to Janelle that she was a hero in all of this because in the end, she had given her niece and my daughter both a priceless gift in their decision. For that, I will always be thankful to Janelle.

My husband saw the look of panic on my face when I came out of the bathroom. “What’s wrong?” he asked. I motioned for him to go in the bathroom with me and look out the window. Across the street was parked a familiar car, my ex boyfriend’s.

This would not have been a big deal except that seeing his car brought back memories of a time when I felt like a babysitter for a man five years older than me. We only dated a little while but he drank non-stop and mixed it with different drugs. I begged him repeatedly to stop before he ended up hurting himself. I hated the situation and tried to end the relationship only to have him overdose one night. I called 911 and he barely made it. The day I took him home from the hospital, I told him I could not remain in a relationship with someone who did drugs and drank the way he did. I had never been into drugs myself and would not see someone who put himself at risk like that. He hollered at me that I was abandoning him when he needed me most. He walked towards me with a look on his face like he wanted to hit me but a knock at the front door stopped him. It was his brother and I quickly exited his house while they were talking.

Shortly afterwards, I met the wonderful man who would become my husband but seeing my ex boyfriend’s car brought back painful memories. My husband understood and held me close, urging me to move away from the window.

A little while later, we went to leave our home to go out for an early Sunday dinner. We saw my ex boyfriend leaving our neighbor’s house. He was carrying a beer and stumbled as he walked towards his car. My husband looked at me, then got out of our truck and walked across the street. He stood there talking to my ex boyfriend until his neighbor came out. My husband then mentioned that he was worried because we had seen him stumble. The neighbor then took his keys away and convinced him to go back in and sleep it off on the couch.

I squeezed my husband’s hand as we drove to the restaurant, grateful that I had the greatest guy in the world by my side, a man who even stepped up and got involved even when it concerned an ex boyfriend just so he would not hurt himself or someone else. The car was still there when we returned home but gone the next morning when we got up to get ready for work.

I am grateful I ended the relationship but still worried to this day that my ex boyfriend will eventually kill himself or someone else. He did not listen to me or get help like I begged him to back then and it looks like he still hasn’t to this day.