Drug Addiction Stories & Info

When she moved in next door, I have to admit I was ecstatic.  She was a beautiful young teenager and the perfect age to be a babysitter for my young daughters who were in kindergarten and first grade.  As I took a pitcher of lemonade and some homemade cookies over to introduce myself the girls insisted on going with me.  April, the teenager smiled as she saw them coming over.  Her face lit up and as she confided in me after we got to know each other, she told me she had always wished for a sibling.

April soon became part of our family.  I learned that she lived with her mother and stepfather and that her mom had been unable to have more children following her birth.  I also picked up on her dislike for her stepfather but I did not know why.  April started babysitting for me on a regular basis and bonded with my two young girls.  She would even sleep over and as a single mom who worked two jobs I appreciated that.

One time, April’s stepfather said the girls could stay over but when I saw the look on April’s face I said it would be easier if they could just sleep in their own beds.  Over time, I began noticing changes in April.  She was eating like crazy, and things started to go missing around the house.  I told her she was too pretty to start eating like that but she said she actually hoped she could get fat so “he” would leave her the hell alone.  When I asked who he was, she would not answer.

One night I caught April in my purse. I had begun to suspect she was on something and she confessed it was heroin.  I walked her home and talked to her mother.  Her stepfather was at work at a local manufacturing plant.

A couple of days later, I heard screaming and went in the backyard in time to see April hitting her stepfather with a shovel.  My two daughters were in their yard.  April was screaming “Stay away from them, you asshole!  You are not going to touch them or I swear I will kill you, you son of a bitch!”

Someone heard the commotion and called the police.  When they got there, they arrested April for assault.  She kept begging me to keep the girls away from her stepfather.  It came out after she saw him with his arm around one of my daughters that she had been abused by him for several years.  The heroin was her way of dealing with it and getting through it.  However, she did love my daughters and could not stand the thought that he might hurt them too.

The charges against April were dropped and she was sent to a treatment program.  Her stepfather was charged with several counts relating to the sexual and physical abuse of April.  She moved in with some relatives in another town but she calls and lets me know how she is doing and the girls love talking to her on the phone.  I cringe when I think of that dirtbag stepfather of hers touching one of my little girls but I am thankful that in the end, April’s love for my girls stopped her nightmare of abuse and she got clean.

The holidays are starting.  I hate the holidays.  Ever since my friends and I went cruising that night ten years ago.  We were just having a good time. Why am I the only one who survived?  We were riding up and down Main Street checking out friends from school and having fun.  When Sheryl went to make the turn, that damn truck never stopped and everyone died but me.  Some of our friends sitting on the side of the road saw it.  I will never forget it.  We had won our big football game against our rivals the night before and everyone was in high spirits.  I never saw Sheryl and Patsy again.  By the time I was let out of the hospital, they were buried.

It isn’t fair!  I hate this time of year.  I know there are about ten messages on my phone from my parents and brother and friends, but I am not going home.  I got out of there as soon as I was old enough.  I do not date.  I barely function outside of work.  I just want to drink and forget about that night.  I take my pot, I take my vodka and to hell with the rest of the world from Friday afternoon to Monday morning.  I do my time as a teller and jump for joy every time there is a holiday so I can have an extra day off to be alone.

I feel so bad this time of year, so guilty.  Sometimes I think about killing myself on the anniversary of Sheryl and Patsy’s deaths.  How could this happen to them? We were all going to graduate and move to California so Sheryl could be an actress and Patsy could write and I could design buildings.  Now all I design are vodka bottles two high except they fall down.  I can’t even do that right.

I think maybe I will do it this year.  I will end it all.  I will just take myself out of this miserable existence  some prankster called fit to call life.  Freaking phone is ringing again.  I am not answering it.

OMG!  My sister in law said my brother needs me.  He is in the hospital!  What the hell?  I gotta go. I have to get there.  My brother?  He is the strongest person I know!   What the hell happened to him?  I have to call a freaking taxi!

One day I went to the corner store.  When I came out, a young man approached me for some money because he was hungry.  I noticed some marks on his arm and face.   I talked to the young man for a few minutes, and then I went back into the store to get him something to eat and a soft drink.  We talked for a while out in the parking lot and he told me his story.  He said he was homeless because his parents had found out he was using drugs.

I knew I could not give him money because as a drug addict, he would just spend it on drugs so I listened to him.  He told me he was down about as low as he could get and did not know what to do.  I told him there was help for him.  He was not the first young person to fight an addiction and he would not be the last.

How can I help a drug addict quit?  I can get him into a rehab clinic, let him get checked in and he can start therapy.  He seemed relieved and grateful as I called information and then the clinic.  They asked to talk to him and after a few minutes, to me.  We made arrangements for him to go to the rehab clinic right away.

I then talked to the young man and together we called his parents.  I told them who I was and that their son wanted to get help.  They were relieved as they had been trying to call him, but he had apparently traded his cell phone for drugs.

I will always believe I was meant to be at that store at that moment in time.  To this day I occasionally hear from that young man and his parents.  He is back on the right track and I am glad we ran into each other that fateful day a year ago.  He tells me he believes I was a gift to a drug addict.  I got a gift to, by helping him that day.