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.

I remember being a little girl and my mom coming by and spending an hour with me at my grandpa’s house in Tennessee. She promised she would come get me some day but she never did. She was always out getting high and when she did come by, there was always someone new with her. When my grandpa passed away I thought she would come get me then but instead I went to live with my uncle and his wife in Kentucky. My mom did not even make it to the funeral. I remember I cried as much over that as over my grandpa.

I remember being a teenager and hanging out with my friends after the game. I boy I liked asked if I wanted to walk down by the lake with him. I said yes. We walked down there and he offered me a beer. Then he asked me if I wanted to get high. I said no. I remember my crush on him went away after that.

I remember high school graduation. My uncle and my aunt were there. Even though I had not heard from her in years, I looked out over the audience to see if my mom was there. I remember being upset that she did not care.

I remember college and my first job over the summer as an intern. I told my uncle I wanted to hire a private investigator to look for my mom. My uncle said he would take care of it. She was his little sister and he was worried, too. I remember telling him I loved him and was glad he was my uncle.

I remember when the report came in. My mother’s picture matched an old Jane Doe file out in California. They requested DNA from my uncle and myself and it was a match. My mom had been dead of an overdose since about a week before my grandpa’s service. I remember my uncle holding me.

I remember feeling I now had closure because I know what happened to my mom. I also remember the years I felt abandoned. My uncle set me up with counseling and I am doing better but I do not know if I ever want to have kids. I do not like being around anyone who gets high and yet I know some of them are absolutely wonderful people who just stumbled a bit. To this day, if someone asks me if I want to smoke a joint or “party”, I remember my mom and I say no.