Drug Addiction Stories

Even today I hear the whispers as I entered the classroom that morning.  It was 8^th grade and I had spent the summer with my cousins.  I had “blossomed” as we said back then.  By lunchtime, the whispers and giggles were no longer hidden as the girls glared at me and one of the more obnoxious boys came up to me and flat out said “So Dianne, where did you get the falsies?”  Without hesitation, I lifted my t-shirt and asked “Do these look fake to you?” 

That began three years of hell that I have not forgotten to this day.  I dreaded going to school but with both my parents working 12 hour shifts at the local factory, I did not want to burden them with my problems at school.  They let us know enough that we were burdens as it was, me and my two younger brothers. 

It was just a few weeks after school started that another girl, another “outcast” stopped by my locker and asked if I wanted to hang out some time.  That was how I got introduced to pot.  I loved how it made me feel able to drift away from the teasing at school.  During high school, we got into cocaine. I did my best to try to hide my figure and getting hooked on drugs helped me stay skinny but it didn’t hide certain attributes. 

I got clean when my aunt came to stay with us after her husband died.  She was alone as they had never had children and it did not take long for her to figure out what was going on, even though her brother (my dad) and sister-in-law were clueless to what had been going on. 

My aunt saved me in two ways.  She helped me clean up my act and get off drugs, but she also showed me what going to bat for someone means.  She had come to school to pick me up for a “girl’s day out” when classes were over and that same, obnoxious boy from the falsies statement three years earlier was making remarks about me again, only he had gotten louder and meaner over the years. 

Without batting an eye, my aunt looked at him and smiled.  “Are you Jerry B’s son?”  He nodded yes.  “I thought so.  He used to tease me all the time, too.  In fact, I remember the note he gave me asking me to go to the drive-in with him.  I turned him down flat.  You are definitely your father’s son, teasing the girl you are crushing on.  Just like your father, you are going about it all wrong.  She doesn’t date jerks, either.” 

The other kids laughed and he turned red.  Sure enough, he did end up asking me to prom a year later.  I said no without hesitation.  They say boys tease girls they like?  All I got out of remembering those years is how he acted that day in 8^th grade and a drug addiction that could have ended everything for me if not for the love and caring of my aunt.  Today, I am happily married with two daughters about to start junior high.  I am very actively involved in their lives.  I’m not going to let them be bullied by some boy who doesn’t know how to express himself in a positive way.  I heard the boy from my own adolescent years just had his third wife file for divorce.  Seems the girl I was back then got the better end of the deal after all.

I hated school. I felt like I never fit in. I just wanted to hide. I went to a school in a small town about ten miles outside of the city but did not hang out with anyone. I made a few friends in the city at the skating rink and that was where I liked being the most. One Friday evening after a harder week than usual at school with the kids putting me down, I went around the side of the skating rink to the alley where everyone smoked cigarettes. It was there that I got high for the first time.

Being sixteen, I was finally able to go to work in the city and began spending every penny I had on getting high and skating. I was able to forget for a little while just how much I hated school and my fellow students. Then one day my mom found out and took my car away and made me stop working and grounded me from going into the city to the skating rink.

I was devastated. I wanted to skate, I wanted to get high, I wanted to forget. It was then that the suicidal thoughts started coming into my head. As the other girls made fun of me behind my back, as the boys laughed at me as I walked by, I knew I could not take much more.

One Friday morning, I woke up, determined that this would be my last day. I had no friends at school, I had lost my privileges of going into the city and skating and to me there was simply no reason to keep living. Then the most amazing thing happened.

One of the girls came up to me after the others were doing their usual snickering and insulting. She smiled at me, looked me in the eye and said “Hi, Stephanie, have a great day” and gave me a high-five and walked away. At lunch she invited me to sit with her and her friends. After a bit of awkwardness, the other girls warmed up and when they found out I loved skating, they invited me to go to a skating rink that was in a different neighborhood than the one I went to downtown in the city. I began skating with them on the weekends and stayed away from pot after that, thanks largely in part to Lisa’s (that was her name) encouragement that I could do without it.

Lisa never realized that she literally saved my life that day twenty years ago. I was too scared to tell her back then, afraid she might think I was a freak after all. It wasn’t until a few months ago when I ran into her at church that I finally confessed what she really did for me.

We moved to Arizona when I was thirteen.  I hated leaving my old school but my dad was in the military and when he gets orders, we move.  I did not know anyone but eventually became friends with a guy down the street.  We began hanging out at the basketball court and the base pool over that summer and eventually I started looking forward to school in the fall.

One night he told me he knew where we could get something.  I asked what and he said, “You’re kidding, right?”  Not wanting to seem like a baby, I said “Yeah, dude, just messing with you.”   We went over to a friend of his who’s mom was out partying that night and I got high for the first time.  My anxiety about a new school and making new friends disappeared.

Over the next couple of years, my grades were acceptable but not at the point they had been.  My dad kept telling me I could do better.  My mom offered to get me a tutor.  I just wanted to get high.

Then one night as we were riding around, my buddy having just got his license, we got stopped by the local cops.  They could sense something funny about my friend and searched the car, finding the pot we had just bought.  They arrested us and called our parents.

That was three years ago.  My parents were really disappointed in me but they stood by me.  They insisted I take responsibility and they got me into a drug treatment program.  My dad ended up retiring this year and we have settled into the community.

I just started my freshman year of college and I also help at the drug rehab center my parents took me to three years ago.  I am interested in becoming a counselor and helping other kids who find themselves where I was as a teenager.  The counselors there seemed to understand and did not put me down while at the same time not letting me use excuses.  When we get into drugs, we need to take responsibility.

I heard horror stories of kids who’s parents turned their backs on them or were into drugs themselves.  I was thankful even more that my parents were there for me, and it made me want to help those who did not have a strong family unit like I did.   My parents are both supporting me in my career of choice and my mom thinks I am going to make a great counselor.