Drug Addiction Stories

As we sat on the bus that day, the stranger next to me and I, my surroundings were not really of importance to me. I didn’t realize I was crying until she leaned over and asked me “Are you all right?” I nodded quietly. I didn’t tell this stranger that no, I really wasn’t. I didn’t tell her that all I wanted was the courage to go somewhere and quietly commit suicide. 

I had no family. Mine had died years earlier in a tornado. This time of year was always hard for me. I had gone into foster care and then into society on my own the day after my 18^th birthday. Some people like storms. I hated them with a passion. I was going back to my home town to try to have the courage to die so I could be with my family again.

The woman next to me began to talk. She told me she had an anniversary coming up that was important to her. I cringed. I did not want to hear about something good. I had an anniversary coming up to and all it was filled with was heartache. I just wanted to know how to get the guts together to do myself in so I could join my family.

She talked about work and life and being on drugs. She talked about losing friends to drugs, about losing her home because she had spent all her money on drugs. Her friends that had not died from overdoses were in the pen or she had lost touch with them once she had gotten clean after making a promise to one of them before he went to prison.  She realized she needed to just that because she had been in a tornado of her own making with her addiction.

I turned to her and asked if she knew where to get some of those drugs. I was hoping maybe I could take something and have one of those overdoses she had mentioned. But she told me I didn’t need drugs, that I was a pretty young girl and had my whole life ahead of me. I told her I didn’t.

That’s when I confessed everything to the stranger on the bus beside me. I told her about the tornado and foster care and counting the days until I was 18 so I could go back to my home town and finally be with my family by way of suicide. When she told me she was from that same home town, I was shocked. The anniversary was the same. Her only child had died at a sleepover that evening.

We talked all the way. We went to the cemetery. It was the same one for her daughter and my family. We talked for a long time. She told me how she had turned to drugs but how she had been clean for a year now. She told me suicide nor drugs were the right thing to do.

She invited me to stay with her as she was starting over also. That was two years ago. Today I am in college and she has become a true “mom” to me. Tornado season still bothers both of us but we know that we have each other. “Mom” is getting married soon and I am seeing a great guy I met here at school. “Mom” told me one time that she thinks her daughter and my family brought us back together. I think she’s right.

My name is Joe and I want to share my story with you. Looking for a job is hard when you are a drug addict, especially if you have a record. It can be done but still, it is hard and it is stressful. People are getting jobs and I am sitting here trying but the minute I tell them I did time for dealing and using, I get excuses and sometimes even a blunt “No thanks”.   Sometimes, I feel like I am still in jail. 

I guess if I had any advice to give someone who is on drugs it would be to get clean now, especially if you do not have a record because once you get one, it is gonna be hell trying to get a job. My mom gripes that I need one but she does not understand how hard it is to try to get one after the stupid stuff I have done.

About the third or fourth time someone tells you no or you feel a change in their attitude towards you, then you just do not feel like trying again, you know? But I am about to get evicted and I know my mom and dad do not really want me moving back in.

Sure, if I had it to do over again, I would do it differently. But what is more important, the fact that I am honest on my applications or the fact that I made a mistake in the past? Are you telling me that no one else made a mistake, that everyone else is perfect?

So what did I end up having to do? I ended up having to lie. I got a job at a fast food restaurant because when it asked on the application if had ever been convicted of a felony, I marked no. I cook burgers and fries now for a living but hey, at least it is something, you know? I am thirty years old and dealing with teenagers and when I see them messing up, I take them aside and try to explain to them that one of these days they will regret the stupid stuff they are doing but they just laugh, look on me like some old geezer (at 30!) and call me Holy Joe behind my back. Yeah, I have heard them do it.

Trust me, if you do not have a record, go get clean before you end up with something that is going to follow you around the rest of your life. If just one of you kids listens, I will know I did something right and made a difference in at least one person’s life to the good instead of all the damn negative stuff I did over the years. Call me Holy Joe, call me whatever, just think that maybe, this old geezer does know what he is talking about.  You do not want to live the rest of your life in a prison without bars.

Hi, my name is Amber and Donna is my substance abuse counselor.  I tell her often that she saved my life six years ago but she tells me it was someone else who did; someone very special.  You see, I had been on drugs since I was thirteen and at twenty gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.  He was hooked on cocaine, though, and that was totally my fault.  They put him in neonatal intensive care and then told me he would be going to a foster home.  I would be going to jail.

I remember I flipped out.  I screamed and fought them from the hospital to the detention center.  After finding out my son and I were high on cocaine, a search of my purse found a bag.  I was arrested.  I kept screaming while in a holding cell and eventually a guard came in with this woman in her mid-thirties or so.  There was something about this woman and for the first time since my arrest, I quieted down and really listened to someone.

Donna asked me some hard soul-searching questions that night.  She told me she was not a lawyer and not a guard but a substance abuse counselor and whatever I said to her would be confidential.  I remember I looked her in the eye that night and told her I just wanted to kill myself because I had lost the one person I had ever loved.  I fell in love with my son the moment I first held him and looked into his eyes.

Donna made arrangements with the judge to get me into a withdrawal treatment program and helped me recover from drugs.  I was put on probation for five years.  I have been off probation about eight months now.  Donna helped me see how I could fight the urge for drugs and encouraged me to volunteer to help others when community service was made part of my probation.  Because of her and my family and friends, I was able to get my son back.  It has been six years now and I thank God and Donna and the drug rehab center I went to every day that I can hold my son in my arms and put him to bed every night.