My Story
I was addicted to drugs from the time I was fifteen years old to thirty-three years old. I have five years in recovery now. No one, including myself, thought I would ever get off drugs. As they said in the treatment program where I lived for six months, “the money was not on me that I would make it.” But I did make it. Against all odds, I am alive today. Not only am I alive, but I am truly happy most of the time. My friends and family are in my life. I have an amazing career working in a treatment center where I help family members get their loved ones treatment. I have a car, an apartment, and a dog that I love more than I ever thought imaginable. And I write! I take a class once a week where I turn my life experiences into stories. These might seem like small things – things that I should take for granted because this is what most people are supposed to have. But I don’t take it for granted, not for one second. The fact that I have this life today is a miracle. You see, not only was I a drug addict, but I was addicted to heroin, and a chronic overdoser. I never set out to overdose. But I did – approximately twenty times. I was revived with naloxone (the antidote to an opiate overdose), with rescue breathing, and more than once 911 had to be called.
In the beginning, it was all about surviving my family life. When I was in my early teens, my mom moved in with a Vietnam Vet who was also an alcoholic. Due to untreated post traumatic stress disorder and alcoholic drinking, he was violent and caused a lot of terror and anxiety in our house. Many people I meet in recovery come from similar backgrounds. Some of us blame our parents and some of us don’t. I love my mom and know she did the best she could. But I also know that being raised in an extremely violent household affected me. By the time I discovered the tranquilizers in my mom’s medicine cabinet, I was already looking for an effective means of escape. With that first pill, for the first time in my life, I felt at peace and able to survive the violence and madness in my home without committing suicide.
If I had a feeling, any feeling, I would use drugs in order to minimize it. By the time I started using heroin, my main goal was to anesthetize myself because at that point I was always in so much pain. What led to my frequent overdosing was always pretty much the same. A lethal combination of drugs in a quantity larger than my body could handle. Like many addicts, I used whatever drugs I could get my hands on and always used as much as possible. Consequently, my tolerance was quite high causing me to use more and more.
There are a million horrible things about an overdose, but looking back, the worst part is this: the person who suffers the most at the time of an overdose is never the person overdosing. The person overdosing is unconscious, blissfully unaware of the panic and hysteria going on around them. Of all the times I overdosed, I never once thought to get help. I am sure people suggested it to me, in fact I remember people insisting that I get help. One time, I woke up in the emergency room and was told by the doctor that I was lucky to be alive and unless I quit using, I would end up in a place far worse than the ER, namely the morgue. His warning did not faze me.
I was humiliated because my friends were worried that I would die, but the need to use drugs was stronger, and as soon as they released me from the hospital, I went back to where I was before. I wish I could say that after my last overdose I “saw the light.” But by the end, my drug use was so out of control and I was so full of despair, death seemed like the least of my problems. Every day was about getting more drugs. Like a lot of women I had to trade sex for drugs. I did all the things I said I would never do. I hated myself and everyone around me. I did not care that I was covered in bruises and that my hair was falling out. I did not care that my arms were scarred with track marks. Despite all this insanity, I knew I was going to die if I kept going. Either someone was going to kill me out on the streets or I was going to overdose again and not survive like my best friend, girlfriend, and countless acquaintances.
I feel it’s important to mention here that even though I was strung out for those eighteen years, I did a lot of amazing things. I graduated from college with honors and was the only one in my family to go to college. I married the love of my life. I helped raise a boy born with HIV after his mother, a close friend of mine, died of AIDS. I also co-founded an HIV prevention program for drug users where I served as director for 13 years. I don’t know how I was able to hold it together so well in the first half of my drug using experience. Somehow, I was able to balance all the “normal” things I was doing in my life with the heroin addiction.
Towards the end, however, I was completely consumed by drugs. But even then, there was still a small part of me that wanted to live. It was this part of me that went to my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Here I ran into someone I knew from my time working in the HIV prevention center, and who I trusted enough to ask for help. By some complete miracle he was able to get me into treatment right away. Because I now work in the treatment industry, I know what an extraordinary thing that was. Most addicts can’t get help when they need it unless they have the financial means to pay for it. Like most addicts I didn’t have any money, but was able to get help despite this fact, and am alive today because of it.
Believe it or not, entering treatment was the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Infinitely harder than being strung-out. Once the drugs left my system, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. Living without drugs for someone who has used them their whole lives feels the way I imagine a fish out of water would feel. I was consumed with panic and felt like I was going to die every minute of every day. But the longer I stayed in the treatment program and let the people who worked there love me, the easier it got. They taught me the importance of reaching out for help by getting a sponsor and working the twelve steps of Narcotics Anonymous. They taught me that I could survive feelings, no matter how big or small, if I share them with someone else who has been where I have been. I learned what it means to be in the “flow of life”: to have a job, pay my rent, walk my dog – all the seemingly mundane things, that for someone like me have become the source of an incredible sense of accomplishment and serenity.
I am clearly not the same person I was five years ago. I am full of light. I laugh and I smile. I am not my pain and my past. My childhood and the ensuing years of addiction do not define me. I was lucky to get a second chance at a life that I never dreamed was possible. In a way I am grateful for these past experiences, and have come to terms with it, as the lessons I learned in the process are what allows me to be of help to other addicts in recovery.
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