- Drugs
I believe it started when my parents separated. Being such a daddy’s girl back then, it really shook me up when he wasn’t in my life as much. The insults going back and forth between my parents and seeing the pain they were in upset me. It felt like my whole world came crashing down. I felt like I’d been lied to and I resented everyone for it, so I started rebelling. It’s common for teenagers to rebel, but for me it started a bit earlier than normal. I was around 11 when I started not listening to anyone and getting angry very easily. I felt like no one understood me and people saw me as being spoiled, which didn’t help because I actually felt the opposite of spoiled. Sometimes, the obvious isn’t so obvious. I was really hurt, and people didn’t seem to notice that. So I started staying out late, smoking cigarettes and hanging out with the wrong people. That was my life for a while.
Living on my own at 15 seemed like the coolest thing at the time. My place was the hang out spot. Old friends admired it, and new friends multiplied. But they weren’t really friends, were they? They were just more people taking advantage of a spot to hang out while getting high. Even though, I was actually pretty strict about whom I let come in my place. I was selling drugs at the time and didn’t want to attract attention by having known criminals seen coming out of my place. I had all the drugs I wanted and I felt on top of the world. I didn’t have to depend on anyone for my next pill or my next line. I had a nice and clean place. I felt like I still had control of my life. Oh, how fast things change. Nothing last forever, as they say. I went from being able to stop using and go to bed, to experiencing the never-ending feeling of wanting more. I accumulated debt, and my selling career was over. I was now faced with not having a steady supply to feed my addiction and I realized how much I needed it. My body cried out for more. The aches and pains took over any control I had over my mind.
I started doing Percocet once in a while at 13 years old. Back before anyone knew what the pills were in my small town, I got my hands on a few. But thankfully, I ended up moving to my dad’s before I could get addicted. Once at my dad’s, I stuck with smoking weed and doing ecstasy for a while. I first did coke when my dad offered me some at age 14. Not knowing I was addicted yet, I moved back to my mom’s. What I didn’t know was that my addiction would follow me wherever I went. I ended up dating someone who sold coke and I got even more addicted since I did a large amount every day. We also started doing OxyContin once in a while so we would be able to relax and go to bed after a night of doing coke. At that point, I couldn’t really go very long without coke but I could go without oxy pills. That was until my dad got me a connection to start selling the pills. Once I started selling, I did so much of them that my body really couldn’t go without them.
Now that I was fully addicted to coke and OxyContin, it was hard to say which I was most addicted too. As time went on, it became more and more obvious that my body needed the oxy and my mind wanted the coke. Once I was high on coke, nothing else mattered. But once the high went away, my body screamed for an oxy. I was able to go without coke way longer then I could go without oxy. I’d even quit coke for a bit here and there. But OxyContin was the one thing that I couldn’t just stop because the withdrawals were too severe. After getting on methadone, I wasn’t ruled by my body as much as my mind. In a way, trying to fix the mind can be even more confusing and difficult then fixing the body. So now that I didn’t have withdrawals anymore, it became all about doing coke. That got me into a lot of trouble and made me do things that even today I try not to think of. It got to the point were enough was enough. I didn’t want to lose control of myself anymore so I quit coke for good.
Sadly, I just ended up replacing coke with oxy. I told myself that it wasn’t as bad because it didn’t affect my decision making and it couldn’t give me withdrawals anymore. I really believed that it didn’t affect my decision making and that was my main argument. I was still myself. I didn’t need it but I just chose to do it because I liked it and I was bored. It wasn’t like coke that made me want to get more after one hit. With oxy, I did one and I was satisfied for the day. I could choose not to do some if I didn’t have the money. The truth was that I didn’t want to be alone with my own thoughts. So when things got quiet or I just couldn’t bare it anymore, I’d do an oxy and numb my mind. I was only able to stop once I made the decision to love myself again. I wanted to be able to enjoy my own company and to enjoy being alone. So I had to face those thoughts head on, change what I didn’t like and accept what I couldn’t change. I needed to realize that I was an intelligent person with a loving heart who could accomplish great things in life. I needed to know that I was loved and cared for and that I wasn’t alone. That’s when everything changed because I learned to deal with these thoughts and memories that haunted me.
There are some things we need to remember so that we may grow and learn from them. Unfortunately, some memories don’t have any purpose other than making us feel bad about ourselves. These memories have a tendency to creep up on us when we least expect it. Most of the time, it happens to me when I’m in bed trying to fall asleep. I start to toss and turn, remembering the awful things I did or awful things that were done to me. I replay them in my head over and over and think of the things that could have been done differently. These are toxic memories, and we all need to find ways to get rid of them and think positive.
What I’ve learned during my recovery is that, when these thoughts happen, I have to remember all the things I’ve accomplished since being sober. This definitely had become easier as I have been sober longer because I’ve had more things to be proud of as time goes on. As soon as I was on the methadone program and had my withdrawals under control, I started working toward my high school diploma. I did it by correspondence so I could stay at home and get better while doing something I could be proud of that gave me hope for the future. I believe the only way I was able to get sober without any therapy, rehab or detox was due to the methadone program. Nothing else worked for me before that because my withdrawals would take over any determination I had to stop.
It took me a little over a year to get completely clean after starting methadone. However, the program only fixed part of the problem. I had to fix my way of thinking on my own and no amount of medication could do that for me. I agree that therapy would have helped me once the withdrawals were gone. I’m not exactly sure why I never committed to weekly therapy, but it might have to do with how terrible I am at keeping appointments. What did help in its place was reading books. That did a great deal to take my mind off of negative things. Also, keeping a journal and having my mom there to talk with me made a huge difference. I really felt like she understood me and I hardly ever felt judged.
I often wonder if I did the right thing getting on methadone or if I just took the easy way out. At the time, it wasn’t even a conscious decision. It kind of just happened. In my mind, there wasn’t any other possibility at that time. I could either do that or keep doing what I was doing to keep the withdrawals away. One way or another, I had to keep the pain and withdrawals at bay. I didn’t know any other way. I even tried doing a bit less oxy every day and tried to gradually stop that way, but it didn’t work at all. Everything just seemed so futile and hopeless. The more I f****d up in my life by doing stupid things to feed my addiction, the more I wanted to get f****d up to forget about it. It was a vicious cycle. Forgiving myself was an essential part of my recovery but that only happened after I’d been on methadone for a while.
I finally got to see a methadone doctor after months of waiting. It wasn’t easy getting an appointment since the doctor was out of town. I had to travel there twice a week for the first couple months and finding a ride wasn’t easy. On top of that, I had to go to a pharmacy every day in the freezing wind, pouring rain, cold snow or extreme heat with no car or city buses. I had to find a ride or walk there and back. During holidays, their store hours were so short that I sometimes didn’t make it in time. The doctor even screwed up sometimes or sent my prescription out of town on the wrong day, and I wouldn’t be able to get my medication. On those days, I’d be in incredible pain. I wish someone would have told me what I was getting into. I didn’t know how hard it was going to be to quit methadone or to go without it for even just a day. Even now when I only need to go to pharmacy once a week, I still feel trapped. I can’t go anywhere for more than a week. I’ve thought of getting away from everything and going to work far away for a summer but then I realize how difficult that would be if I’m still on methadone. I’ve been slowly lowering my methadone dosage, hoping to be able to do something adventurous this summer. “Hoping” is the key word, because I’ve tried lowering my dose more than once before. What always seems to happen is that I lower the dose too quickly and my body starts hurting. I can’t sleep and I’m always tired. In short, I don’t function well so I give up and return to the same amount of methadone I was originally using before going down.
Now, I’m going down slowly, and it’s been going ok. There were still moments where I didn’t feel good and I really thought about giving up again. Thankfully, I was able to hold on and not go back up. Instead, I’d stay at that amount for a while to get used to it. I know that if it weren’t for methadone I wouldn’t even have the state of mind to dream about traveling, going to school or even having a life in general. So I’m really grateful. I can’t expect it to be easy or to magically get fixed. Good things require effort and determination. I have to take the good with the bad and hope that I’m strong enough to get off it eventually. It’s ironic how the one thing that freed me is also keeping me trapped. But honestly, it could be worse. Now, at least my mind is my own, and I have a chance at life.
Charmed