Who was your Reason to get Better? Show your support by Commenting!
Imagine standing in the middle of nowhere in a -40 snowstorm, you have not eaten or had an ounce of water in days. You look across from you and see people. People in warmth eating, drinking enjoying there time. You scream for help, beg, plead. But no one helps you, they just look at you and watch. This my friends are how I would describe my 10-year addiction to opiates.
Today I am 8 months clean. I am no longer a slave to a substance. I am free. Miracles do really happen. But this all did not happen overnight. It took dedication, strength, and determination. I can truthfully say today I will never go back. I am looking at my bright future, enjoying life, and taking life on with a full swing, ready and prepared for whatever comes my way!
Read more: I have an Addiction and I Don’t Know How to Fight it
I am writing this to share my story, struggle, and I am standing tall with gratitude of where I am today, in hopes I can help someone.
September 5, 2001, my dad had passed away due to addiction. From that day on I was against drugs, despised them, never wanted to look at them. So how can someone who grew up with solid morals, a loving family lose all there morals and beliefs, and really just not give a fuck! Well, I’ll tell you. After my dad had passed away I really never had family support. My mom was a loving mother, but she also was struggling with her own demons and could not offer her full love as a parent to my siblings and me, my sister and myself raised ourselves pretty much, my brother was living elsewhere. I struggled every day for love, affection, guidance, and stability after losing my father… and I struggled with that until I was 15. Well, I then found that in a man a little older than me. He showed me love, affection, interest, something I have been longing for for a really long time. He had me from that moment on. I was now devoted to this man that I thought was a loving caring man. What I thought at the time was love, turned dark, abusive, and controlling really quick…. but I thought to myself well he loves me…. all the abuse didn’t matter because of the “loved” me. Something no one else ever did. The things I went through and seen with this man is indescribable; from being beaten, treated like some sort of animal, raped and abused almost on the daily really broke my spirit. I always have been one to care about others, love, be positive, humorous. But this broke me. I was no longer that person……until I met Percocet.
The warmth, carefree, happy feeling I got when I took this Percocet was once again something I have been longing for and I found it. I could now deal with the abuse and deal with this fucked up situation I seemed to have got myself into. My brain turned to fuck the world mode. I no longer had feelings, Percocet got rid of those suckers for me! I packed my stuff up, left the abuse and carried on in my miserable, broken down self. At the time I loved it. It took all my pain away, I could breathe, I could feel somewhat comfortable in my own skin!
Read more: My Addiction Journey
What seemed to be my solution to carry on in life turned bad…. really bad. I was up to taking over 50 Percocet daily. Moved onto a stronger opiate OxyContin…. and then eventually fentanyl. I liked to consider myself somewhat of a functioning addict for probably the first 5 years of my addiction, well so I thought anyways, which probably was just a twisted, distorted thought of reality.
What seemed like my solution, I started realizing that when I did not have this I would get sick… really sick. DOPE SICK. Now, this sickness is nowhere near the little flu or a cold. It is torture. From the massive anxiety, nauseous, jitters, vomiting, feeling like bugs are crawling under your skin, indescribable restlessness, feeling like you have just been running over by a semi and left on the side of the road to die sickness! So who would want to feel like that?! Not me! I would do pretty much ANYTHING to not feel like that. When my habit starting running at a $300 a day habit, working a normal job just wasn’t cutting it. And god forbid if I got sick… that brought me to work as an escort to selling drugs. Which then just brought deeper, and darker into my addiction.
I turned into a dark, depressed suicidal mess! I lost my home, everything I had, friends, and ended up living in my moms basement which I spent ALL of my time locking my bedroom door, sniffing as much fentanyl as I could get in, unless I needed more, and the walk to my drug dealers car was the only escape from my dark bedroom I would get. At this point, I was 26 years old. A drug addict with nothing, living every moment of my day for my next fix. Praying to a god that I had given up on to just kill me already. I tried to kill myself daily, with large amounts of fentanyl, and benzos. I would observe the people around me that were normal, living a good life, and happy, something I wanted so so so bad. But for some reason, it never happened. I just wanted this to end, I have seen no hope from here, there was NO fixing me. I had come to accept that I was a drug addict and was to far gone for help, at this point, I didn\’t even want help. I wanted it to all end. But there was always this little glimmer of hope in the back of my head that I wanted to be that funny, loving caring, positive person I once was. I have a sister who never left my side, would do anything to get me the help if I wanted it, pushed me to want it and made that little glimmer of hope a bit bigger and the courage to stand up and say HELP ME! Which was something I have never asked for or cared for throughout this all?
Read more: How I Overcame my Gaming Addiction
January 10th,2017 I was dope sick. Again. I called my sister begging for money. My sister, my brother-in-law and my mom would help me out because they would see just how sick I would get and they too didn’t want to see me like that. My sisters exact words were, “we can no longer give you money, you know what we will pay for and that’s all we can do” I knew she was talking about treatment because we had talked about it all the time, we even went for a visit to the treatment Center they wanted me to go to.
I could feel the sickness coming on, I had burnt all my bridges, I knew no one was going to help me…. so I took a few deep breaths packed a bag and within an hour my brother in law was at my door ready to drive me to I recover. At this point, I was pretty much a walking circus. I looked dead and lifeless.
I drive about 2 hours away from my hometown to this treatment Center pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Hopeless, and just done. My body was shutting down, my mind had shut down. I figured I would give this an honest go because I had no other option. Getting high wasn’t making me feel better, could this really be the answer to all my problems? I had nowhere else to turn. I was at my rock bottom of the rock bottom. I had a family I was destroying and I needed to do this. Not just for my family but myself. I kept telling Myself my family went through all that pain with me and there still by my side, so I should be able to go through this pain for them… and that is really what got me by day to day. I made up my mind walking through the doors of the Treatment Center. If this didn’t work I was ending this once and for all… well fast forward a month weeks of indescribable sickness, not sleeping for weeks on end things slowly started getting better. The amount of support I had from my family was so therapeutical on its own. Intense daily councilling and dedication to things slowly started to get better. The amount of effort all the staff put into me at I recover started my transformation. I stayed a total of 3 months in treatment which was the best thing that could of ever happen. Everyday I would feel stronger, happier and more free, and grateful, Which is the best feeling I think one can feel.
I look at life so differently now, I still have a lot of work ahead of me but I am free.
I am loved, I am a good person. I have a good job, I’m going back to school, amazing friends I rekindled with, and a loving supportive family which I could not have done it without them. And I know I would not give up this to get high or for anything. Miracles do happen, I am a walking, talking miracle. No one ever thought I would be where I am today, not only myself believed this but others, people were waiting to see me in the paper of an overdose.
I hope this helps anyone else out there struggling with addiction. And never think it’s too late to get help. No matter how far gone you think you are there is always hope. Have faith. If I can do it you can do it! I also had come off all opiates with no substation. (No suboxone, or methadone) so if doctors or people tell you-you to need something you don’t! I am proof! ❤️
Just a quick add to this which helps me. I would always be asked what I was like before drugs and all the craziness. I would tell them I was, kind, loving, funny, and happy. And I would always say but I’m not that person anymore! That person is gone. I was told this and it sticks by me every day! Best advice yet “if you had it in you before, you still have it, you just have to find it! You are not that person!” And I am that fun loving funny outgoing girl again and it feels good!
