- Drugs
- Friends & Family
submitted by: Susanne Johnson
Melanie grew up in Louisiana as child number nine out of ten. Alcoholism and drug addiction was full blown in her family. She saw early on as a child what drugs or alcohol can do to someone by watching her older brothers and sisters. It didn’t affect her in a negative way right then, as she does not have a history of abuse at home or violence. Rather, she felt entertained to watch with her younger sister together with the older siblings behaving strange after consumption. At this time she didn’t realize how much she had in common with the older siblings using and drinking and how little she had in common with the ones not engaging in addiction at all. She felt always drawn to the ones who were in trouble.
It wasn’t a surprise that she had her first drink by 6th grade. She says today, “I will never forget the feeling, never forget the moment.” She had the impression as when she first had some dental work done and the dentist put laughing gas on her. She simply thought, “This is the best”.
Time went by and she lost her younger sister in a fatal car accident. Right after that, she was drinking and used cocaine a lot around the end of her high school years. About that time a friend of the family, who was later married to one of her older sisters, started the recovery cycle in her family by entering treatment himself and using his influence on her family to change their lives too. Not Melanie though, she lasted longer, went through college while still using wine and weed, and became a nurse. In a short period following, her dad and another sister passed away, and the grief and loss from now three untimely deaths in the family sped up things for her in the wrong direction. After struggling with migraines she got access to Lortab and things started to go in a downward spiral, as she immediately loved the feeling the pills gave her.
Toward the end of her active drug addiction, things got out of control. Work got into the way of her lifestyle, so she quit her job and stayed home. She came across a prescription pad and instantly became somebody she never wanted to be in her life. She wrote her own scripts for three years until she got caught.
In the meantime, her siblings made it into recovery, thanks to the family friend and husband of her sister. She ran out of prescriptions and couldn’t forge anything anymore and decided to call in a prescription for herself. The way the call went, she knew she was caught and knew that she would get arrested when she would pick up the drugs, so she didn’t go.
A couple days later she went with her kids to Mexico for a family wedding and the whole trip just focused on how to get drugs. She left the dinner table with family and her kids to find herself in a dark alley with a total stranger, who promised to bring her to a doctor who will give her a prescription. All of a sudden her common sense set in for a moment and she thought that she might get killed on this; running around in dark places with complete strangers and nobody know her whereabouts.
Nothing happened to her, but the deal didn’t work either and she got really mad with the stranger. She realized what a crazy shift of feelings that was and she went back home to Louisiana with her children who were ten and seven years old at that time. Back home she went straight to her lawyer knowing that there would be a warrant out for her and a couple days later she was in a treatment facility in Florida and has been clean and sober ever since.
She was accountable to many places for her sobriety: the board of nursing, a probation officer and groups. She didn’t like to be by herself in the beginning and went to three meetings a day. She didn’t want to go through the steps at first. She noticed that working the steps means to admit something and she was not willing to do this. She didn’t work for the first year of her recovery. Then she started part time doing some case management and utilization review for a treatment facility and somehow never left. Today she is the CEO of a small treatment facility and loving her job.
“There is hope and you don’t have to die”, she would like to tell anybody who is still using or drinking. There were times where she would have preferred to be dead; she just didn’t have what it took to take her own life at this time. She was afraid to kill herself, but wanted to be dead. When she contemplated overdosing she remembered her two beautiful boys that she couldn’t leave behind.
Melanie didn’t know how to ask for help. She emphasizes today that it is okay to ask for help. “You can’t just stay there. All you need to do is use the three words ‘I need help’, or even just one word ‘help!’”. She is very grateful to the family friend who did wonders to her and her siblings by breaking the addiction cycle for her family.