- Drugs
Today I am a 46 year-old woman who is going to college for the first time. This same day last year, September 10, I was in Plain State Jail in Texas with two months left to serve on my second felony sentence for prostitution in that state. At that point, I was wondering how I could have fallen so far.
Today I know, but I still sometimes ask myself how I have made it this far in less than a year after walking out those prison doors on November 4, 2011. I would like to say that I have been clean from drugs since being locked up on Feb. 10, 2011, but that would be a lie because I have had three relapses since being released. The last one, four months ago, was the worst as far as how much I used and how much I spent. It was the last time I used, and when I picked myself up, I walked away from the drugs with money still in my pocket and have not turned back.
That was the first time I was honest with my family about what I was doing. I think that, for me, all the lies are one thing that keeps me from staying sober. Finally being honest with my family has helped me stay clean. Cocaine addiction began for me in 1986. I believe that I was addicted after my first use. I got clean in 1988, but in 2001, I began to mess around with crystal meth; and it was no time before I was searching for cocaine. I had always shot up, and by this time powder was harder to find, and crack was the popular thing—so I began to smoke. I had spent a couple of weeks lost out smoking, then my brother found me and dragged me home. I was OK and clean for about two months when I met the man I eventually married. He was a user of everything, and he really loved to smoke crack. I began smoking with him and was quickly lost.
See, I don’t have a stopping point when it comes to drugs; when I am using, they have complete control of me. I left my husband in Oklahoma and hit the road hitchhiking. I ended up in Dallas, Texas, in 2009. Dallas is where my first drug use had begun in 1986. It was no time till I started working the streets to support my habit, and the prostitution arrests started. From the beginning I was only planning on being in Dallas a few days, but a few days became two years of living on the streets when I wasnt in jail. Today I am on treatment for Hepatitis C. I am sick a lot from that, but I am alive, I am sober, I am in college, and I have a future planned that doesn’t include drugs. I have come through my darkness, and on the other side, I have found the light.