- Drugs
Hello fine people, my name is Markie. We addicts all had beautiful lives, family, friends, money and a partner to share our lives with. I had a wonderful wife and a three-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter. I was working as a store manager in a big box retail store. I was well liked and well respected. I couldn’t ask for more.
I was living the American dream until my 29-year-old wife got sick. She thought she had a cold so I took her to the doctor. He took blood, called us back in two days and told us she needed to see an oncologist. We were shocked and depressed for days, but I told my wife, “We can do this.” I took time off from work and took her to the doctor. She started chemo right away. As I had been a doctor in the military, they allowed me to administer some of her medicines at home so she didn’t have to go to the hospital every day.
It was going well until I slipped on the snow outside and dislocated my right shoulder, as if we weren’t stressed out enough already. I had surgery and thought I was all fixed up. The doctor sent me home with a prescription for painkillers, and that was when the trouble started. I found that they took away the physical pain and that, wow, the mental pain was gone too. Painkillers relieved a lot of the stress I was going through. I am sorry to say I didn’t think of the pain my wife was in, and I have to live with that forever. When I was out of the pills, I called my wife’s doctor and told him she was in pain, so he wrote a prescription for OxyContin, just what I needed, right?
This went on for two years until my wife passed away. After that I was in more pain than I could have imagined. I started doctor shopping for anything stronger. I had three doctors giving me medications, plus I was taking whatever I could get from hospitals. I lost my car and job and had to sell my house and move in with my mother, yikes! I knew I had to clean myself up and get a job, so I did.
I started seeing a shrink and working, and everything seemed to be going well except I couldn’t get over what I did to my wife. She was sick, and I was high all the time, so I could only wonder if I did everything I could do for her. Did I say anything wrong while I was high? Things you might think are minor were very major to me. I started using the pills again since they helped before, right? I thought I knew better this time. I thought I had it all under control until a guy who worked for me saw me taking the pills and asked me why. I explained I was in a lot of pain and needed them, and he said, “I have something better.” He handed me four bags of heroin.
I was hooked on heroin so I had to make a trip every day to buy the stuff. That is what I did for the next four years until I got arrested and went to jail. I got out of jail and was back in jail three days later. I was there for three months while waiting for my court date. I had a lot of time to think, and what I came up with was, “That’s it. I am done!” but then I thought, “It’s too late. I already lost everything.” I was never so wrong. I still had my health, life and kids. I may have lost my family and all my possessions, but I could live again, smell the flowers, enjoy everything I was missing and mourn my wife which was something I didn’t have a chance to do.
To all of you who read this: Don’t ever ever give up. You still have a long life ahead of you, and you never know what is waiting for you around the corner. God bless you all.