- Alcohol
- Drugs
I began partying when I was 13. It was 1973 and I was a flower child born about ten years too late, but we were the last boomers and we were “Peace, Love and Rock and Roll”. We were also into drugs and alcohol. Everyone I knew was doing it…so I did too.
I noticed the first time I drank I had a black out. I thought everyone got like that! I seemed to be the one who could out smoke, out drink or out trip everyone around me. At first I was “cool” because of that but after a few years, I noticed my “friends” were not inviting me to go out and that I was gravitating towards a whole new crowd: Harder, more dangerous.
I eventually ended up in Arizona State School (a polite name for reform school) where I spent the next two years learning. Learning what heroin was, learning what prostitution and burglary and check fraud were. I was also learning from the mistakes of others. I did not get caught for any of my crimes for years.
My parents moved us to Utah in an attempt to give me a new start…and them too, I suppose. I continued on my path of single-handed destruction until I was in my late thirties and I was released from prison for the third time in 1996. By that time, I had been a heroin addict for over 13 years, in and out of jail over 30 times, prison 3 times, lost custody of my oldest son, lost every possession I had at least three times over and somehow miraculously saved my house by the kindness of my mother and a small trust fund from a beloved grandmother whose funeral happened while I was in prison.
I remember the week before I got released, my “roommate” in prison was packing her stuff to be released and I was bitching and moaning about cops and rules and prison and everything and she turned to me and said “You know, you don’t have to do this anymore.” I just stared at her and thought, right. Like I have a choice! I really did not know that I did!
The day I got out I remember standing on my front doorstep, getting ready to walk in my house after two and a half years, and my first thoughts were “What if my parole officer comes over; where would he search for a stash? Where could I hide something?” I was planning on going back to prison before I had even opened the door! Then the comment my former “roommate” said about my choice came back like a bolt and I thought, what if…just what if I DO have a choice to not do this anymore?
I started to contemplate who I would be without the labels of addict, ex-con, parolee, and loser. I picked up a recovery book and read it cover to cover. I never attended meetings but I clung to the line in the book that was stated over and over– “We do recover”. My parole officer told me to go to school. He said that I was smart. So during the next two years I went to school and got a Bachelor of Science in behavioral science.
Then I caught a fever of sorts, a fever of possibility and choice and hope and in the next four years I went on to get my master’s degree in social work, applied for and got a full pardon from the State of Utah, changed the expungment law to accommodate my full pardon and got my record expunged. I fought and won to get my social worker license from the Utah State Department of Professional Licensing, and was hired to run the outpatient programs 7 years ago for the county I live in.
Since then, I have tried to instill in every person coming through our doors the possibility of change and hope and choice and dreams…most importantly the dreams. I do not use derogatory words about my former addiction. I do not call it “beast” or “monster”. I honor my addiction and others addictions because I know that drugs cover pain and if someone has used the brilliant coping skill of addiction to survive something and they are walking in our door, then the coping skill has worked! They have not committed suicide or homicide or gone “crazy”. That person survived to fight another day!
To me, addiction is a brilliant, powerful tool that we employ often in early adolescence to stop feeling whatever intolerable feeling we are feeling. It is a brilliant tool, until the solution becomes the problem. Even then, it creates wonderful situations for us where we completely demand that society pay attention to us and put us somewhere safe before we do something irreversible and final. I love addicts. I love myself and I am so grateful I was an addict!