- Alcohol
- Drugs
I spent six years traveling the country, six years packing up, moving, working and settling in long enough to pack up, move and start again. Those six years were not the beginning of my drug addiction, but they were the most intense. Moving from Oklahoma to Montana, California, Louisiana, Texas, Nebraska, South Dakota, the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and Arkansas was emotionally and mentally exhausting. It also gave me the opportunity to explore many, many different drugs.
Money helped me stay on drugs. I was working in the oil field with limitless influences and limited choices. I nearly killed myself because of drugs and was nearly killed twice by someone else’s addiction. I was in the hospital more times than I can count, but nothing ever made my brain say, “That is enough.” I was an addict, and I got to where I would inhale, inject and swallow any drug I was presented with.
My significant other and I quit the oil field and settled back in Oklahoma, trying to start a new life. I went to school and was doing very well, perfect grades, until I was unpleasantly surprised with a random drug test right before finals. I failed, of course, and threw 10 months and $20,000 down the toilet. You would think I would have woken up but, again, I was an addict. We joined the oil field again, and we went back on the road to Texas and then North Carolina.
The day I was nearly strangled to death was an eye opener. I stopped most of the drugs and tried hard to straighten up. Soon after we went back to Oklahoma for work. On Memorial Day 2011, I had to face an out-of-control, raging meth addict who was drunk and on drugs. I was thrown out of a moving truck twice and driven all over the state while being told I was going to be murdered that day. I sobered up quickly and had to use cunning and strength to trick him into driving my kids and I back home where it was safe. The truck’s engine blew far from home in the middle of the night, and my kids and I were abandoned in the middle of nowhere in the sweltering heat at midnight. The next day I made him swear to me no more drugs, no more alcohol. That lasted for less than a month as someone bought me a bag of marijuana on my birthday and meth was brought in as the kicker. It was August 2011 when I decided I had to change my life. I had to leave. One morning in October 2011, I woke up, packed what I could fit, put the cat and two kids in a truck and left that life for good. I never went back and have been clean and sober since.