- Drugs
- Friends & Family
submitted by: Susanne Johnson
My name is Danielle. I am 27 years old and I’ve been clean for three and a half years. I have a son who is five. He’s my whole world and the reason I originally got off of drugs in 2010, but I stopped doing the work and thought that I’d be fine– I was so wrong. Right now I am in school to become an addiction counselor. I am passionate about helping others and I love helping people get to the road of recovery.
My story starts at a really young age of three. It was just a week until my fourth birthday. We were all outside playing in the snow when it happened. I got hit in the face with a shovel. I was rushed to the hospital covered in blood, my lip ripped open. I remember the doctors crying just looking at me. I also remember the pain I felt, until they gave me the medication. That was my first taste. But that was it for about six years, until I was ten and got hurt playing basketball. I remember how bad my ankle hurt until I got to the emergency room. They gave me pain killers and the pain went away.
I played a lot of sports when I was younger and I also got hurt often. I remember being upset when my prescription was gone. I liked the feeling that the Vicodin gave me, so I got hurt again– this time on purpose. I punched a wall and fractured my hand. Sure enough, I got more painkillers. I figured that since it was legal, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. After all, my doctor gave them to me. It didn’t take long for me to progress from just enjoying the pills to outright needing the pills.
One day I decided to have someone run over my ankle with my car. Forward, backwards, forward, backwards. The pain was excruciating, but I had no choice. I needed to break my ankle to take the pills legally, since I had just been put on probation and couldn’t afford to get into more trouble. I had my wrist run over a couple of times, too. I never broke a bone that way (which made me mad), but I still got the drugs. I’d fake a tooth ache to have teeth pulled, and get the pills that way. I’d do pretty much anything to get the next fix. Whatever it took to satisfy my addiction, that’s what I did.
I was promiscuous when I was on drugs. I didn’t care. This wasn’t who I was, and it certainly wasn’t how I saw myself growing up when I was ten years old. Back then, I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer, I had all of that in my future. But instead I got high, and I kept getting high.
I became all bones, getting down to 89 pounds. I lived at home, and was regularly stealing large sums of money from my parents. I pawned anything I could get money for, and used every penny to pay for drugs. I’d try to save enough money to get my items back, but any money I managed to save would go right back into getting more drugs. I lost a camera, an iTouch, and a gold diamond ring, all because I could never get enough money together to pay the pawn shop. Getting high became my top priority, and often it was my only priority.
Most of the people I hung out with at this time weren’t genuine friends. They were just people who got high with me. We didn’t really care about each other. All we cared about was who had pills. If you had a pill, then I was with you. Eventually I got into heroin. That was my lowest point. Sticking a needle into my arm to get high was definitely my lowest point.
Being an addict is miserable enough, but being a female addict is especially dangerous. Rates of sexual abuse are many times higher for female addicts than for women in general. I was raped two different times by two different guys while I was high. Just about every guy I dated beat the crap out of me, because they were high, and I was high. I’d say something to make them mad and they’d beat me up. I’d be on the floor almost unconscious, and would go home with bruises all over my body. I went to school with bruises all over my body.
I finally dropped out of high school and got my GED. The one good thing I did while I was high was to get my GED. I really don’t know how I did it since I was high all the time.
I began to cut myself. I have hundreds of cuts on my thighs, because I hated myself, I absolutely hated myself and hated everything I was doing. I was getting high to try to feel better. I destroyed my family, and my parents didn’t trust me. The only reason I was allowed to live with my parents was because my mom didn’t believe in tough love. Everyone else in my family told her she had to kick me out. I thank God she didn’t, because I’d have been sleeping under a bridge or in my car. I wasn’t allowed near my nieces or nephews because I was a junkie. I couldn’t be trusted around them because they could have gotten hurt.
Like I said, I weighed about 89 pounds, I looked disgusting, I had pimples everywhere, I was the ugliest thing in the world. Then I got pregnant, and I was still doing drugs every day. I went to jail three different times. I sat in jail once while I was pregnant. Me with this big old belly sitting in a jail cell, that’s not how you want to be pregnant. And that’s when I realized that I wasn’t just living for myself any longer, I was living for this baby as well. After ten years of the lying and the stealing, I realized I needed to do something about my addiction. I was finally ready to get out of this terrible way of life.
I was three months pregnant when I went to the doctor. They told me that I’d lose the baby if I suddenly stopped using the drugs, so I continued using until a treatment clinic could get me in. I went to a Suboxone treatment clinic in the area that ended up saving my life. I wouldn’t be here today without the help of this clinic and its caring staff.
I got clean and started going to group, where I learned why I was an addict. I learned that I was kind of “set up” because I have alcoholism and drug abuse in my family, so it runs deep in my veins. But it was still my choice. I wasn’t an addict until I began using the drugs.
The groups were amazing. We learned why we had this addiction, about the dangers of relapse, the process of relapse, and without all of that knowledge I’d probably still be hanging out with the same people I was hanging out with before. I’d still be getting high if I didn’t know better. But we learned that you can’t have the same friends as you had in active addiction, so I got rid of all my friends. One friend I had to let go I’ve known my entire life. She is now over a year clean and living healthy with her children.
I gave birth to my son in 2010. He was born very healthy and he did not have any withdrawal. The first few months of his life were very exciting but rough as well. I was still learning how to live as a person without substances and I was learning how to be a mom. I went to group and meetings every week, got a job, things were looking great!
I stopped working on my recovery and relapsed. It was a 2 month relapse. It ended with police, child services and me in jail. I had never been away from my little boy and all of a sudden I was away for a week that seemed like a decade. As soon as I was released I went back to my group and meetings and to my counselor.
I have to say now that even though the relapse was terrible I took the most important lesson away from it: I can’t stop working on me. I can’t put my recovery onto someone else’s shoulders; it needs to be for me and then for my son. This relapse seems like it was so long ago, I have learned so much since that and my life is so far from where it was. As addicts, we wake up every day and we need to want to be sober. It’s a struggle every day. I’m proud of where I am today. It’s been a long bumpy road but I’ve learned a lot of lessons and I learned who I am. My family is now on the road to recovery, too. As I hurt myself, I hurt everybody around me. I am now able to see my nieces and nephew, I am trusted again.
The last four years I have spent going to schools talking to kids about drugs, telling my story. I’ve also had a few public service announcements. I’m in college! I never thought in a million years I’d be accepted into any school. I have learned so much this past year in school. I am a really great student as well, which is not at all how I was in high school. Through a professor on the first day of class I learned of NAADAC and NHADACA. I put in an application for a full scholarship and got it! I get to go to the NAADAC annual conference! I am so grateful for all of these opportunities I have gotten!
In NH we have such a problem but not enough of a solution. I plan on being part of that solution and I refuse to give up!