- Drugs
- Friends & Family
submitted by: Susanne Johnson
I was born in an upper-middle-class suburb in Alabama and grew up with both parents and a brother who is five years older than me. I don’t really have any solid memories before the age of 11 or 12. Between seventh and eighth grade, the rumor got started that I was gay. My real friends knew it wasn’t true, but it taught me a lot about fake people. That’s really when I stopped trying to be somebody else and fit in and when I started keeping to myself most of the time. Around this time my grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, moved in with us, and my brother got arrested several times for possession. All of this put a strain on the family to say the least.
I was a very angry kid. I was angry that I was being forced to grow up somewhere that I hated so much, angry that, between my brother and grandmother, my parents didn’t have much time for me and angry that I always felt I was coming up short and would never be good enough.
I got high for the first time when I was 14 and angry and alone. I heard that people abused pain pills to get high, and I had some from a car wreck I was in with my mom. I didn’t really know anything about getting high so I took four or five the first time, and I wasn’t angry. I felt that I was able to get along with people better. I felt comfortable. I remember thinking, “Yes, this is it. This is what I’ve been looking for the whole time.”
I ran out of pills. I figured that was it, I didn’t have a job so I wasn’t going to be able to continue buying them, but then I found out that I could sell/trade my ADD medicine. I started smoking marijuana about a year later and found a new group of friends that I didn’t feel judged by. At this point I was smoking and taking pills every day.
The first time I drained my parent’s bank account I was 15. Things got progressively worse. When I was 16, one of my good friends died of an overdose. I tried to quit and couldn’t, and that’s when I knew I had a problem. Things were really bad. I was severely depressed and felt alone and like a terrible person. I couldn’t quit, and my part time job wasn’t covering it anymore. There were two reasons I didn’t kill myself my junior year of high school, and they were both teachers that talked to me and made me feel like I mattered for the first time in a long time.
I thought that once I graduated and got out of that town, I would be able to stop. When I went to college things only got worse. I was already on painkillers, and I was introduced to benzos during my first semester. By the end of my second year of college, I had gotten kicked out of school twice, I was spending the equivalent of two weeks of pay on drugs every day, I was sleeping in an apartment I had been evicted from, and my parents didn’t want me around. I detoxed three times and would get 5-30 days clean here and there, but I couldn’t stay clean. I had gotten beaten up by a dealer I stole from, was running drugs, and had sold my bed all to avoid withdrawal. There were times that I quit breathing; there were situations I shouldn’t have walked out of alive. Seven people I had grown up with and gotten high with had died as a direct result of drug use by this point.
I tried everything from different religions, living with people and alone, moving to different cities and switching drugs, but none of it worked. The last two years I was using, I would wake up every morning disappointed that I had lived through the night. I was so tired. I eventually decided that I was going to get clean and stay clean or I was going to kill myself. I went back to my high school and visited those two teachers, but didn’t tell them I was going to rehab. I was afraid of letting them down yet again. I told two of my college art professors that I was going to rehab and was overwhelmed by the love and support they showed me.
I got pulled over two nights after I made the decision to go to rehab. I had $2,500 worth of drugs on me and should have 6 felonies, but I believe God was looking out for me, and I received mercy instead of justice. I went to a three-week treatment center, but they kept me for seven weeks. This time I gave it all I had. I detoxed and went to an actual rehab center where they taught me such things as the importance of going to support group meetings and cutting ties with people I used with. They taught me how to deal with emotions and feelings and how to be a better person. I have been clean since May 8, 2012.
I have been on the dean’s list five of the six semesters that I’ve been clean. My parents allowed me to move back in with them, and I have a better relationship with them now than I ever thought was possible. I’m set to graduate with an art major and psychology minor next December.
The thing I would recommend the most to anyone new to recovery is to find a support group and start talking to people there. I didn’t talk to anyone for about the first four months, but once I did I started feeling better. My life is so much better today. I have bad days where I think getting high sounds good, but I know I never want to go back to that utter misery. Today I can look at myself in the mirror. I no longer hate myself; today I love myself. I never even let myself dream that my life could be this good.