- Drugs
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
My name is Tracy T. and my daughter is in recovery. She is 30 years old today and I’m so extremely happy and relieved that she finally found it. It took her six years of trying since her first visit to a treatment center in 2012.
Her addiction didn’t begin with illegal drugs; it began after a needed surgery that treated injuries from a fall that happened during an ice storm in 2011.
She was given 90 Percocet (opioid pain pills) after surgery. I remembered thinking, “That sure looks like a lot.” but then brushed the thought off and decided to trust the doctor and his abilities. (I didn’t know about the risks at the time.)She got another refill, followed by another. That doctor gave her pills for about a year, and she quickly developed a physical dependency on them.
As a bit of history, her father and I divorced when my daughter was in fourth grade, and it was a traumatic event for her. Her dad and I lived in Nashville for ten years and we returned to Paducah, KY. Once we divorced, I took the kids and went back to Nashville. My daughter’s younger brother went through some typical teenage stuff, but never had any addiction problems. I remarried and had another child that is 17 today.
My daughter may have had addictive tendencies and anxiety issues at an earlier time in life, but they never caused her this amount of trouble. Once when she was young, we had to enroll her in a treatment wilderness program in West Virginia. She stayed two months before we switched her back to a private school, and it definitely helped her and us at that time. She managed to get through college well and graduated.
In the last six years, my daughter has attended dual diagnosis treatment programs. While the first one in California didn’t diagnose her with any co-occurring disorder, the second one in Florida diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and many other issues. She came home with a bag full of medications. Her body was never clean and she started self-medicating as well.
She had a couple of DUI charges and was caught with paraphernalia. She was then in multiple car accidents, and it’s a miracle that she didn’t get hurt badly or kill someone. There was a lot of money involved in her process, which was both a blessing and a curse for her.
Money helped her into treatment, but also got her out of her consequences. We enabled because we love her and wanted to help her. It was a struggle for me sometimes, and I asked her father to stop supporting her financially, but couldn’t get through to him that his way of making up was not going to help our daughter. My ex-husband was also drinking a lot at that time, so communication was very difficult. Helping her financially was his way out of his own guilt and shame.
In 2012, we came together and hosted a professional group intervention and got her into treatment. When she returned, she had no ongoing care and ended up in a relationship that didn’t serve her well. She relapsed within weeks and married into that unhealthy relationship. Her use of pain medication eventually morphed into heroin use.
My daughter asked for help and we admitted her to a long-term treatment. That time, we did not admit her to a luxury place. It was a free, state-funded treatment place in Kentucky. She stayed six months and has just now returned home sober, to live with her father, who found recovery from alcohol in the meantime.
I took several training classes in the recovery field in an effort to help my daughter. Because of that, my sister and I have decided to open up a sober living home for ladies with in-house therapist in Paducah, KY. We own a vacant building in Paducah that is ideal for that purpose. We hope to open our doors very soon to those who need a place to stay after finishing inpatient treatment. My daughter turned out to be a huge asset in our efforts to get it started, coordinating the finishing cosmetic touches, and helping get it ready for other ladies to move in.
It was not easy, and it was a long journey, but I never gave up on my daughter and never will. I hope she will now stay in recovery and her struggles are over.