- Drugs
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
I have been lucky to escape addiction because my family has had many problems with this deadly disease. My grandmother has been addicted to crack for a very long time, and she recently began using heroin. She is only in her sixties now, and her addiction has messed up many relationships in our family.
Despite the havoc caused by her addiction and her stealing from other family members, we all try to push her to get better. So far, our efforts have been unsuccessful. In order to get better, you have to be willing. She is not there yet. I have heard people say that she is just not ready. It makes no sense to me, because she needs to be ready to make a change in her life. I can talk as much as I want about how bad it all is, but as long as she doesn’t want it for herself, it’s not going to happen.
Other than my grandmother, we have many other family members who currently struggle with addiction, including my aunt and some cousins. We have lost two family members to drug overdoses already. One of them was my cousin Nicky. Nicky was at her mother’s house and they were about to take her son from her. It was a weekend, and they had planned to visit the state fair. They got ready and when her mom said, “Come on, let’s go,” she got no reply. She found her daughter bent over in the room next to her, having died from an overdose. The ambulance was called and they immediately took her to the hospital, where she stayed on life support for about 12 hours. She ended up passing away on life support; all help came too late.
We had a good family friend named Ricky. He was a friend, but he felt like part of the family and I considered him a cousin. He was only using drugs for the third time in his entire life, and he overdosed. That was the second major family death related to overdose.
I also went to school with a girl that used heroin only one time and messed herself up. Even after her bad experience, she still used a second time. That second use of heroin killed her. Most people would not do it again if they had a bad experience the first time, but she must have felt something that she liked and it was more powerful than the pain that she received from the first use.
In another incident, the mother of my cousin’s child overdosed and went into coma for three days. When she woke up, she had lost function of her legs, but even then, still went still out on the street to prostitute herself for more drugs. Less than a month after the first incident, she passed away.
All of these things affected me powerfully that I have steered away from drugs as far as I could. I saw that people who had lives worth living were always clean and sober.
My father was most likely not an addict, but he abused cocaine and alcohol recreationally all the way up to my birth. He told me that the day I was born created a shockwave that went through his body. He knew then that he had to change. My father lives free of cocaine and alcohol today.
Due to an injury in his back, he got onto prescription drugs for a short while. He got himself off of them, knowing he didn’t want to take them even one day longer than absolutely needed. He switched over to Cannabis Oil, which he does not use recreationally– only as a tool to manage the pain. There are days he can’t walk, but he does not want to take pain meds on a long-term basis.
When I was about to join the navy, I had to fill out a form disclosing all of my family members who have had legal trouble in the past, to get my security clearance. The officer saw the long list and said “You fell through the cracks, didn’t you?” My parents were really good parents, which helped. They often questioned me about any drug and were very strict with me about it. I smoked weed for a very short duration when I was 19. I stopped because I became aware of what it can do to me.
I have a passion to help the people addicted to anything today. I work for a laboratory company and hope I can make a difference in someone’s life.