Drugs and other stuff
I was just thinking about a conversation I had with my daughters best friend almost three years ago. My eldest daughter is 24 and her best friend had been doing meth and heroin for two years at that point.
She had always been a funny, cute, level headed girl that I watched grow up from the time they were in kindergarten.
She was different than the other girls, because she never really went boy crazy, and she always concentrated on her grades.
She didn’t get over emotional or dramatic about things, and always just wanted everyone to calm down and get along.
Prom was not a big deal to her like it was the other girls, and she wasn’t obsessed with make up and looking perfect all of the time.
She was popular, and sweet… and then in her senior year, she was raped.
It was downhill after that.
The guy that raped her went to jail, and while awaiting trial, killed himself. Being a small town surrounded by small towns, and him being from a ”good name”, she was blamed and harrassed for some time.
That’s when the drugs came in.
I remember she came over with my daughter about three years ago
She started talking to me about her problems (which was unlike her. She never really talked about her feelings) with drugs, and she had tears streaming down her face when she asked me ”does it ever REALLY get better?”
I told her no. No it was never going to be completely better. That people acted like going to detox and getting off drugs was all there was to it.
That it would be a choice she would have to make every single day. “Do I want to go to work so I can buy that new tv that I wanted? or do I want to pawn everything I own and then spend the rest of the day looking for someone who’s holding?”
I asked her how she wanted to spend her days. Did she want to look for money and chase dealers all over town every single day, get high, get up the next day and do it all over again? Or did she want to accomplish some sort of normal living for her and her son? One where she didn’t have to worry if she had enough stash to last her all day, or the next day, or where she was going to get her next fix”
I told her that sober people often acted like getting off of drugs meant that you were sober and could go on living a normal life.
That’s not true. It’s a struggle. You’ll have cravings. You have a bad day and think that one bump will be okay. The next thing you know, you’re pawning your gramma’s engagement ring for smack. You can’t play with it. Not even once. You have to make a choice every. single. day. to. stay. sober.
AND IT IS HARD.
I told her she would have to find new coping skills for stress, for the bad days, for life in general.
I told her she would have to cut off some of the friends she’d grown up with that were still using, because you can’t even be around it.
I told her it wasn’t easy. That life is hard. That living life in recovery is hard.
But it’s not as hard as being and addict, and losing everything, including yourself.
I also told her she could do it. That she was strong, and she was brave, and she had already overcome so much, that I KNEW she could do this.
She cried, and it broke my heart. She told me things she had done, and the guilt she was carrying because of the choices she made in drugs, rather than being a mother to her child. She was heartbroken and guilt ridden, and it was painful to watch.
She told me ”I told (my daughter) that I really wanted to come over here with her to talk to you, because I feel like you’ll always tell me the truth, and that you’ll understand and not judge me.
She said she felt like everyone had just given up on her.
What an awful feeling for a child to go through. Feeling her parents and family had given up on her. Like she was worth nothing.
It made me sad. I know she had put her family through a lot, but she really felt like they just didn’t love her anymore.
She went to detox that day, and moved into sober living after that, and did well for quite some time.
Then last year while my son was in jail, I was on the phone with her again talking her into going to long term rehab.
I convinced her to leave her job and go right then. To call someone to cover her, go grab her things, and just go.
She did. It was a six month rehab, and she completed it.
Last time I saw her she was doing well… but I still worry for her.
I honestly don’t know why I’m writing about this, except that I was thinking it was this time last year when I talked her into going to long term rehab, which lead me to thinking about the conversation we had three years ago.
She’s on my heart tonight, so I thought I would write about it.