The beginning

My story. You can read it if you want, or not. This is my online journal because I don't like to write pen to paper, simply because it hurts my hand and I have awful handwriting.

Disclaimer: I am an addict whose drugs of choice are alcohol and opiates, I don't use the term alcoholic. So anyway, prefered the downers in my last days before recovery, basically terrified to try any other drug in my adult life because I had enough to deal with, what with the alcohol and prescription pain meds. Plus, to be perfectly honest, I am not from the streets. I didn't have a drug dealer, I got my drugs from docs and on the internet. In my childhood and throughout my teen years I took every drug out there, it was the 70's after all (had a drug dealer back then, lots of them actually). Uppers, downers, hallucinogens (my own personal favorite - the farther they took me from reality the better.) I ingested and shot up. Got hep c. Bummer for me.

I don't know if I was born an addict, I was very headstrong and got my own selfish way more often than not, or if people have a pre-disposition to it (I think medically speaking they do). I have read many things about people who fall into addiction and I have had every one. For example, the latest I came across was that they have found that people who weren't popular in school are more prone to become addicts. Being around addicts, I have come to find out that we don't fit in some how, and drugs (I include alcohol as a drug) make us feel like we do. I was the kid everyone kicked around in grade school, I was shy, I cried easily (addicts are very sensitive people) and I had a terrible family life, brothers I was embarrassed by, an absentee mother and father, etc. I blame the Waltons and the Brady Bunch. Like a counselor once told me, I was raised by wolves. My father was away a lot - a traveling salesman. My mom stayed home when she could but also worked. When my father died when I was nine, my mom went to work 3 jobs to support us. We were left to raise ourselves. We did a sucky job. We abused each other, hated each other, it was every kid for himself. I was sexually abused (another indicator of future addiction) by two of my brothers (I was around 3-5, they were 13 - 15) and a neighbor, the father of a friend.

So, I never felt good enough, never felt like I fit in. When I was 9 years old I started smoking cigarettes. By the time I was 11 it was pot. I don't remember my first drink or first hard drug, but I was pretty much fully into it all by the age of 13. Lost my virginity at 14. Grew up fast. Didn't care if I lived or died, in fact, tried to die at my own hands several times (had to get stitches in my wrist once, scars, nice). This is not a woe-is-me story, it's just my story. My friends were as screwed up as I am, people like that tend to find each other. But the thing is, not a lot of them had horrible family lives, but a few did to be sure.

This year I lost two very close friends to addiction - one drank herself to death and one choked on his own vomit because he was so drunk. In high school I lost too many friends to count - overdoses, car accidents, suicides, all related to drugs. I think it's either the one or two killer in the country, because there are so many ways you can die from it.

This will not be a downer of a blog, just had to get the history out of the way. I celebrated a year's sobriety on Sept 19. Never made it that far.

However, there was a time when this was not my life - after doing all of that crap in my teens I gave it up, walked away from it all (although I would still drink to excess at times - binge drinking). Yet, one day I found myself pregnant. Unmarried. My family rallied around me and I had the most beautiful baby girl. All the drugs and drinking stopped. Shortly after that, she was only 8 months old, I met my future husband. Her own father didn't want to have anything to do with her because I told him if he wanted to be a part of her life he had to pay child support. Not a high priority for him, see ya.

So, we got married when she was 3 and lived together for a year and a half before that. I had no problem with drugs. Suffered with headaches, would get vicodin, take what I needed, leave the rest, when the prescription was empty I didn't freak out, I knew I'd get more when I needed it. I was able to go out to dinner with my husband, have a drink, get that warm feeling and stop. Imagine my shock when, after my divorce I found myself addicted to vicodin. I felt I had let God down. I felt I had let everyone down, never mind the fact that my ex was/is manic-depressive and verbally and emotionally abusive. I was sick all the time. Amazingly enough, after the divorce and ever since, (10 years later) I rarely get sick. I met a man at the end of my marriage, fell in love and asked for a divorce. Got one. The man didn't last, the divorce did.

See, all I ever wanted to be was a wife and a mother. I loved my life. I loved my kids. I made mistakes, but I was happy. We were married 12 years. I think the last 7 were continually getting worse. But I hung in there, because I had become a Christian when our second child (his first, and only as far as he's concerned, always said my other daughter's father owes him $100,000 for all the money he spent on her - did I mention money is his Master? I also hung in there for the kids and I really gave it my all, tried to become the obedient wife, but my independence and willfullness would not let me do that consistently, not to mention he took advantage of it by being a tyrant. He was an unhappy man in general and In the end, I hated him. When a woman gives up, that's it, there is no turning back.

That's it for now. I think I'm done with the beginning, but who knows. At any rate, today I live in the solution, today I have a God who I know loves me because of my faith in His Son, and I have forgiveness. Forgiving myself, not so easy. So, day by day, I will walk through this, this second year of my sobriety.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I had a hard time admitting I was an addict, but since have realized this is a progressive disease. My addiction was sporadic, until the end.

Another story.

Goodnight.