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I had tried meth for the first time out of curiosity. And when I try something I like to "do it right".....an all-or-nothing attitude. So the first time I tried meth, someone injected it into my arm and I cried, literally. I cried because it was so good. About a month later, I was offered heroin. I had the same attitude with it. I was curious. I liked it because I have a nervous disorder and it calmed me.
I did it again a week later. The intervals between using became shorter and shorter until it was an everyday thing. And then one day I had a tummy ache, I thought I had food poisoning or something. I was sweating. For all my education, it didn't occur to me before then that I'd been stricken with this mysterious sickness before, I didn't see the pattern. Jokingly, I suggested to my boyfriend that we were addicted. And I laughed. The look on his face told me that instead of making a joke, I was telling the truth. |
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I didn't have a specific incident that you'd call "rock bottom". There was no intervention, no finding of God, no teary-eyed situation that made me give up heroin. My reason for quitting is simple. I started to realize how bored I was. I mean, it's not like I wasn't doing anything. I was always going here or there in the car, either to sell stuff or buy drugs. But I was bored.
This kind of life isn't stimulating. It was exciting in the sense that I could get pulled over any second, I got to meet people but they weren't the sort of people you'd want to get aquainted with. I got bored with the lifestyle, it wasn't challenging. I knew I a plethora of unused potential, and I felt like I was wasting it. I started using out of curiosity and ended up quiting out of boredom. |
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Once I had it in my mind to quit, the thought wouldn't go away. The users around me all said they wanted to quit. I believed that in thier heart, most of them really did want to quit, they just lacked the determination, self control, the energy to do anything about it. I decided to go to my mother, as children often do when they're sick, and ask for help. She looked up the clinics, she did all the footwork for me and asked around about recovery.
I'm more grateful to her than I can say for doing this. She was 2000 miles away from me, and she made dozens of phonecalls to get me into a clinic. All I had to do was show up. A week later, she met me at the clinic and drove me 2000 miles away so I could live with her. In my opinion, the methadone wasn't much better than the heroin. Just another ball and chain to drag around, only legal.
So after living with my mother for 3 months, I stopped going. Cold turkey. Very nasty. I pretty much locked myself in my bedroom and told my mother to hide the car keys and the money and to make sure I ate something every now and then. I made it through. I've been clean for 3 years now. |
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Find someone to help you. A good support system, no matter how independent you might be, is the best way to kick.
No matter what type of recovery you choose (if you have any choice about it), you'll need someone waiting for you on the other end of the tunnel. Even if it's just a counselor or a social worker. Knowing that someone cares, even though it might be just one person, makes all the difference in the world. |
