My addiction to my addict. My addiction to helping others...

I have been asked so many times, "why don't you start a blog?" I guess I never have because I feel like I already say too much, vent too much and what else could I possibly say? Well, after reading a lot of posts in the last 24 hours about an actor, whom I barely even recognized---it has set my fingertips on fire. So here we go...


My name is Stephanie and I love an addict. You see, to me, she is not just a "junkie" a "pill popper" "a crack head" "tweaker" or whatever other awful titles we all have used when describing a person with addiction. I have used them. I have used them when bitching at her. I have used them when crying to my family. It is not until my son pointed out, "Quit calling her a junkie, Mom.  She is still a person!"  He was right. He often is right, I admit. She is my child. She is my first-born baby. She was the first true love of my life. She is an accurate reflection of my own face and stubbornness and she is an addict.


My daughter is beautiful. She grew up very loved, a daddy's girl who loved softball and her friends and her family. Since she was 2 1/2, the light of her life was her little brother. She always wanted to fit in, always fighting to get a starting position on varsity softball---always wanted to be a cheerleader, but settled for chanter and always felt she fell short in the eyes of everyone else. Why? Was it my fault, somehow? I have pondered that question now for several years. Several long, hard years. 


Her dad and I divorced when she was 10. We literally split our time in half with our children. They were our life. He was a wonderful father. I moved to a town nearby and she met friends in the neighborhood and later decided she wanted to live with me full time. Quite normal for a little girl beginning to go through life's changes. It was not something her dad took lightly and I think in reality, it broke his heart. So, she switched schools at the age of 12.  After that time, he stopped going to softball games, stopped showing up at her events and tried to strong-arm her into seeing things his way. It was heart breaking. I tried my best to split my time equally in traveling with sports with both of my children; and whatever location I couldn't be---my mom and step dad would fill in for me. A lot of things happened between now and then that were both his fault and mine. A lot. A lot more than most children have to ever deal with in their lives; yet, I had two children and one chose one road, and one chose the other. Why? We will never know the answer.


I will move on to avoid getting wrapped up in my own regrets and anger. The more I think back to those times, the more I wish that I would have known that every event in her life could change her thinking; or change her heroes; or change her principles. I don't even know if it would have changed a thing if we stayed married, or if my dad and step dad hadn't died so young, or if she had a father figure in her life during the most crucial time of her teen years.  To this day, she struggles with her relationship with her father. To this day, she yearns for his attention and to this day, if he ever shows up for five minutes, then that five minutes will matter more to her than my last five years and I would be okay with that, if it saved her life.


Do you have medication in your home? I did. I got very sick after my step dad and dad died and learned it was from stress and grief. Pain like no other, or so I thought. I have now learned that there is another level of pain in watching your child die right before your eyes over and over and over again.  My medication started disappearing. When? I have no idea, because I hardly ever took any of it. None of it had worked because I was simply sick physically and emotionally due to grief. I had muscle relaxers, pain pills, sleeping pills, you name it. Had them all tucked in a bag in my closet. I never checked the bag. Why would I? "My kids were perfect". I had no idea that kids were taking pills. I had no idea their friends would steal pills. I was completely oblivious to the drug problem among our youth until that drug problem slapped me straight upside the head.  

After my daughter's sophomore year, she got tic fever and mono at the same time. She was in the hospital for over a week. Her spleen was swollen and then came the devastating news to her that "she could not play softball." She tried, but the heat and fatigue was too much...so there went a huge part of her passion in life. She had idle hands, an idle mind and too much time to 'focus on not focusing."


Move forward. Senior year. I was so ready for her to graduate. She and some of her friends were the biggest pain and source of constant stress in my life. Parties, getting into trouble, breaking curfew rules, it was an everyday event getting her to behave. I thought "Kids and their alcohol" and grounded her from everything, not even realizing that alcohol wasn't the biggest devil crippling my family. The night before graduation, she had a car wreck. A wreck so bad that she was thrown 50 yards from her car. She was found upside down in the mud. Her boots had blown off her feet. The car looked like a twisted ball of steel. There would be no way someone could survive such an accident, but she did. I will never forget seeing an old classmate of mine at the hospital, who was one of the paramedics on the scene. He said he knew it was my daughter because when they turned her over, he thought, "she looks just like Stephanie Baker." How ironic that someone I had known since I was a child, had saved my own child's life that night. She had been drinking. She had been partying at a "Senior Sneak Out" and as a result of her choices; she never got to walk across the stage on graduation day. Her cap and gown were strewn into the field, graduation money scattered everywhere and her life forever changed. 


"Your daughter suffers from depression" they told me in the hospital. My own family member was her doctor. I thought, "She does not! She's hurting! She has 4 broken parts of her back, a lacerated spleen, a collapsed lung---she's in PAIN!" Still no clue that the devil was grabbing hold even tighter of her innocence and her life. I believed her, I never thought she enjoyed the morphine drip rather than thinking about missing graduation. "My daughter would never lie to me regarding her pain", so I thought. She was barely 18. To this day, I don't know if alcohol was the only thing in her system because she was a "legal adult" and I had no right to that information. It didn't matter to me, though. I just wanted her life spared. I just wanted my daughter back. I was happy God didn't take her.  An email circulated among teachers and parents, sent from a staff member, who criticized my parenting, criticized my daughter and the email had no purpose other than gossip. Thankfully, I have loyal friends who don't spread gossip but shared the email with me so that I would know the names and faces of those who were stabbing the knife into my back. It was hurtful. My daughter was humiliated, but I defended her. Once again, "it was just a phase. She would be fine", I thought.


Then came college. I should have made her stay home. She had been accepted to Pitt State and was so very excited. I wasn't going to stop her from her educational dreams, for goodness sakes..."if she wants to go to Pitt, then by golly, I will take out student loans on her behalf and she will go to Pitt State! I will even buy her another car!  This is just what she needs...a fresh beginning, a new start, new friends and away from the temptations hanging over her." The only thing that accomplished was that I lost all control and lost all ability to see the daily effects of her choices. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Wrong. I still had a child at home. He needed some structure and less drama that the endless fights about his sister was causing. It was a breath of fresh air that she wasn't living at home, to be honest. If I could pick one time in this journey to go back to, it would be that summer. If I would have had the knowledge then, that I have now, I firmly believe I could have stopped the train wreck getting ready to happen...or maybe I couldn't have. 


The next 4/5 years are full of pain, lies, and tears, begging for admittance of her problem, begging for the truth. I will never forget her little brother and his 6'2 frame, getting on his hands and knees and falling at her feet, in tears...begging her to get help. Begging her to admit she had a problem...and she walked off from him, leaving him lying on the concrete. Her friend picked her up on the highway. Her dad watched from across the street to make sure she got picked up safely. Does she even know that? Does she even know that he cared enough to stay and watch her get into a car? I don't know. Would it have made a difference? If the one person (her brother) that she loved and idolized had fallen to the ground in pain...could anyone make her see the light? 


From there on, she has never lived back at home. We sold her car, confiscated her phone, and kicked her out of our house. It was tough love...or was it? It was tough on me. It was tough on her brother. Was it tough on her? Or did it solidify in her mind, that I really didn't love her as much as I said...Again, I do not know. 


I am not going to add every personal detail of our family and her life because there are so many things that are still so painfully private. She and I have discussed doing a blog together. I hope that becomes a reality because her view, which seemed to be so different, has now come full circle. She remembers the pain in her brother's face and it brings her to tears. She remembers the lies, the people that she should not have let in her life and she knows now that this problem is much bigger than any of us to handle on our own. Her view, though, is one of compassion for others who have gone down the road to hell. She has had several friends who have died of this disease and she attended their funerals and still chose to use drugs. Why? How? What on earth can make someone want to put something in their body that most of us wouldn't even want to see, smell or breathe? 


You see, I admit that when Whitney Houston died, I was not shocked. She had been on drugs for so long. I got criticized for saying something very similar to that on social media. I think what I said was "Whitney Houston died. Big shocker there." Now, I look back and think, "That was totally crappy of me." She is still someone’s daughter, mother, friend or mentor. Who am I to decide whose life is more valuable? Who am I to say that her death wasn't a shock?  When dealing with an addicted child, you sometimes live your life waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop. The ring of the doorbell with the officer standing there. The nightmare every parent dreads. To this day, although I know my own daughter's struggles, her death would still be my personal nightmare. My personal devastating loss. Addict or not, her loss would break my heart.  At the time Whitney Houston died, I was estranged from my daughter, so I was cold. She was living with a guy who was not making good decisions either and was teaching her all sorts of new things. I blamed him. Was it his fault? No. It wasn't. She was raised better than to behave in such a manner. She didn't want to even be his friend back in high school, because she told me he had a drug problem. Now he was her companion?  Her judgment, her values, her morals had all changed. Drugs changed her.


It's cut and dry. "Stop doing it! Just stop! Why can't you just stop?" Those are words and questions I have asked so many times. One thing I have learned through her treatment, and my support from other parents who are living this hell with me---is that they cannot just stop. It is not that simple. It's a mind game like no other. It controls their every thought, emotion and feeling. They crave it more than they crave their family, food, and their own lives. How can someone do that? How can someone feel that way? How can this happen to MY child? Well, here's what I want to tell YOU. It can happen to YOUR child. It can happen to YOUR family. It can happen to YOU. We are all at risk in some way or another. We are all one bad choice from being an addict. Just one. One bad temptation can change your whole life.


I tell parents of teens, to lock up their medication. No matter what it is, lock it up. If they can take it, they will or their friends will. You think it will not happen in your family, but do not take the chance. Those of you who have children who are less confident, more impressionable and more likely to buckle under pressure are even more at risk. There are people all around you that are willing to give our kids medication for money. There are people who will buy your kids booze for their attention. There are people all around your children that will sell them anything they want to get something in return. There are people that can make your "perfect child" into a thief, a liar, and a mean, vile, hateful person that you don't recognize. They are robbing us of our children and robbing our children of their youth. 


My mission. I have tried to get people arrested for selling drugs. I have tried to get my own child arrested for doing drugs. I have tried my damnedest to assist law enforcement in the crackdown of drugs in our area and honestly, I gave up. Let me tell you now, the law enforcement officials, the prosecutor, they don't care about your addict. They aren't going to save them. They aren't going to arrest them and their dealer is going to get a slap on the wrist, if they even get arrested. The legal system is failing us all. I know many law enforcement officials who are wonderful people and have tried to curb the problems, but the problem goes way deeper than them. What is it? I don't know, I'm only one person; but I have my theories and it saddens me. I left my job of 12 years in the legal system partly because I couldn't stand the pressures any longer of juggling my home life and trying to listen to other people's problems on a daily basis. Another factor was that I was losing faith in the legal system, because it was failing my family.  It was a constant source of irritation to my heart and soul.  I wonder at times, if those that let the drug dealers go free, if they would lose sleep at night, if that dealer sold my child, the last dose of something that ended her life. I doubt it. I wonder sometimes if things would change if some of our lawmakers had addicts as children. Some of them do and probably don't know it.  How would they cope if this were their child? Would they ignore it? Would they talk about it? Would they pretend there is no big pink elephant sitting in the room? Would they want my help in helping their child? Would I help them? You bet I would. I don't wish this hell on any family. 


I'm not blaming anyone other than my own child for her mistakes. It was her choice to take that first pill. What I want to change---is the people who are making those pills so readily available to our children---and I want there to be consequences to their actions.  I know that I have hacked off so many people in law enforcement and the prosecutor's office that if someone shot me in a parking lot tonight, I doubt charges would ever be filed...but if my efforts save one child, one family, one person, one mother, one father, one sister, one brother, then I feel my cause was worthy. 


So today, as you read the stories about the actor who died with a needle in his arm...before you decide to dismiss his life or feel he "deserved it" or think that he should "have just quit", maybe you should step outside the box and look into a world in which I am living and I am breathing and I am fighting every single day. A world in which every day, my baby girl is fighting to get her life back. A world in which every day I fear she will lose the fight. A world in which unless you have loved an addict, you will never understand. No, his life was not any more important than any other person in this world--but if his death can bring back some awareness to the drug problem in this nation, then perhaps his greatest accomplishment is yet to be seen.  


Before you dismiss his life as another "druggie", look in the eyes of your children. Look deep into their eyes. Someday they can have "pin point pupils" or "blown pupils" or "tremors". If you don't know what those terms mean, I encourage you to look them up. Maybe you have been seeing the look in your child's eyes and just don't know what it is. I saw it, and I didn't. I didn't know those terms until about 2 years ago. I knew her eyes didn't "look right" but couldn't figure it out. I finally googled "my child's eyes don't look right and I think she is doing drugs". Pinpoint pupils was the term that came up immediately and it nailed "the look" square on the head. I don't want you to be the next "me." I don't want your family to be the next "us". I don't want your child to be the next "addict." 


To all of those who are fighting this---keep fighting. To those of you who place judgment on my family---go ahead. For those of you who need help---admit it and get it. I will help you find a treatment facility. Nothing would make me happier than to lead someone to recovery.  For those of you who have lost someone to this deadly disease, I cry for you and I'm sorry. To the politicians running for office--show me what you are going to do to help this problem. Show me that my child isn't just some "junkie" that isn't worth your time or concern. Show me that you want to change this world for your own children and to spare them from the devil hiding in the closet that is ready to jump onto the next victim, during a vulnerable part of their life. To those of you who think this can never happen to your family--YOU ARE WRONG.