The Normal Teenage Girl

I actually played softball with your daughter when we were kids. You probably didn’t know I was a drug addict. I have been clean over 7 years now. I would like to share my story in hope of helping someone else.

This is my story of addiction.

I was your teenage girl. Loved life. Loved sports. Loved boys.

It all started with alcohol. I'd drink anything I could get my hands on. I tried cocaine for the first time when I was barely 16. I met a guy and fell in with him and his friends, the “wrong crowd”, so to speak. He talked me into dealing and using pot, coke, pills, etc. He used meth, but I was too scared to try it. I left him after 10 months and moved in with my new man who I knew from high school, not too much later. I dropped out of school my sophomore year because I was too busy getting high. There were times I would get so “pilled out” that I would have memory lapses while driving or at someone's house. Later, I would be told about things I'd done and I had zero memory of them.

I overdosed and somehow survived many times.

After a short time I found myself being abused physically and mentally by that man I thought I loved. We did nothing but get messed up and fight and argue. I finally left him after 2 ½ years and moved back in with my dad. I then met a guy that worked at the restaurant I did and he seemed really great at first. Said all the right things, he was very nice. He introduced me to his friends who dealt and used drugs of all kinds and some who worked at a local strip joint. I unfortunately was wooed in to their life and started doing more drugs and started working at the strip club as a dancer to support our many habits. This is by far the most embarrassing thing I ever did. While there, I experimented with more drugs. Now I had done many drugs including coke, crack, meth, ecstasy, oxycontin, acid, shrooms, morphine, and even some experimental drugs that I couldn't tell you the name. I was in very deep.

I stole pain pills from my family's own medicine cabinet and stole money as well to fuel my habit. That is why it is so important that parents lock up their medications. I can promise you that kids will take them. 

In my early years, I would self harm (cutting my wrists) before I ever started using any drugs. I have scars all over my arms that remind me every day of that battle. When I see other people with scars like mine, I just want to give them a hug and tell them it'll all be ok and over one day.

I finally wised up and left that guy and moved back in with my dad. I was finally starting to get clean. Well “clean-er.” I had quit many things…but not everything yet. Then I met a man. A truly great man. We started dating and hit it off instantly. I believe strongly that if it weren’t for him I would be dead or in jail. I quit that job got clean. I was done with drugs. I wanted to break free…and I did.

Today I have been clean for 7 1/2  years and I'm engaged to the man of my dreams and we have a beautiful daughter together.

Occasionally I still have bad days where I'll have a craving, but I just remind myself what I've been through and how it would ruin my now happy life, so I tell myself it's not worth it. My daughter needs her mom, and that's the best thing to keep me clean.

I also used to avoid my family as much as possible because of the shame I felt being a druggie and then also a stripper. I knew if I went around them at high use times they would know I was high. Now I wish I could get those times back I missed out on with my family members who are gone. I have many regrets that I will never be able to go back and change. But I can only try to be a better person now and spend as much time with my family as possible. In order to 100% get away from that life, I had to never see or speak to those people again, even my best friend at the time. It's the only way.

Every story of addiction is different. Everyone starts in a different way for a different reason. I was in the wrong places at the wrong times with all the wrong people. I found myself being pressured by people, usually my exes, and feeling like I can't say no. Today I speak to zero of the people that joined me down that path. I never want to go back there again. I am finally clean and happy.

I at least feel better after saying all of this. I hope my story can help others. I hope my story can help others struggling with addiction and can help parents know what the signs they may be seeing in their own kids.

People caught in addiction need help and help is something that is hard to come by. Most people judge and condemn people like me because they've never been there and don't understand what it does to you and your loved ones. They look at us like a lost cause. Like it's too late for us. We are not a lost cause. We can be productive members of society if given the chance and given love and help. We want that, even while being destructive, we wish we weren't that way. I can't tell you how many times I cried while doing these horrible things. I would think of my family and what a disappointment I must've been. How I was a waste of a human being. I know now I was just a very troubled girl in a tornado of destruction that I set loose.

I hope that addict stereotype can be crushed one day and we aren't looked at as a waste of life and energy, but a real person with real problems who needs a loving hand to help them get their life back and actually live again.