Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
I am recovering drug addict and alcoholic, cutter, bulimic, and more. I just celebrated a year sober from drugs and alcohol on the 17th, three days ago. I have not cut myself or have done any kind of self-injuring in 10 months. I haven’t forced myself to throw up in a couple of months. Life is slowly becoming more manageable, and I have a clear head. With that clear head, there come a lot of feelings. Shame and guilt are probably number one, because now that I’m sober I’m going through the wreckage of my past. Yet on the other side of that, there is a new freedom of which I have never experienced and it’s amazing. Today, I’m extremely grateful and content with life.
My story started when I was around seven. I started injuring myself. That went on unnoticed until I was about twelve, when my mom confronted me. After a big “fight” or whatever you want to call it, I told her straight up that, “I cut myself.” It was the first time I ever admitted out loud what I was doing. Also around twelve or eleven, I started doing drugs. It began pretty innocently, I guess. I was asking regularly for Adderoll from my boyfriend at the time to help me to study or to lose weight. Eventually, it ran my life. I wouldn’t eat for days, sometimes a week, at a time. I’d stay up all night either exercising or studying. That kept on until I was about thirteen, when I started smoking marijuana, drinking, and taking other kind of pills.
The drugs were doing for me what I couldn’t do myself. All I wanted was to feel better, and that was easily accomplished through getting plastered or stoned out of my mind. Oblivion was easy for me and extremely comfortable. My dad and mom then began taking me to regular ER visits for attempted suicide or stitches. I began to go to different psych wards around Houston and I started running away and getting locked up shortly after that.
By the time I was 16, I had tried AA more than once and accumulated thirteen months of being a dry drunk. I was most definitely not sober. I was still going to inpatient places even after I got sober off the drugs and alcohol for my self-injury. I had found out about AA through a rehabilitation center, where I stayed 2-3 months. I began to go to meetings, and Youth AA Groups, such as APGs (Alternative Peer Groups).
Two APGs and about two years later, at ten months sober (the most I had ever had since I started using), I went to inpatient in Denton for my self-injury. The epitome of a dry drunk: Once having removed the alcohol and drugs, I was left with feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions, which would normally be taken out under the influence. Without any type of a spiritual experience, I couldn’t change my life. I was “white-knuckling” it, as the AAs said. I was miserable, discontent, angry, and so on. I was still acting out on my worst addiction: self-injury. When you’re in jail, it’s pretty damn hard to get some drugs or alcohol. But no matter where I went, self-injury was an easy accessible tool. So I went to Denton to seek help.
I was raped in Denton, and therefore had a lot of resentments towards the place I went to, God, the rapist, the hotel, etc. etc. Most of all, I was angry at God because in my eyes, I had gone to get help and stop self-injuring, and then that happened. For a very long time, I felt as if it was God trying to tell me I wasn’t ready to stop cutting. What a delusion that was! But they were my feelings, and therefore legit. I was very angry for a long time because I wanted God in my life and I wanted to stop hurting and to stop harming myself, and then someone else harms me. I didn’t think it was fair. Now I realize that God does throw curve balls, but I don’t need to justify it. I needed to take it as it came, accept it, realize that bad things happen to good people, learn, heal, talk about it, and move on.
After the rape, I stayed sober for about 4-5 more months until I put myself in a position to get high again. I wasn’t thinking about getting high, it just happened. Once again: I was without defense against the first drink/drug. I ran away that day for about three days and when I tried hitch hiking home, the woman that had picked me up flagged a policeman down. I was taken into custody, and my dad picked me up later that day from the juvenile detention center. After that, I went to another placement and decided to run away from there. I ran away with someone else and lived on the streets for about a month and a half.
Within that month and a half, I learned how to sell my body, and I began a life of drugs all over again. I had never done “hard drugs” before I ran away, and by the time I came back, I was hooked on crack and had done meth, ecstasy, cocaine, and several others as well. For a long time I only saw myself as a crackwhore. It was really hard for me to look myself in the mirror and accept who I was and what I had become. I had lost all knowledge that I didn’t have to be that way. So when I got back home, I chose to continue doing drugs, just not to that extreme. This was around March 2008. I continued to go to school high and I had no self-respect.
Eventually, my actions caught up to me and I was locked up for assault and domestic violence. I had hit my dad. The abuse I caused him went on for years before I finally “got caught,” but today I’m glad. My dad and I have an amazing relationship and when I talk to other people about him, I often refer to him as my “knight in shining armor.” He’s always been there for me through everything and has never left nor rejected me. He’s always loved me for exactly who I am. “I don’t love the things you do, but I love the person you are,” he often says. So when I sobered up in jail after the assault, I had a lot of guilt and shame riding on my back, to the point of where I couldn’t speak to him civilly in a window visitation while in JDC.
I got out on house arrest fifteen days later, and still thought I could play the system. I thought probation and house arrest were merely jokes. Two days later, I was back in jail, under the influence. After not coming home for two days straight, my dad caught me and turned me in. I was so mad at him at first. I remember telling him I hated him and I hoped he would die. I live with that every day, now. Yet, I know things don’t ever have to be that way anymore. From JDC, they sent me to a rehabilitation center in North Texas since I had been admitted under the influence for the second time.
I spent nine months in that rehab, and everyday I live today; I thank God for the events that caused me to go there. I don’t think I would have ever sobered up again on my own, no matter how much God I had. I think it really took a lot of time away from that kind of atmosphere to gain a clear head and decide not to use again. I cut for the first month I was in there, and then realized that cutting wasn’t getting me anywhere either.
As far as what it’s like now, I have to maintain a spiritual connection with my higher power, because I know that if I don’t then I’ll end up right back where I started from. Today I’m so grateful that I don’t EVER have to be that person that I used to be, and I believe that is the greatest miracle God or recovery could have ever given me. I’ve been through a lot, and today I consider myself a survivor. I don’t act anything like I used to and ultimately I’m just not the same girl that I used to be. I can’t really express my gratitude anymore than that. I’m happy, joyous and free today and for that, I thank God. I value my freedom more than anything today, and right now I don’t wish to put anything in it’s way. I’ve spent about an accumulated two years behind gates and fences and maximum security places. Today, I don’t want to live that way anymore. I want to live my life the way I’ve always dreamed of and be successful. I know I can accomplish all things through Christ, and that’s my plan.
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