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  I started to calm down after I made that call. My mom was on her way, but while waiting by the pay phone I heard my dad screaming out my name. I turned around to see him walking toward me. I felt a sense of relief to see him, because I hadn’t been able to tell him what Sylvia had done yet. I knew that he could fix the situation with her, but things went differently than I had expected. He told Ryan and I to get in the car and, to no big surprise, he drove us to a bar. When we told him our story, he told us that he didn’t believe us. He was angry by this point, yelling loudly enough for everyone at the bar to hear. He said he believed Sylvia’s story, which was that she did not touch us at all. He was upset that we would treat his wife so badly, and he told us she was the most important thing in his life. My father told us that he wasn’t willing to let anything mess that up.

  Growing up, I had wanted my dad to appreciate me, and here he was, choosing his alcohol and his addiction to a woman over the word of his own daughter about being abused. At least I had succeeded in leading Ryan to safety. When my dad became very concerned about what we were going to tell our mom, I wasn’t concerned at all. I had no reason to lie about what happened. My father was telling me to keep it a secret, but I refused to give in to his desperation. My mom needed to know, and I didn’t understand how my father expected me to lie. Once she picked us up I told her the story of how Sylvia had physically hurt Ryan and that we had to hide from her in the bedroom until we could get away. It was a relief that my mom had finally come for us, but I was very confused and angry. How could this be happening is all I could think. A dad is supposed to protect his kids, yet he had chosen to hang me out to dry. His own flesh and blood was just another casualty along the way.

  It would be a year and a half before I would hear from my father again, and I started acting out around that same time. I was starved for attention. I also didn’t have the coping skills I needed to go through the kinds of events caused by the addicts around me, events that were the story of my family’s life. The attention I wanted came easily when I would get in trouble. I quickly realized that the attention was negative, but it was still attention, and I learned to get it from people who were safe, unlike Sylvia. Before long it became a regular act of mine to give my teachers a hard time and play the class clown. I found that other kids would egg me on. To have attention from them was such a great feeling. My beast of addiction was awakened by this harmless wish to be appreciated and loved. The acting up eventually became normal behavior for me and kept feeding into itself. It was as if I had become a ball of negative energy that was consumed with anger and hate.

  As the time went by I became angrier and lonelier. In middle school my family moved across town. I was very set on making friends after the move and keeping them. I became a great actress, with the ability to mold myself to what others wanted me to be, which would be a trait that came in handy once I started using full-time. The friends I made at my new school were already experimenting with drugs, but I had no interest in participating. I smoked cigarettes, but that was all during this time, and my mom had no idea. If my friends ever asked if I had been high before, I lied and said yes. I didn’t want anyone to think I was lame and inexperienced. My mom could have appreciated this, based on her own fears growing up.

  Our family moved again after the end of this year, to Colorado, where I did give in to the peer pressure of drugs. That’s when I met Chuck, who introduced me to pot. I was back into my lonely space after the move, without the friends I had worked so hard to make. My dad also got back in touch with me. A letter arrived in the mail after I had heard nothing from him for a year and a half, and the letter was postmarked from the Yavapai County jail, in Arizona. He was in prison for driving under the influence, which made me upset. I just wanted to be alone. It didn’t seem fair that my dad was so good at vanishing from my life while other kids never had to experience this. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t be the father that I needed him to be. He had done everything the opposite of the way I believed a father was supposed to act. I took his letter to the side of our house to read it in private. In the letter, my dad wrote that he had made a decision to stop drinking and therefore could no longer have Sylvia in his life. He wrote that he was sorry for everything that he had done to cause me pain and that he wanted to stop hurting the people that he loved the most and become a better man and father.

  He made promises that things were now going to be different. At that point, I had no reason to doubt his promises. He hadn’t begun the string of arrests, letters, and promises that he would be different that I would receive from him over the next few years. And of course his message was the promise that every little girl without a father wants to hear. Somehow it seemed that he and I were a little closer to the fairytale relationship I could have only dreamed of by then. The men in my life at the time were either related to me, or they were boys I was meeting through my brother, like Chuck. At first I was absolutely shocked to find out that my brother had been smoking pot with Chuck, but the shock soon turned into curiosity, and I leaned in a little closer so I could become part of their world.

  Chuck was a few years older than me, and quite a bit older than my brother. I soon found out that they shared a common bond, though. They both liked to smoke marijuana. As we all sat together the first day I chose to try drugs, Chuck reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pipe and a bag of weed. I played it cool on the outside, but on the inside I was completely freaking out. It was as if a great war began inside my head. Part of me knew that it was wrong, but the other part of me just couldn’t say no anymore. I didn’t do it because I wanted to rebel, and I didn’t do it because I thought it would be fun or because I felt I had to because that was my family legacy. I made the decision to get high at that moment because I wanted to be accepted.

  When Chuck and my brother gave me a chance to try pot, it became a huge moment in my life. It was a moment when I learned that I could be carefree and a moment when I learned drugs could somehow fill the void that had always been inside of me. Something that was supposed to be so terrible for me really offered feelings of euphoria, happiness, and fulfillment. I realized that pot was something great that I had been missing out on for so long. In my father’s letter that year he had promised to be different. I would be different, too, because I actually became more like the addict he had been when I was growing up. I can see the scene when this happened so clearly in my mind. Chuck, Ryan, and I sat on a hill with the sun shining down on us. After I tried weed on that hill, I soon began to wonder if alcohol would also produce the same effect for me. I find this to be the power of addiction. The years I spent hating drugs and alcohol were reversed after one time taking drugs. In a matter of seconds, I lost all defenses to the beast.

  This is when the illness of addiction began to take control of my life. I was the new kid in Colorado. I had trouble making friends, and I was scared to take any risks and meet new people. All the people I met there pretty much had a place where they already fit in, a crowd that they belonged to. I just couldn’t seem to find my place. I was surrounded by hundreds of kids but felt like the loneliest person in the world. I dreaded each day that I had to get out of bed and face eating lunch by myself once again. To my mom, everything may have looked relatively good, other than a few calls from school that I was acting up, but on the inside I felt alone and lost, and I didn’t see any point in letting her know. Things had gotten really bad at school, but I knew that she wasn’t going to be able to fix that. It was up to me to find my place in our new town.

  I found Chuck, eventually, and found the neighborhood friends Ryan and I shared, Christy and Danny, later on. At school all the lonely kids like me, the misfits and new kids, just kind of hung together. Deeper down we knew that if any of us could have made a better friend, we would have. I became impatient for summer to come because of that wish to get away from these nobodies. Meeting Chuck had introduced me to a whole different world that had opened the door to me if I was willing to live like an ad
dict, and by that time I was. I became an addict that first day I lit up. In no time at all, I was looking for my second and third high. I had to have more. I had to reach the high that I experienced the first time, and it became my quest to feel okay. After feeling fine for the first time in my life, I never wanted to go back to feeling insecure. I wasn’t afraid to talk to people when I was high. I didn’t wish I were someone else. I never wanted to reverse that effect.

  Within a couple of weeks I developed strep throat because I was using so frequently. As I sat in the doctor’s office, I was sure I would have to submit a urine sample and my pot smoking would be found out. This was my introduction to the paranoia that is a side effect of addiction. Paranoia is the constant companion of the addict. The nurse at the office noticed I had dropped seventeen pounds in a two-week period, but she hadn’t asked for a sample. She talked about my weight instead, and as far as I could remember I hadn’t stopped eating, so I didn’t have an answer. My mom and I never discussed it further; we just left it as a mystery, maybe a temporary part of the adjustment to our move, which we didn’t try to overanalyze. I had figured that if anything I had gained weight, from overeating when I had the munchies after smoking pot.

  Then the nurse eventually did ask for the urine sample, and my heart dropped to the floor. This was it for me, obviously. I could tell I was going to be busted for sure. Again, this was paranoia. The nurse had asked for the urine sample because she wanted to rule out the possibility I had developed diabetes, which might have accounted for the rapid change in my weight. My mom had no clue about my drug use when we were at this appointment. She could have asked the nurse to run the urine tests for drugs, but why would she? She only had a sense that something was different with me after we moved to Colorado. That summer I tried my best to reach my next drunk or high. Maybe it would have turned out differently if my mom had followed her instinct that I was different and assumed I was using drugs, because I was, but I wasn’t so different she couldn’t recognize me. I looked a lot like she had looked at my age. I began to isolate myself, lie, and steal. I also let my addiction become the most important thing in my life, just like my dad did.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE PROGRESSION OF THE DISEASE

  IT SEEMED AS IF I had started a whole new life for myself. It didn’t come easy to stay high, though, because I hardly knew anybody besides Chuck and the other kids Ryan knew that did drugs. I had to persuade one of these people to steal alcohol for me at the beginning, because I was always too chicken to steal it from the grocery store myself. It became evident early on that I would have to get brave enough to use my own acting skills to stay high as often as I needed to. I needed to become a great manipulator and liar. My summer had led into the first year at high school, where again I had no friends. This is when I met Ryan’s friend, Danny, and his sister, Christy. I struck up a conversation almost instantly with Danny about our mutual interest in getting high. It was just like my dad and Jen had been with their alcohol, or Chuck and I had been with our pot. I gathered from the way Danny explained his habit that he just might be the connection and friend I had been waiting for.

  We walked miles on the afternoon I met him to find Christy, because she supposedly hung out where we could buy some pot. I’d never purchased drugs before, but I was ready. I was excited to have my very first and very own bag of weed. Christy went to the same school that I did and was in my grade, so as I walked up to the place where I first met her, I sensed I was about to meet a good friend. At school the next day I stumbled upon her again, and her friends were all gathered together during lunch. She recognized me and asked me if I wanted to hang out. The feeling was wonderful. I was in complete awe of Christy and thought her friends were all beautiful and seemed so much more experienced than I was with drugs. Because we all shared a connection with drugs, it was as if I was instantly accepted. After meeting these girls, I always had someone to get high with and to walk home with me. Christy and Danny lived one street over from our house in Colorado. She and I soon became very close friends and did everything together, and it didn’t take long before getting high together became an everyday occurrence.

  I soon figured out that in the world of addiction, the person with the drugs is the person with all the power. Everyone is instantly this person’s best friend, which was the kind of attention I had always craved. When I realized this was the way it worked, I was willing to do whatever it took to keep experiencing the highs of my new world. My allowance wasn’t enough to support my marijuana and alcohol use by then, so I started sneaking out at night to break into the neighborhood cars to look for any valuables or money I could scrounge up. To my surprise, lots of people didn’t lock their car doors. Sometimes I would find money, and sometimes I would take clothes or expensive jackets that I could then sell to friends for drugs. Acid became an option, but I resisted at first. Somehow my mind had convinced me that I was still in control of myself as long as I didn’t take it past alcohol and pot. Acid made me rethink my opinion. I was surprised that all I had to do was put a little white square of paper on my tongue to get high from LSD.

  Each time I tried a new drug, I liked it better than the last. I didn’t have control of my addiction, no matter what I believed. Alcohol and pot were a part of my everyday life, and I added LSD on the weekends. I had no clue that my mom had compromised with her drug use the same way I was beginning to. Both of us were “weekend warriors” in our own ways. Being on drugs like this gradually became an easy and comfortable way for me to live. Through friends of my brother I met new drug connections, like Larry and his wife, Annie, who lived on the street behind me. Larry was twenty-six and fed me a constant supply of drugs and alcohol and gave all the neighborhood kids a place to party. No more standing outside in Colorado blizzards, freezing and soaking myself just to get high without my mom catching me. Larry liked me instantly. He invited me to his house any time I wanted to party. It didn’t take long before I took his offer and brought Christy to meet him, and we were showing up at Larry’s every day after school.

  I was having so much fun living this way, and I wasn’t going to let anything or anyone get in my way. Getting high was more important than anything else. There was no room for family, chores, or schoolwork. It was obvious to my mom that I had changed. She was baffled as to why, partly because she had no proof I was using and partly because of her own denial, which kept her from looking for the clues that she could have seen, like my weight loss. She would come home and find that my chores weren’t done or have to take calls from my teachers, who confronted her about my continuously missing schoolwork. The only way that I really knew how to react was to be argumentative. It was as if I had started building a wall around myself made of pure anger. It fought off anyone who came too close. The anger wasn’t hard to keep alive because I lived in fear that my secret would be found out, and I was willing to do anything to protect it. I was skipping class with my friends. They didn’t usually end up going back to school after ditching to get high, so I would just follow them, and wherever they ended up, I ended up.

  It became a game to sneak off campus and run from the school supervisors that drove around the grounds in golf carts, acting like a fleet of police. They knew through the grapevine that other kids came looking to me for dope. Because of this suspicion, any time a supervisor felt like it, I was searched. Occasionally, the supervisors would catch me on the Path, a jumble of trees across the street from my school where everyone who wanted to smoke cigarettes or get high would hide. It was pretty obvious that you were hiding something if a supervisor caught you on the Path. The only reason kids went there was to do things that weren’t allowed. One of the closest calls on the Path I can remember was with Christy. The campus supervisors came roaring over in the golf carts on a witch hunt for us, just as soon as we had lit the cigarettes we always smoked to cover up the smell after we smoked pot.

  We weren’t the only people on the Path that day, so the supervisors began to round everyone up. When they
had, they barked marching orders for us to return to class. I thought Christy and I had blended in with everyone else and made a close escape, but just before we were out of sight, the supervisors told us to follow them to the main office at school. I thought they were going to bust us for ditching, or write us up for being off campus at worst. To my surprise they asked me to empty my pockets. They never found anything on me, and Christy came up clean, too, because she had been smart enough to hide her pipe in her bra. They couldn’t nail us, but they made it clear that the smell of the marijuana was very heavily on us. They told us it would only be a matter of time before we would finally be caught red-handed. I ended up at Larry’s house after that, only that time I arrived to find somebody new at his house. Larry kept a tight circle of people around him because of the fear. It wasn’t very often that someone new came around.

  Addiction makes you fearful that your secret will get out. If the secret gets out, you get busted, which means the addiction can’t continue, and that’s worse than being caught red-handed. Nothing could be worse for an addict than being forced to stop. All of us worried constantly about the people we opened up to. An addict has to limit the people he or she knows to ensure the secret of addiction stays safe. Larry had a huge secret. He had purchased four hundred dollars’ worth of cocaine from the new person hanging around. They asked me if I wanted to stay and party, so I said yes and quickly found a spot to sit on the floor. I did four and half lines and didn’t leave that spot for the next five hours. I just sat there numb, observing all the conversation around me. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, and I loved every second of it. PCP, a drug called phencyclidine, came next. I began to smoke marijuana laced with the stuff and catch the feelings of strength, power, and invulnerability PCP gives. I spent the next two months on a constant high of marijuana, alcohol, acid, cocaine, and PCP.