Addicted Like Me Read online

  There I was sitting on our couch at home, coming off a high and in withdrawal, rattled by the news Lenny had been picked up by police and was packing a shotgun, in addition to being frustrated by Lindsey’s confrontation, and then I got busted by my mom. Talk about finally feeling my bottom. My mom confronted me with the option to either go to an intake at yet another recovery program or leave her house. I didn’t know if this was as bad as it got for somebody like me or if things were still going to get worse, but I knew I had to make a choice. My mom had taken her Tough Love to the harshest place yet by asking me to leave her house. That wasn’t on my terms or playing into my need to declare that I was the one running away. I was absolutely licked, and I knew it deep inside of me. I was thin as a rail sitting on that couch, because I never ate when I was on meth, and I had been flying from high to high. I couldn’t seem to go a day without some kind of substance in my body. The beast could go on devouring me like that, or I could try to fight him off, but that required hope. Was I worth hoping for? I really couldn’t believe such a thing on that day. The most I was capable of was telling my mom I would go talk to the counselor because I realized my life was trashed.

  CHAPTER 10

  STOPPING THE BEAST IN ITS TRACKS

  I LIKE TO CALL the day I stopped my beast in his tracks my first glimpse of hope. I didn’t know I could begin to believe in myself just by seeing a crowd of sober kids hanging out laughing, talking, and running around having the time of their lives. It gave me the realization I didn’t have to choose our family legacy of addiction to see the kids at the twelve-step center where my mom took me after I agreed to talk to a counselor. It wasn’t the fact that all of them seemed genuinely happy that got to me. It was the fact that they all seemed this way without a single drug in their body. How could that be? It was possible, though; that’s the only thing I knew for sure.

  I didn’t immediately decide to change the day my mother forced me to choose between leaving the house and entering a new recovery program. I took a whole day to ponder which decision I should make. I just couldn’t come to terms with another one of my mom’s solutions for fixing me. To my knowledge I was unfixable, so at the beginning, my mind was completely made up and I was going to leave. I figured that there was at least one benefit to leaving. I was always welcome to stay at Steve’s house, and sitting around all day getting wasted didn’t seem like such a bad option for a drug addict. I called my friend Paige to ask her what she thought I should do. She told me that I was stupid and ridiculous to think I should leave and that I just needed to stop getting high and get my life together. She told me to shut up and go to the stupid program and deal with it.

  I still wasn’t sure what I would do after talking to Paige, and I hadn’t left my room to tell my mom my decision, but then I heard her getting ready to leave the house. “I’m going with you!” The words just flew out of my mouth. She had to get Ryan, who had attended his first twelve-step meeting that night, so I jumped in the car with her. I hadn’t decided to change when I got in the car, but I had decided I could at least fake it one more time and maybe, just maybe, I could get my mom off my back long enough to figure out a better plan. It was only after we pulled up at the twelve-step center that I even considered the fact that I was not in danger of becoming some parent-obeying, straitlaced, rule-abiding teen if I decided to change. I hopped out of the car in the parking lot and fell in with Ryan’s friends. They weren’t lame.

  It seemed like these kids had taken their lives back. I remembered when I used to own my life and knew I wanted to get back to that place, but letting myself think about things like that gave me a sense of fear that hurt so much. As I stood in the parking lot, my head began spinning with a hundred questions. Did I want to enter into another rehab? Was it going to be a waste of time? Was I just a waste of time? I was consumed by so much dread. What would life be like if I were sober? Would I hate every minute of it? Would it be like waking up from a nightmare only to realize I also hated my life when I was sober? While using I felt like I could conquer the world, yet I was too high to follow through with any of my dreams. I craved excitement and a daring lifestyle. What if a lifestyle like that was impossible for a sober person?

  If I left home I did know I could expect to be daring. Besides going to Steve’s place, I was sure I would end up all right on my own and be able to support myself by becoming a stripper. I wouldn’t need anyone then to take care of me or get me high because I would be able to live without anyone telling me what to do or who I should be. This dark and untrusting side of me spoke up loudly against the hope I felt. In my sick head I was trying to talk myself out of believing I was worth a try. I told myself there was no way in the world that all these kids could be as happy as I thought they seemed and not be high on something. It just wasn’t possible, or maybe they were just more normal than I had become over the years and were happy because they had been the kind of kids that broke curfew or ditched school functions and drank here and there, but not the kind of kids that had been to the depths that my addiction had taken me. The hopeful side of me said I was wrong to believe any of that.

  At this point all I knew was that nothing had worked for me so far, and getting high wasn’t really working for me either. I had tried to stop with my own will, and that didn’t work. I was hospitalized, and that didn’t work. I threw myself into church, and that also didn’t work. All I knew is that whatever it was that was going to save me had not been introduced into my life just yet. Why not this? The new hope inside me said that the kids I met at the twelve-step group were just like me. They were just further along, and to get there what I needed to do was make a decision to try again.

  I told my mom I wanted to join the kids I had met in the parking lot the night we picked Ryan up. I met with a counselor after that and was set up to begin recovery. I was absolutely terrified walking into my first newcomer meeting. My mouth was dry, my heart raced, and a huge hole inside of me throbbed for some kind of fix. I quickly noticed just how attractive the counselor who was running the meeting was. He looked like a model with long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Each time he spoke to me, I ate up the attention and felt at ease. After the introductions in our group, he began to tell parts of his story, and it was as if he was telling my story, which completely captured my attention. He began to describe desperation and a loneliness that I identified with so much. Up to this point, no one had ever come even close to understanding the kind of hell that my addiction had taken me to. No one had ever gotten past the wall of anger I had built around me. Since this counselor broke through to me so quickly, I knew that something was available for me at that place if I would just stay and keep listening.

  Something said to me at that meeting has stuck with me to this day. As the counselor told his story, he shared with me that he decided to stop using because he just “became sick and tired of being sick and tired.” This felt like it came from God’s mouth, and I was completely blown away. I had never had the experience of a simple phrase reaching to the deepest parts of my soul. It reached even to the part of me that wanted to fight the choice I had made to try again to stop using drugs, and it filled up the part of me that wanted to live. Nothing at my meeting went the way I had planned. I expected to show up and be told that I was a really screwed-up kid, that I was breaking my parent’s heart, that drugs were the devil, and that I was going to end up in a gutter someday unless I got sober. That wasn’t the case, and that made this rehab different from every other counselor, doctor, hospital program, or consequence I had had forced upon me. I knew for a long time, with 100 percent of my mind, body, and soul, that I had a problem with alcohol and drugs. No one had ever put that problem to me the way the counselor did at my first newcomers meeting. He said that I had the potential to have a condition called alcoholism.

  This counselor had given my beast a name. I was told that the illness of alcoholism is an addiction that transpires through family generations without regard for race, age, faith, gender, intelligenc
e, profession, or even the general nature of a person. I became a little more comfortable really considering that I might have an illness, not just a habit. The illness of addiction is a family affair, which is why it is a nightmare everyone in my family had visit them at one point or another, and why it was a beast in our lives that each of us had to face. Addiction gets passed on even if you didn’t ask for it, or you can’t handle it, or you don’t know it is about to consume you. Information like this actually got through to me, but that didn’t mean I was about to give the information my immediate trust. I was still wary of committing to anything. I hadn’t decided to stop using; I had only decided I should try again because what I had heard about my behaviors was new.

  During my newcomers meeting, I was asked to commit to staying sober and attending the meetings for thirty days. I couldn’t even handle going one day without using. I wondered how I was going to go thirty days, because that seemed like an eternity to me. I also believed at this point that I was still capable of using and fooling everyone around me that I wasn’t. This kind of thinking seems funny to me now. It’s usually pretty obvious to everyone else when an addict continues to use. My counselor proposed a deal, though. He told me that if I gave him thirty days, he would get my mom off my back, so I agreed to go along with his deal. If nothing else, I was going to at least pretend I was clean. At this time I was heavily involved in huffing, a way to use any kind of chemical vapor to get high. It wasn’t likely I was going to be able to keep my promise to the counselor in that position. I huffed during my thirty days because it was just so easy to do. I could go into anyone’s bathroom and get high off a can of air freshener spray. I felt out of control if I didn’t huff or use the old drugs or alcohol I was used to. Getting high was what felt normal to me, and being sober was the feeling that was weird to handle.

  There was also the same old friendship dilemma at recovery that I had had all my life. I hadn’t really gotten to know anyone well in the group, and in that new place of being vulnerable, I didn’t have a desire to. I felt so out of place at the sober functions. I put on a happy face as a huffer and pretended for everyone there that I was sober, but on my own time I was back with the friends I wasn’t ready to leave. I had status in these groups with people that were older, popular, and had money. On the weekends I was still going to hardcore parties, where I would come across many people that I had known from church that I never thought would have touched a drug in their life. These were the altar boys and girls and the kids that were youth leaders. I quickly learned that they were just as into the drug scene as I was, and some were in even worse. A few were huffers that were actually pretty out of control considering just how dangerous it can be. Huffing can kill the very first time.

  Everything outside of my meetings at recovery completely revolved around my using. I received constant phone calls from people who needed drugs and people who wanted to give me drugs, and I was consuming more drugs than I ever knew anyone could. With the amounts that I was huffing, it is a miracle that I didn’t find myself dead. Inside of rehab I tried to duplicate the fastest way I had learned to make new friends and not feel alone. I looked for the kids who were still getting high. We would sneak off after the meetings while everyone was hanging out at the coffee shop, where I had seen the kids who were so happy on the night I had that glimmer of hope. I didn’t really understand at the time that most kids in recovery were there because they actually wanted to be sober. What I had seen was real. I just wasn’t ready to do the work yet to make that hope true for me. It had to go in small phases for me, so when I believed in myself enough to try again, this was a huge accomplishment. It just didn’t change my thinking right away. I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would want to be sober after I had temporarily been forced to experience it in contrast to the euphoria given by drugs and alcohol.

  Eventually it was clear to the counselors that I was involved in the downward spiral of many of the kids in the program. I would go use with kids and then sneak back and act like we had been at the coffee shop the whole time; all the while we were so paranoid that everyone would know. When the counselors confronted me, it was because someone had ratted me out. The confrontation was the last thing I wanted to happen again to me at that time, after what I went through with Lindsey. I found out I would have to go through that all again when I was approached before the start of a meeting by one of the kids who regularly got high with me. I could tell right away just how upset and irate he was. He accused me of telling the counselors that I had got him high and proceeded to tell me that someone had given a list of names of all the kids in the program who were still using. I tried to convince him that it wasn’t me who told. My loyalty was to drugs, not the program, I explained.

  The list of names piled up after that. Some of the kids on the list ended up leaving recovery, and those that were in positions of leadership were forced to step down. I figured the outcome for me was going to be another boot out of a rehab program, but as the days went by, I didn’t get kicked out. The lack of scare tactics set this recovery program apart and so did the bright idea to draw a person like me in closer at the starting stage of getting clean. I was put into inpatient to be counseled more closely after it was discovered I was still using, which was the opposite action of every other program I had been in. I didn’t know I was being switched to inpatient. I fumed, on the defensive, at the meeting where I found out, instantly throwing up all my walls. I was certain that people didn’t have a clue what kind of girl they were messing with. I was ready to play hardball to keep things the same as they had been in every other program, where I was the one who was in control.

  My mom was supposed to be leaving that weekend for a camping trip with her boyfriend, Bob, and his kids, but she told me we just had to stop by the twelve-step center before she left to talk about Ryan’s homecoming. What I didn’t know was that he had told my mom I was using and that he couldn’t return home because of my addictions. I was so angry when I realized that I had been lied to about the purpose of the meeting. It wasn’t about Ryan at all. So there I was, sitting on the floor in the coffee shop at the twelve-step center, feeling very alone and very uncertain of my future. I had been going to the rehab functions, I had been attending the meetings, and I had even drunk the damn coffee like I was supposed to. A counselor stayed with me the whole time I vented and raged. She was cool, letting me smoke all her cigarettes. Little did I know that it was just one of her tools to get me to trust her and open up, so the program was in control, not me. At this time I had no idea that my mother had already left the meeting and was checking out the residential house that counselors wanted me to attend.

  It seemed like forever that I sat and talked to the counselor. She told me her rehab story, about how she came to sobriety and all the trouble she had gotten herself into before. This caused me to open up and give her some of my history as a user. What I said probably only helped confirm how badly I needed inpatient treatment, and that it needed to happen very soon. The talk wasn’t enough to keep me from wondering what was taking my mother so long in the meeting, because I still didn’t know the meeting about my brother was never the plan in the first place. I began to ask for her. Next thing I knew I was sitting in an office surrounded by counselors, being told the truth. I should have known that I was walking right into my own intervention. I could feel the fear coming over me that I felt in the parking lot the night I first visited the twelve-step center and could hear my heart beating in my ears. The most frightening part of an intervention for an addict is to hear that a different life is possible, and that this life is actually better. It is an unbelievable concept that brings up all the what-if questions I had already asked myself.

  Yet I had seen the evidence. There was a way for me to be happy, free, and sober. I knew my life was still the opposite. I wasn’t dumb. I knew how badly off I was and I definitely didn’t need that pointed out to me over and over again. I had lived my life thinking and knowing in my heart that I probably wasn’t going t
o see my eighteenth birthday. This had been a reality I came to live with at some point years before, when I shut off all of my emotions from even caring that death was probably going to be my destiny. I just accepted that as a fact of what happens to a person who takes the amount of mind-changing chemicals I did. No way, no way, no way, I repeated in my head as the counselors explained the plan to move me to the residential home run by the twelve-step center. The suggestion of inpatient treatment brought me right back to the scary hospitals I had seen, with the bars on the windows, the freaky kids that drooled, and Santa Claus, who declared I was beyond help. I only began to listen when the counselors mentioned the fact that the program took place at a house, not an institution.

  The program seemed like a regular day at home. There was not a bedtime rule, and I could stay up to hang out all night if I wanted to. I wouldn’t be subjected to terrible hospital meals and could cook anything I wished to in a community kitchen. It was going to be like a forty-five-day vacation to pick myself back up again. That explanation didn’t sound so bad. The counselors just needed an answer. That’s when the what-if questions filled me to the top. The biggest question was whether I was done using, because I wasn’t sure I really was. I had a huge drug party planned. I also had two days left of school I needed to make up if I was going to get any credit for that year. I brought up the reality of my school situation as a way to say no to treatment at first, but the counselors rejected this. They assured me that they would let the school know my situation and were positive that the school would waive the two make-up days. “You have given your getting-high career 100 percent,” a counselor finally said. “What would happen if you gave this 100 percent?” This question got to me. She was right. It was that one moment of clarity that I desperately needed to hear.