The Demon I Call Addiction

Cross-posted from Faces and Voices of Recovery

I was 9 yrs old when I had my 1st sip of beer.  I spit it out, but by the 7th grade I was smoking pot, cigarettes, and drinking vodka on the rocks. I left home for good when I was 15, I believe it was around 1984. I spent the years from then, until I went to prison in, October 2002 using drugs and alcohol. I wasn’t picky I would do whatever was available but my preference was crack or pills.

I cleaned up briefly two times in all those years and that’s was only when I was pregnant with my \two sons. I have been free from prison since October 2006. Yes, I have slipped since being released, but I am clean now thanks to a po wer higher than myself.   Maybe its to help another addict, I’m not sure. I do know that I should have overdosed numerous times over, but for some reason I have been spared.

I have my 2 sons, that I have not raised, but we are forming bonds.  The love and trust is growing everyday.

It is a struggle. Some days it would be so “easy” to just give in to the demon I call addiction. The demon could take hold no matter how bad I didn’t want to, no matter how much I cried out to GOD to help me stop.

I truly believe addiction is a disease that people need to acknowledge, just like cancer or aids. It is not just a “CHOICE” we make. I believe it is very hard for people that have never suffered from addiction to understand just what it is that we go through. For me personally it was to turn off my feelings, when things got to hard I popped a pill. When 1 wasn’t enough I popped two or three, ok lets get real, I snorted them. When I finally decided enough was enough and quit the last time I was up to twenty 30mg Roxies a day. Everyday I was risking my freedom, losing the home I had just bought, and losing my children again. So I reached out to friends that are clean and simply said HELP and for that I am here to tell my story.

This post is part of the ONDCP Stories of Hope blog series.