Saturday, October 11, 2014

Heroin's Introduction

When Jim and I met on March 19, 2011, a relationship was the last thing that I wanted. I was a single mom to a daughter who wasn't even 2 years old. I was going to school. I was enjoying being single which is something I had never done in my adult life before I became a mother. Besides random hookups, I was done with men. I didn't want a boyfriend, I never wanted to get married, and I certainly didn't want to have any more children. It's funny how the exact things you DON'T want are the things that you get.

The first month of my relationship with Jim was great. More than great. Amazing. Wonderful. Outstanding. I still don't even have all of the words to describe it. When we went on our first date, I was shocked and surprised when he came to pick me up. Not only did he knock on the door instead of calling or texting me, he opened the car door for me. I was blown away.

After about a month, I remember having a conversation about methadone. I was ignorant about it. Sure, I knew that it was supposedly for helping get off heroin and other opioid drugs. But in my mind, I saw no point in it - it was simply going from one drug to another and it didn't work. All methadone did was get you off of one drug and onto another, with the only difference being this other drug was legal. I don't even know how the subject came up. I didn't find out until about a week after my anti-methadone statements that Jim was a methadone patient - and that he decided he did not want to be on it anymore. He walked off of his clinic.

On April 17, 2011, Jim and I went to a Phillies game. He hadn't been feeling too well. While we were waiting for the train to come, he asked me about moving in together. I liked Jim; I liked him a lot. I had only been in two other relationships before, and both moved very quickly. I had moved in with my first boyfriend almost immediately. I had already been staying at my second boyfriend's house for a bit before we got together. I didn't want to move so quickly this time. As a matter of fact, I think it may have been before this same game, we had gone to the store to buy some sunflower seeds and other stuff to take to the game with us. I don't remember what I said but Jim was standing behind me. He wrapped his arms around me and I remember very clearly what he said: "That's why I love you." My eyes widened. When he asked me about moving in together, I gave him an honest answer. After a brief pause, I swallowed and told him, "I do really like you. But I don't want to move that fast. We've only been seeing each other for a month and I'd like to get to know you more."

We went to the game. We both had a beer but I barely drank mine. Since he wasn't feeling too good so we left before the game was over (I absolutely HATE to leave a Phillies game early; this had only been the second or third time ever that I left early and the only time we ever had together). Jim came home with me and we parted ways.

Fast forward to Easter Sunday, one week later. Jim spent the night at my house the night before, Easter Eve, so to speak. On Easter morning, Jim woke up and left to go home, shower, and change. When he came back that afternoon, he spent most of the day before leaving again. He was gone for a few hours and came back, clearly intoxicated. At first, I thought he was drunk and wasn't very happy with the fact that he was drinking and driving. My mom had had several beverages and was drunk when Jim got back. She asked me if he drank a lot. The two of them spent some time talking. I was quiet because I had seen something that put me at a loss for words.

Noticing how quiet I was being, Jim asked if I wanted to go outside. We went out, sat in his car, and smoked a blunt. Jim asked me what was wrong. I didn't respond verbally; instead I started to cry. He asked me again. Through my tears, I said to him, "I told you why I don't talk to my best friend (Sam, the one who stopped talking to me that past January, after I discovered she was doing heroin and I went to her sister about it) and why I don't have anything to do with my daughter's father and I don't like what I see on your arm."

Jim started to cry as well. He tried to cover up his needle marks that I was talking about. I don't remember much else that we talked about that night. My head told me to end the relationship right then and there. My heart told me not to, to give him a chance. As heartbroken as I was, I decided to listen to my heart. I had no idea what the next few months were going to bring.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

The Beginning of It All (A Very Long Introduction)

I was sitting here watching an old episode of "Flashpoint" when a craving to get high hit me with such intensity. This particular episode titled, "The Other Lane," had nothing to do with drugs. However, I had taken my dose of methadone shortly before the craving hit and decided that I wanted to write what was going on when the idea struck to start a blog.

MMA or MMT, which stand for Medication-Assisted Treatment or Methadone Maintenance Treatment, has a bad rep. Even I believed, years ago, that there was no point to it as it was just going from one drug to another. While the latter does ring true somewhat, there is a complete difference between getting high and taking methadone to keep yourself from not only the sickness that comes along with being in withdrawal, or being "dope sick," and preventing yourself from getting high if you do happen to relapse. I am getting ahead of myself already, as I tend to do a lot when I write. I should start from the beginning. The story may take a while...

My name is Kim and as of writing this entry, am 29 years old. I live in Philadelphia and, with the exception of 2 months, have lived here my entire life. I am a mother to three beautiful, amazing children, a 5 year old girl who is in kindergarten, a toddler girl who will be 2 next month, in November, and an 8 month old baby boy. They are my pride and joy.

My addiction began 2 weeks before my 14th birthday, when I smoked pot for the first time, though now that I know about the disease called addiction, I realize that it actually started a long time before then - I was born predisposed to addiction. By the time I was 16 years old, I had tried coke, wet (or angel dust), and just about any pill I could get my hands on - Percocet, Tylenol 3, Xanax, Ecstasy...anything. Around this time, OxyContin had begun to become popular in my neighborhood. I swore I would never touch it. By the end of this school year, 11th grade, and around the time I turned 17, I had stolen money from my parents bank account - close to, if not at least, $1000. It wasn't long after this that I just got bored with it all and stopped. I stopped everything but the weed, and every now and again, I would smoke wet.

I finished high school the next year, in 2003. After school was done, I found a job at a day care my cousin owned. I worked there in the summer then quit. I started working in December at a newly opened casual dining restaurant that had opened in my neighborhood and within a year, began my first long-term relationship with Dave, at age 19. One thing that he and I had in common was our love of marijuana. We spent all of our time high. A couple of years later, when I was around 21, I began having very bad menstrual periods. I would be in so much pain I couldn't even get out of bed; working as a cook, I had to do something about this pain. Doctors told me that nothing was wrong with me. I began to self-medicate with percocets on the first, and sometimes second, day of my cycle. Once in a while, after a few months, I would take the pills just for fun.

A few months before my 22nd birthday, I met Aaron, the guy who would give me the best thing in the world - my oldest daughter. He would help me find the pills I wanted if no one at work had them. Just days after my 22nd birthday, I broke up with Dave, after an almost 3-year relationship. I don't remember if I tried an OxyContin before or after I broke up with him. Aaron introduced me to them. He told me that they were the same thing as the percs, only they didn't have the Tylenol in them like percs do, they were pure oxycodone, and they cost only 50¢ per milligram, as opposed to the $1 per milligram cost of percocets. I was scared to death to take them because of how many kids in my neighborhood had died after overdosing on them. I would only take less than ¼ of an 80-milligram tablet. Within a month, maybe 2, I was taking at least 1-80mg pill per day. But instead of swallowing them, as I did when I first started to take them, my new friend showed me how to crush and snort them. He and I "officially" became a couple in August, 2007.

By the next year, after a huge fight I had with my brother during my niece's July baptism, in which I was named her Godmother, I realized how bad off I was. I was spending my entire $600-1000 biweekly paycheck in less than a week, supporting both my and Aaron's habit. I decided I wanted to get out of this place. I called a friend of mine, Rachel, and asked if I could come live with her in the county of West Palm Beach, Florida. I bought a one-way ticket with my next paycheck and prepared for my September 17th flight.

About a month before I was set to leave, I found out that Aaron was using heroin. That, along with crack, were two drugs I swore I would never touch. Finding out this news added something new to the reasons as to why I wanted to leave this place behind: to get away from the drugs, to have and save money, to start over, and to get away from him. I stopped seeing him before I left. After not seeing him for around 3 weeks, I decided to see him one last time before moving - the night before I left. After spending a very boring and worthless night together, he came home with me. When he realized that I had no pills to give him, he got mad, gave me a kiss, and left. I arrived at the PBI airport around 10AM, relieved, feeling new and fresh. The last Oxy I touched was that morning, in the airport, just before going through security. I started a new life...or so I thought.
I had been on Florida for just over 2 weeks. I was due for my period on September 29th. I had always had a very regular, 28-day cycle. On September 30th, I knew I was pregnant. My boobs were already sore. It was just one day after my missed period and I just KNEW I was pregnant. On October 2nd, after my 2nd day of training at my new job, I bought a pregnancy test on my bike ride to work. As soon as I got there, I went into the bathroom and peed on it. After a minute that really took about an hour, the result read positive. I knew I was pregnant even before the test but I didn't believe it. I took another test. Another positive. I scouted out the location of a Planned Parenthood. I went there, paid almost $40, and had another positive result. I decided to have an abortion. I began working as much as I could, barely spending any money unless it was for weed or cigarettes. Within two weeks, I had over $900 saved for the abortion. Around this time, I started to fight with my own head about having the abortion. It took a week or two but I decided that I could not bring myself to have it done. With a heavy heart, I decided to move back to Philly.

I moved back in November. It was devastated. I moved to Florida to get away from this place. I wanted to leave everything and everyone behind and start a new life, start everything over. Yet, here I was, back in the place I so desperately wanted to be away from. I decided not to try to get in touch with the father once I got home (I did call and tell him that I was pregnant while I was in Florida - I had left him with the impression that I wanted nothing to do with him and that I was going to have an abortion; I never told him that I changed my mind about doing it). I went the entire 9 months drug-free, except the very beginning before I knew (and about two weeks after I knew when I was planning to terminate the pregnancy), when I was smoking weed. I gave birth to a very beautiful, healthy, red-headed baby girl on May 30th, 2009. I named her Mollyanne Elizabeth.

When my daughter was about 2 months old, I started to smoke weed again. Very soon after, I decided to do an Oxy. I got a tax return in August and spent $400 on the pills. After that binge, I slowed down. I still took the pills here and there (and I smoked weed every day) but luckily for me, I didn't get bad with the pills again. I took them up until February. In January, my friend Sam that I got high with stopped talking to me. After that, I did them two or three more times before I got bored with them and stopped. Still, I never stopped smoking and actually started to drink...a lot. I had started college in January and by March, I was drinking 4-5 night out of the week. It didn't matter if I had class the next day or not. My friend and I started to talk again in April, about a week or so before my 25th birthday. The first night we hung out, guess what we did. Yep, you guessed it! We got oxies. My friend and I didn't hang out as much but just about every time we did, we got the pills. Finally, after getting high (by myself) one day in August, I had gotten the worst headache in the world and felt like I was going to throw all of my insides up. I decided I was done. August 21st, 2010 was the last time I touched one of those pills.

In September, I started to go to different bars a lot with Sam. I smoked every single day and started to do either Xans or klonopins. It felt great, taking them and being drunk! Sam and I had so much fun! One of our first nights out together, she told me that when she got money, she was going to get us a "big guy" to split, meaning an 80-mg OxyContin. I had lost all of my desire to do them and told her I was good (it's funny because when she and I first met, we would smoke weed together all the time and she always asked me if I wanted her to get me a perc or a xan and I always told her, "Nah, you know I don't fuck with that shit.").

In October, I fell extremely ill; I couldn't walk and was I'm an extreme amount of pain. My entire body blew up and I was covered with a purplish-red rash. My brother said I looked like a purple Incredible Hulk. I was given steroids and percocets for the pain. I was in school the next day and at 9AM, 2½ hours after taking one 5-mg pill, was sitting in the cafeteria nodding out. I couldn't stand the way I felt.

In November, I discovered that Sam was doing heroin. I never brought it up with her. I brought it up with her sister two months later and it ended our friendship. I was happy on the outside, because I didn't want to associate with and heroin addicts. But on the inside, I was so upset that I lost a friend over that horrible drug. Even though I lost a friend, I was at least glad that I didn't lose her permanently - she was alive, at least. After that, I continued to smoke weed and I drank here and there (but I toned it down a LOT) but I stopped taking the downers.

On March 19, 2011, I met a guy named Jim. I didn't want a relationship at that point in my life. Actually, I didn't want a relationship...ever again. I didn't want anymore kids either. I was 25 years old and too busy having fun, going out when I could, hooking up with people. I was living out the rest of my youth. He and I met at a St. Paddy's party that mutual friends had. He went to the party to meet me. I knew about him but had nothing in mind about meeting a man that I would meet again after that night. We wound up staying up all night talking and kissing and getting to know each other. We then spent the whole morning together (if that's what you want to call it - we didn't even go to bed until around 6AM). About 3 days after we met, we became nearly inseparable. It was the beginning of a new relationship for me.

However, it wasn't just a relationship with a man. For me, it began a long, hard relationship with drugs again. While at that point, and for a while afterwards, I didn't touch anything except an occasional drink and weed on most days. But it was the beginning of the end. I didn't know that in less than 2 months, methadone and heroin would enter my life.

And in less than a year later, I would begin the hardest battle I ever fought...