by Betsy
March 9, 2000

I began using at around 7th and 8th grade, however old that is. I used mostly weed, alcohol and LSD at that time. In later years that use progressed to coke and speed. At that time, I had never done opiates, including heroin. I was seventeen years old when I graduated from High School. Against my will, I attended college as an art major.

My first year of college was a wash. I was terribly homesick, and stayed drunk and stoned out of my mind half of the time. I no longer have a taste for alcohol (thank GOD), but I sure did for awhile back then. I also underwent a very traumatic event that first year of college leaving me in fear of going to parties especially involving fraternities and jocks, etc.

My second year of college went a little smoother than the first. I was off campus and soon began dating a local boy; a 'townie' who had mutual interests in partying. (I later ended up marrying and having three children with this young man, who would know?) He soon moved in with me. There was a coke dealer living upstairs from us. I managed to keep my grades up, while using, without a problem. As time went on and our relationship grew, we partied less and less. We became engaged.

Graduation was approaching and we were planning on gettng married after that. My husband had since entered the small New England college to also pursue a degree in art. He was unfaithful to me from the start. Even before the wedding. But I looked the other way and went through with the wedding, trying to think there was some kind of beautiful dream to be fulfilled.

I would never have guessed then that we would have three children together and he would hurt me with the outright use of these children as pawns. I had no idea he would rip them from my arms the way he did. I really didn't know the man I married. Perhaps the man he had become.

I stopped using drugs completely during my first pregnancy. My abstinence lasted through many stormy years. He moved in with another woman with a child during my son's age, the first year of our marriage. It was my last year for getting my second Bachelors degree in Art, this one was a Bachelor of Fine Arts. So I was doing my thesis that year. He was off doing coke with this woman and leaving me alone with the baby, with no money. I 'let' him back into our lives.

I started a sign business while he was in college and unemployed. The economy at that time was soaring and I did great that first year. So great, we put a down payment on a house. His mothers house had been on the market for three years, and she was anxious to get rid of it. We ended up buying it. As the sign business grew, he joined me and it became an extremely successful business. I was pregnant with my second child when we closed on the house. As my first child was in Kindergarten, I was even 'room mother', believe it or not.

The business wasn't doing as well as it used to, and Dip (that's what we can call my husband) got a job designing sportswear at a company that silkscreened t-shirts/hats, etc. It was a good job for that area (small town in New England) and had good benefits. Good thing, too! When my second little boy was about ten months old, I found out I was pregnant with my third (surprise!!) child. Before her birth, even before my second son's birth, I began to have migraine headaches. I remembered having them as a child. Sometimes, but rarely, they would get so bad I went to the local hospital emergency room for a shot of demerol/phenergan. These headaches become increasingly worse.

Dip continued cheating every chance he got. I had decided long before to build a wall around myself so high that nobody could hurt me. At least I thought they wouldn't be able to.

By this tim we had a mortgage and a whole lot of bills. I had to quit my waitressing job. I was on way too much medication by this time and it was too much for me to try to run the business and take care of three kids while addicted and depressed.

My daughters birth was the real point of change for me. We were losing the business, therefore, we were barely making mortgage payments. I had very bad migraines and back pain constantly. I was an addict. He was cheating on me, with a 15 year old he met at work. He confessed to me. I said, "Okay", and took some more Percocet. I left my meds on the highest shelf in the kitchen above the stove. It was wall to wall bottles. I didn't keep my favorites up there though.

To make an already long story a little longer, I tried to get clean after realizing how much I was using; over 80 percs a week (actually I ran out after four days, they would only give me that many a week) for about four months. I decided I would go into a local hospital to detox.

They ended up giving me Demerol every four hours and releasing me after four days. When I returned there sick, they sent me to a nuthouse. I got out of there within hours.

I decided to go cold turkey at home. I wanted to be clean before I decided what to do about the marriage. Once I finally detoxed from all the pills, I stayed clean for four months. I knew that this relationship my husband was having was still going on. I filed for divorce. It wasn't long before I was back in a Doctor's office. I was receiving prescriptions from numerous physicians for two or three years before I got caught. During these years I lost my house, most of my business, our vehicles (although I traded for a used, old vehicle). My husband contested custody of the children. The one place I had left myself vulnerable. He had the money. He got a great lawyer and went for it. I had several psychiatric stays for depression by this time and it was that, that he used against me.

Although he was picked up for being an habitual offender and sentenced to three months on an intensive supervision program, wearing an ankle bracelet, nothing he did seemed to make a difference in anyone's eyes. He once took me to court less than a week after I was released from a psychiatric hospital A GAL had been appointed to the casee at HIS request and she had heard only from him at this point. GAL stands for "Guardian ad litum", a court appointee that makes recommendations to the court. The GAL, when asked what to recommend, stated that I should not be able to have any access to my children save one two hour supervised visit per week. I almost fainted. These children I bore, that I never raised a hand to, that I loved and nursed and protected after he wanted to get an abortion each time i told him the 'news'....those children. In my favor, the Judge thought this was a ludicrous and groundless recommendation. She said, "This woman needs to see those kids every day and vice versa." She ordered I see my kids every day. His attorney took that to mean every day but weekends. I still took whatever visitation I could get. Then one day I went to get them and my ex-husband didn't show up. He said he wasn't going to give them to me. I got a cop and showed him my court order. They called him. He said that I was a 'danger' to the children. I guess when a person says this, the cops can't do a thing. All I could do was schedule another hearing. It would be close to a year before I got one.

What did I do all that time? Guess? I began using coke again. Then, I began using heroin just to come down from the cocaine. Soon it was mostly the heroin and rarely the cocaine. I sold about all of my possesions in the apartment. My children had become a lost memory from long ago, as well as the life I had led. I stayed in drug areas most of the time and tried to cop.

After a few years of this, rarely seeing my children, or even remembering it when I did, my family intervened. I was forced to go to a detox . They sent my AA sister up to 'surprise' me. By the end of two weeks she was shooting up heroin with us. But, I finally admitted myself to a detox. I left the detox, of course. It wasn't my decision to be there in the first place. The first inpatient detox I called, said they used methadone for the first four days, which sounded better than nothing at all, at the time. I went in high and they wouldn't give me anything the first day. The next day i was sick, and the Doctor still wouldn't give me any methadone, even though I was begging and pleading for it. "Well, you've been here 24 hours the worst is over", they told me. The Doctor finally agreed on the third day, to give me a ONE day dose of methadone. I have no idea how much it was, but, it was the only day I could do anything, like go to a group, etc.

It took a few of these detox's before I took it seriously, and when I did, I wasn't really thinking about methadone. I once tried to kick at a relative's house. They called local facilities and got me into a recovery part of a detox/rehab unit of a hospital in New England. This time it seemed to work. My disability had finally been approved. Since I had long ago lost my vehicle and apartment, I had to decide where to live. I was so out of it, I don't even remember why I decided to live where I am. It is two hours away from my family.

After I got out of that detox I began to crave again. I had finally moved into a decent apartment, bought a cheap used car, and was beginning to think about seeing my kids again. The cravings scared me and I made an appointment at the methadone clinic here. It saved my life and my family. It gave me a chance to meet a partner and we are good for each other. I have been on MMT for four years. The clinic is a long way from perfect. So are all the laws and the segregation in moving a medical treatment away from the medical community. But thank God for the medicine they give us. I see my children on a regular basis. I have food to eat, an apartment, a computer (I never thought I would get one).

We all lose different things to this disease. Sometimes it makes me afraid to gain things again. Because I fear losing it all, once again. I would hate to go through that again. I have had one slip-up about three years ago using cocaine. I went back into detox after a couple of weeks. It really scared me. I don't remember going down so fast, but, I'm older and I've been clean for awhile. It taught me a lesson.