How grand...writing a story about myself. I read the rest on the post, how different we all are and yet how alike. The same fears, hopes, dreams, loses, blessings and failures. I guess this is what is called the human experience. It is definitely called the addict's experience.

Mine sounds classic. Like the one the wino tells from skid-row "I had it all" Actually, I had a lot, but I also had the addiction that would take so much of it away.

Just a year ago I was a grants/contracts specialist for a major children's hospital chain run by a testamentary trust. I made over $70,000 a year with a company car, a company expense account, frequent flyer business miles, yada, yada, yada. I had a housekeeper three times a week. She even did my grocery shopping. I taught adjunct at several community colleges (to keep up my academic skills)...blah, blah, blah.

I started spending too much company time in doctor's offices and on the phone to drugstores trying to cop, score, obtain. I spent my nights counting pills worrying if I had enough for an upcoming trip or just the next day. If I didn't I was quick to cancel a meeting with anybody in order to keep myself supplied. I have spent many lunch hours in the emergency room, just getting enough for the afternoon.

I was at the zenith of my addiction. They say the workplace is always the last to know. What they didn't know is that for the past several years my vacation time has been in rehab with trying to get myself detoxed and back on the straight road. As soon as I left rehab I would be back looking within days. Nothing took away the terrible cravings, the desperation. Not the 12-step programs that's for sure. I didn't need self analysis - I certainly examined myself all the time. I needed help.

I've gone through purses, I've broken into friend's homes, I've spent nights at parties with people I barely knew, in their private bathrooms peering into their medicine cabinets, I've called pharmacies pretending to be from doctor's offices, I've stolen pads, I've exhausted almost all my relationships with people who love me as well as people I hardly new. I've even tried to cop from my students and one of my own kids.

About ten years ago I had a back injury. I had always dabbled in recreational drugs (coke, pot, designer "stuff") A child of the sixties I was the quintessential old hippie turned yuppie. But the painkillers given to me was better than anything I had ever partied on -- they helped me cope and catalogue problems, they dimmed unhappy thoughts. There were deaths of so many people I loved at one time. I lost my 35 year old brother (my alter-ego) to AIDS, I lost my beloved Uncle to the same disease six months later. I was the caretaker for my uncle. I lost my two best buddies (cradle babies, we were) to breast cancer within the same time period. All died within a four year cycle. One of my friends had no family support, except three little ones of her own and we became her caretakers and support system.

My godson was only five when she died. Her baby. I sat holding hands with the dying, it got to be a common occurrence. However, I had my little buddies, my painkillers to help me cope.

I would count them out in hospital rooms. I would raid the bottles of my dying friends and family. Thank God, they could get more...after all who cared if they were addicted, they were on their way out...

Throughout it all I did and do still have my loving husband. My college boyfriend. He is the only thing that has seemed to last.

One of my kids suffers from major depression. He has been hospitalized several four times since his diagnoses eight years ago. When he has a good day, we all rejoice. I often wondered if my drug usage of LSD, peyote, etc., in college might have contributed to his problem. Oh guilt, you are such a part of addiction. I worry about his welfare all the time. I realize he is probably never going to live a "normal" happy life.

I had never seen heroin, yet I was a heroin addict. It is much the same...except for the nod I am told. I would get a kick from pain medication, then after a while no kick at all, just functional. Where does the ending begin and the beginning end? The great lover turns out to be the great deceiver. Two sides of the same coin. I was using to live and living to use. I hardly had the time to do some of the things I used to like so much. I was too busy counting, counting, counting.

I lost down to a size 2 - you know the old addicts adage "eating takes away the buzz" I thought I looked great. Looking at pictures I looked like a cadaver. Dead woman walking. My nerves were such I couldn't read the chapter of a book, watch a movie. Insomnia kept me up nights rambling around the house. At work sometimes I read what I had written and it seemed incoherent, at best stupid. I lost the ability to spell, to think, to focus.

In meetings people would sit away from me because inevitably I would drop something one them. I couldn't hold my hands still. One day I heard a loud woman speaking in the hall and realized it was me. Strident, shrill...I was becoming someone I didn't know, didn't want to know.

Compulsive things started happening. I have wrecked my car so many times, my insurance is now hard to get and expensive. I was told I was doing things that were embarrassing, like walking outside my house with only a bra and slip on - out to the mailbox, wearing a thong out to get the paper. Modest me, who is horrified by the thought of cellulite, showing it all to the neighborhood. Shameful things, doing things out of compulsion without thinking.

I went through money like water. Buying, charging. It was nothing for me to spend $300-$500 on one suit, my closet filled with cashmere sweaters, designer purses, Ferrangamo shoes at $400 a pair. Even though making a good living I couldn't afford those...I could spent a $100 at a convenience store on lottery sratch-off tickets and cigarettes and junk. My purse was filled with candy, the only thing that I seemed hungry for. I would forget meals, forget to eat. But I never forgot to count my pills.

I've been in withdrawal so many times. I know the meaning of the old sayings like the monkey on your back, or riding the pale horse. I went to 12 step meetings, but again, they just never worked for me. I am not a joiner. I couldn't cheerlead Bill W's cause. I never could understand how in rehab there would be a person checked in in the middle of the night with the joneses and jitters and three days later the "camp" leader - pulling every one up for late night prayers and meditations. Everyone else in rehab seemed to get with the program. I couldn't stand the togetherness of chanting and singing and all the cute little sayings "it doesn't work for some people" no matter if you do work it. Maybe I never knew what working it was all about.

I read the big blue book and the little book and the steps and they just made me feel more guilty. I never enjoyed summer camp. I certainly didn't enjoy sharing a room with a stranger and having to sweep the kitchen of a place I was paying $1,500 a day for. The counselors were always suspect of me because I didn't participate like I should have. I didn't want to cry in front of everyone and have them clap at my "break through" however I'm glad to works for so many.

Methadone does work for me. I was arrested. Searched, even my body cavities, gross. how demeaning...I have to be in court next week. I had already used a pretrial intervention several years ago for a similar offense. Even though I wasn't arrested the first time or charged, they see this second time as what it is -- a third degree felony for forgery or attempted forgery. I didn't even get the pills this time. The police came while I was buying groceries waiting for the script to be filled. I left my groceries in my buggy while I was hauled off to jail. I hope the Hagaan Daas ice-cream melted all over their floor and was hell to clean.

A doctor and a pharmacist could spot me coming. I had the desperate look. The look of not being in control. The look of please give me....please. I would ask for water at the counter and tell the druggist the doctor suggested I take one just as soon as I could to stop any "breakthrough" pain. Right. I'll bet they could tell I wasn't just taking one, either, but several.

Today is the end of my first month off drugs and on Methadone. How can it be a drug when I feel like my old self again...before ten years of hell? Slowly the fog seems to be lifting. I've lost my job, my car, my housekeeper, my reputation, and I almost lost my sanity. Slowly, I am beginning to feel sane again, not well by any means, but better. A bit more sane every day. A little more focused. No crazed by compulsive behavior, not counting, counting, counting.