Spotlight On
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| 10/1/2008 |
SPOTLIGHT ON…
‘This Thing Called Recovery’
By Zoie
It all started when I was about 9 years old. My father was a smoker and I wanted to see what it was like to smoke. So my brother and I stole some cigarettes from his office. We smoked the whole pack, and man, was I sick. But it didn’t stop me. I smoked from then until now.
One day I was smoking at school and got caught by a teacher. The teacher called my parents and I figured I was in trouble. So, I didn’t go home that night, hoping they’d be so worried they wouldn’t care about the smoking. But, when I came home the next day they didn’t even ask were I had been all night.
Eventually, I started getting into more and more trouble at school. I started smoking pot and drinking all the time. When I drank, I felt powerful and free from all the problems at home. Smoking pot was my first brush with illegal drugs, but I loved it from the first moment I tried it. Then I started huffing anything I could get my hands on. Gas, paint, glue -- just about anything that would get me high. My friends at school introduced me to acid and speed. Oh my God, I was in heaven. All I wanted to do was to get high and escape reality. I hated my parents more and more each day.
I was only 12 when my parents put me into special classes in school and sent me to a head doctor. This made me even madder. I knew deep down that I was not really mad at them, but rather was mad at myself.
My father would ground me and I would sneak out my window. Then he nailed the window shut, so I just stopped coming home altogether. My friends and I were breaking into houses and stealing anything we could find to get high. We got busted one time and taken to juvenile hall. They called my father, but he never showed up to get me, so I had to stay there for 72 hours.
My parents couldn’t quite figure out what to do with me, sending me first to a Christian group home where I eventually got kicked out, and then to a series of other schools, all with the same results. In the end, I went back home and enrolled in school. But, right away, I found some people like me and we started skipping classes and getting drunk in the woods right across from the school. At one point, we decided to break into a house right down the road from school. We took 2 guns and a lot of money. I took one of the guns to school afterwards and somebody squealed on me. This time, I got kicked out for good.
When I got home my parents had all my stuff packed and told me I was not welcome at their house anymore. Oddly, for the first time I felt truly happy, even though I didn’t know what to do or where to go.
So, I went down the street to a friend’s house and guess what? He and some other kids were running away to California. They asked if I wanted to come. I said hell yes, my parents just kicked me out. Perfect timing.
So, five wild kids set out cross-country to the land of sun and fun. We had no clue what was in store for us. We ended up staying in old buildings and on the streets. We had to rob and steal for anything we needed and to eat. I never felt so alone. We finally found some other street kids and I asked how they were making it. They told me they were selling drugs and that they had this house that they all stayed in. They wanted just one of us to come and live with them, and since I was the youngest they let me come in. All of them were into using Crank and also making it. I had no clue how my life was about to change.
First they showed me the ropes on how to make it. Then came selling it. I started doing more and more speed every day. I felt like I was on the top of the world.
When I was 14, I moved in with my dealer and off the streets. He took care of me as long as I sold the drugs we were making. There was a lab in the basement and pot growing everywhere, and I had a place to call home.
If you are a young person reading my story and it sounds like a cool life for a kid to live, then you are not getting the point. I want to share this with you because the events that follow almost cost me my freedom and my life.
I got into big trouble with the cops. I had no one else to turn to but my father. I hadn’t talked to him since I left 2 years earlier. He asked me to come back to Savannah with him, but I could not stop the madness in my head. So he left without me. I remember the look on his face and him telling me I could stay with him if I was clean. It took me a year to get back to Savannah and when I finally did, he didn’t even recognize me. I was living in my own self-made hell.
Then there was the accident.
It was a clear and wonderful day outside but in my drug-filled brain it was foggy. I was on my way to my new dealer’s house. I didn’t even see the curve up ahead, let alone the tree I was heading straight for. I was more concerned with just how quickly I could get the drugs. When I looked up it was too late to do anything. I hit the brakes and went into a spin.
From what the EMT told me, they had to cut me out of my car and start my heart back 3 times. I was in a coma for 8 days and stayed in the hospital for about 7 months. This gave me time to get off the drugs, and when I got out of the hospital I went to live with my father.
But, the pain was unbearable and my friends brought me lots of pills and coke. My father took me to physical therapy 3 times a week while I healed physically, but my addiction started right where it had left off, if not worse.
As soon as I was back on my feet, I was off to the races again, heading back to California, doing even more and different stuff than before. I was given heroin for the first time and I was instantaneously hooked. I found myself in a place I never imagined and I knew some-thing had to be done if I wanted to see a new day.
Finally, I wanted help. So I checked myself into a treatment center. They told me I needed to stay the full 6 months of the program for it to have any benefit on my recovery. It took all that was in me to stay and to get the help I needed.
The worst, by far, was the withdrawal. I never thought it would be as bad as it was. The physical pain is nothing compared to the emptiness a junkie feels. There's no logic to the fear; it is just a panic that eats away at your body and soul. I hated everyone and everything. I vented my anger on anything I could get my hands on. I had emotions that I never knew were there. I thought it would never end.
My counselor at the treatment center made me go to this crazy group and talk about a Higher Power. I told her I had no Higher Power and if I did then how the hell did my life get so screwed up? She told me my H.P. had always been there for me but that I had never taken the time to see him. There were 2 groups of people, she said. The ones who want this thing called recovery and the ones who never get it. She told me my will was what was keeping me from seeing my chance at recovery. All I had to do was to admit that I was powerless over my addiction and that my life was unmanageable. I knew this much was true for me.
So, there I was at a treatment center, beginning to live and work the program of Narcotics Anonymous. It was suggested that I work the Twelve Steps at my own pace, but being as stubborn as I am I jumped in with all I had. The first step was no problem for me because I knew I had a problem and that I was powerless over it. But when it came to the second step I was scared because I felt like I had let God down my whole life. I also knew that there was some kind of power greater than myself because otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
At the third step, things seemed to be getting easier. I felt like I finally had found a higher power of my understanding and I was ready to turn my will and life over to him. I went to my first outside meeting and found a wonderful sponsor. She told me not to panic over the thought of a higher power. She told me that it could be anything that kept me sober and clean that day. If it was a door or a light bulb, as long as it saved my ass then it was working.
But then came the fourth step -- making an inventory of ourselves, and it had to be fearless and moral. “How the hell could I do that?” I thought to myself. Well, I sat down and began to write and write. It just kept coming.
It took me forever to do step five -- to admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I was so afraid that I would be judged, as I had been judged all my life. I also wondered why I had to tell God. “Doesn’t he know already?” I thought.
But after I took the step and finally told all, I never felt so free. I felt like a new person. I was starting to get this thing called recovery, and the other steps just started to fall into place.
I have learned over the years of being in this program that you do not have to be perfect. It takes time to work the steps and to work the program. It does not happen overnight. I know this much is true for my recovery.
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