I just bought tickets for the Dead and Company concert July 9th. Of course my friend Megan is coming, she has almost two years clean! I can’t wait until I get over a year. Thankfully the planning for this trip is strictly who’s gonna be driving and who’s gonna be buying the red bull and snacks along the way. A couple months ago it would have been a very different experience.

Growing up my parents always taught me to treat others with respect and make healthy decisions for myself conducive to my future. When I was eleven years my dad went to prison, leaving my mom alone with three kids, two of which had a predisposition to trouble making. My brother was thirteen when all of the madness began, I was eleven. My 6 year old sister was too young to understand what was going on. Days passing, feeling more and more alone as the truth of the matter sunk in, I retaliated. I would say rude things to my mom thinking that she was abandoning us with her new boyfriend and job. Criticizing the way she was raising my sister. Ignoring the simple requests she made in order to try and keep the house in order. Calling her a stupid b**** whenever she annoyed me. Afterall how could she know better than a twelve year old going on thirty drug addict.

I had my first drink soon after, while clubbing with my cousin, soon after I started smoking weed. The first time I smoked it was amazing I have never felt so good in my entire life. I felt so cool and everything around me calm, a daze. Exactly what I needed to escape from reality.

In school I was disrespectful to anyone that tried to tell me what to do and when I would come home I was constantly disrespecting my mom, no matter how hard she tried to get me and my unruly brother under control. Sleeping in class, or not participating in anything that I found the least bit uninteresting. The weeks of trouble compiled rolling me over into eighth grade the year I first tried prescription medications, the depression and anger multiplying under the influence.

I’m at the skatepark hanging with my homies, acting like wanna be hoodrats. It’s hot outside the sun reflecting off the ramps. I’m trying to seduce all the older boys into giving me some of their drugs. It works my “friend” Dan comes over with some blue pills of xanax. I couldn’t control my body for some reason. I was slumped in a ball on the ramp. I had to pee but couldn’t walk. Another one of my “friends” Josh walked me over to Trader Joe's to pee. Everything felt like a dream. I vaguely knew that it was real life but it felt fake, the world wasn’t real. A couple hours later I was being woken up, still groggy alone on the warm concrete of the park, covered in sweat, my clothes moist, my mom pulling me into her car.

I got sent to a Wilderness camp in Utah. The highest level of care. Isolating me from the trouble I was searching for. During my stay I was engaged in starting a fire out of sticks and rocks, then building it up. Followed by a bland oatmeal breakfast and a six mile hike to our next campground with occasional water and bathroom breaks. Then waiting for dinner, which consisted of rice and chicken bouillon if lucky, distracted by nature and the necessary work such as building traps in order to inch my way closer to freedom. When I got back my dad came back from prison soon after and everything was looking like it would take a turn for the better. There was hope in the air my family was anticipating something better to come of our situation.

Only I was a troubled fourteen year old and wanted to wreak more havoc on the people around me. So at first, I set boundaries with my friends and did not want to go back to using. Then the obsession and compulsion set it and I started smoking weed. The progression this time around was quick I started popping pills very quickly and progressed to harder drugs in a very short period of time. When I use I do not like to listen to what people have to say. I was running away from my house constantly, getting taken into the police station. Many adults in my life were trying to talk some sense into me. I could no longer maintain my hygiene or grades at school. I was constantly sneaking out of my house, my parents not knowing what to do and not wanting to believe what was happening. Struggling through two years of this madness, I met my boyfriend. I thought he cared about me and with all the drugs and new friends coming my way it was great.

Everything was a blur. I barely slept, my hygiene was long forgotten about. Showering and brushing my teeth were no longer necessities. Getting high was the only thing that ruled the empty space which once was my mind. My only concerns were what should chips I would steal from Walgreens, before I snort another line of coke so then when the stomach pains would set in from not eating for a whole week later I could pop a few xanax bars, have sex with my boyfriend, laydown and in between naps chew on something. I couldn’t tell which day was which anymore. It was a long hazy tunnel of confusion, arguments, coming home, crying, getting a call from Him, leaving again. Going out to parties getting pissed off by all the annoying people that used to be my friends.

Never satisfied with myself. Not good enough. I wanted more drugs. When I popped molly, the first 30 minutes as I first snorted it or when the pills finally digested enough and the chemicals hit my bloodstream, and my pupils dilated, before the nausea set in I felt happy. For that portion of an hour I felt what I thought was pure happiness. Butterflies in my stomach, my heart racing, looking at this person that told me they loved me and then pushed me towards danger for a whole year of my life, thinking I was happy. Really believing it.

The mental abuse was a part of the relationship all along, I was just too confused and not in enough pain to leave, and when the physical started to set in I did not care enough about myself to do anything to put a stop to it. After another couple days of me missing I came home to my mom kicking me out to my dad's once again. That was not going to fly with my boyfriend, I was not allowed to be that far away. The best way to get my mom off my back and let me back in would be to tell her I wanted to go to treatment, and turn my life around.
We went and checked out a treatment center called FAIR. As expected I qualified for the high risk program. The first two weeks were rough I was sneaking out, getting sent to the hospital, getting out only to sneak out and continuing the vicious cycle.  Then something clicked and I took all the suggestions everyone was giving me.

Today, eight months later, I have raised my grades realised the potential I have, mended the relationships with my parents and am paying reparations for all the money I have stolen over the years. Currently I am on the Eighth Step, of a Twelve-Step program, which I believe is going to be the most life changing, I am going to call the people that I have hurt in the past and make amends to them. Helping me let go of the burden.  I try to live by the twelve steps of Narcotics Anonymous in all of my affairs. My job and the people I let into my life today can count on the fact that I will show up to things I say I will. Overall I would not be the respectable and trustworthy young lady that I am today without the bad decisions of my past.