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Apr
26
Hi, my name is Yvonne and I am 32 years old. I am a recovering meth and Tylenol with codeine addict. I am not sure where to start, so I will tell you a bit about the very beginning. I was abused physically, sexually and emotionally all by different family members. I started drinking and smoking pot at 13 and continued until about 28.
I started smoking crack when I was 17, after I met the father of my children. He was a crack addict and I did it with him for about a year until I got scared by a dream I had. A drug dream and I remember thinking; I don't ever want to live without it, which scared me enough to stop.
About a month later, I found out I was pregnant with our daughter. I was just 18, with a very abusive man, and scared to death. I thought that if I loved him enough. I could change him-hahahaha! I had our daughter and then had our son 15 months later. I did smoke crack a few more times over the years. I stayed with him for 11 years before I had enough guts and determination to stay away. I was dead set against drugs. I lived with a crack head for 11 years and he put me through hell with his addiction. I didn't have anything to do with people who did drugs.
Then I met the man who would change everything. Show me what it was really like to be loved and how I deserve to be treated. I had a really bad childhood that for the most of, I cannot remember. I have had 15 years of therapy to get to where I am today. I never knew what happiness felt like till I met Tyler. He changed it all. He gave me the best 2 years of my life and I have never felt so loved, beautiful or special. But of course, he had his problems too.
He drank too much and when he did. He would flirt and or cheat. So needless to say my world came crashing down. Then we started having money problems, and started fighting. I was having trouble finding a job and decided to go to school. (I had dropped out at 14) I went to college to become a legal secretary.
I was attending college with my best friend of 14 years. She was known to use drugs but hid it from me for the most part. I loved her more than life itself. She was more than my best friend. More than my sister. We had some weird bond that I cannot explain or compare anything to.
One day on our way home from school. She asked me to try meth. I had taken an Ativan (an anti-anxiety pill) and it lowered my guard and I said yes. I didn't really feel anything. It was weird. Tyler and I went to her house over the weekend to party a bit and I got him to try it too. Then a few days later I got the stomach flu really bad where I ended up going to the hospital because I had stomach cramps so bad I thought I was going to die!
I phoned my girlfriend and asked her to bring me some meth, so I could clean up my house and stuff. We had 3 kids all together (Tyler and I) and he worked a lot. She did that and I was a goner from that point on. Tyler and I fought more and more. I was lying and stealing from him or us. I would disappear for hours at a time. Then the fights got so bad he told me to get out and he turned just nasty on me. I was packing and trying to move out.
Then I caught him in bed with someone. That is a long story but we were both set up on that. That completely devastated me. I have never been or felt so hurt in my entire life. I cried for 3 weeks straight and could not function at all. I dropped out of school moved out of my house by myself. No one helped me at all. I moved in with the mother of my step daughter. Tyler's ex. who I had befriended. She has many issues herself that I was not aware of. She still loved Tyler (she is the one who made sure I caught him in bed with the other girl) she caused a lot of fights between us. Lying to me about what he was saying, hurting me. She was a recovering addict (meth), but she started using right before I moved in. Up until then, I denied using to her. She was a nightmare to live with. She had 2 children that I was raising. She was not capable. Hiding in the bedroom for days.
I moved next door. The building next door her kids were still always at my house. I did not mind, as I loved them. She was really fucked up though. I mean really, hallucinating, paranoid and delirious. The ministry came and took her kids, and she turned on me! She made up lies. She told anyone who would listen, lies about me and I spent months proving myself. Some truth some lies.
I always kept my head on straight. I never smoked it. Never saw things that I thought were real. Don't get me wrong. I was doing a lot of damage to myself and my children. But it was just beginning. Just before that, I found out my best friend has leukemia, and she was pregnant. They cannot cure her, and she will die. They just don't know when.
Honestly. I still don't think I have dealt with that. I had the ministry for children in families in my life now because of my other friend (Tyler's ex). But I had them fooled. Actually at one point they thought I had narcolepsy because I would just nod off in the middle of a conversation. Little did they know I had been up for 3 or 4 or 5 days and that was why. I had managed to pass the drug tests they had asked.
Life was becoming worse though. I had people in my apartment that should not be there. My kids were seeing things they should not have to see. They knew I would be up for days. I would sleep in my computer chair never in my bed. I could not sleep in my bed. I wanted Tyler there and I would just lie there dwelling on him. So why bother. I would just pass out when I could no longer stay awake in my chair.
My daughter who was 13 would search the apartment upside down for my drugs and when she would find them. She would confront me, mad as hell. I couldn't deny it. Tyler and I would get back together. I would try to quit, or say I was, but he would find the drugs and leave again. I have never been a liar. To scared and embarrassed to get caught. I became a very good liar, and a good thief. I would lie, steal and manipulate to get my drugs. I was always told I am the sweetest person you could ever meet. The best friend you could ever have. Not a violent person at all. I became one. I became very aggressive. To Tyler and to my daughter who is what they call spirited. Lol meaning very strong minded.
I hated who I had become. I was so ashamed of myself. I hated my life and hated myself. I was everything I hated and nothing that I liked. I ended up moving out of my apartment due to a conflict with another tenant who was making my life hell. I was planning on going to a treatment center from there. Tyler was back, but I was a mess. A lost little girl who didn't know what to do.
Moving day came and I couldn't do anything. I had no money and he had gotten a truck. Gotten people and moved all my stuff back into his house. I was making plans for the treatment center when the ministry said I could not be at his house around his daughter who he had gotten custody of. I didn't know what to do. He was going to look after the kids while I was in the 60 day program. I was being told we could not be there. The kids could be there once I was in a center but not until then. We somehow managed to figure things out, and I went in on Nov 14 2004.
Tyler's drinking was still a problem though, and the ministry took his daughter and bullied me into signing mine over as well. I didn't have a choice, because I wanted and needed to finish my program. Entering that program and deciding to clean up was the scariest thing I have ever done in my life. I have been addicted to Tylenol with codeine for 11 years. So learning to live straight was really new to me. Throughout the years with the father of my children, I suffered great depression and anxiety and was diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder. Another name for post-traumatic stress disorder. I took a lot of Ativan, Xanax and Valium and whatever else they tried to give me. I was addicted to valium and Ativan for many years but managed to get off those on my own.
This is the first time in my life I think I have ever been totally straight. My life was a huge mess. Lost my house, my kids, my relationship with Tyler was unknown. My best friend wasn't cleaning up. So I could not have anything to do with her, and basically I lost her 6 months later. I still have not talked to her and I miss her dearly. Tyler and I were living in a hotel above a very popular bar. So all you could hear was the music till 2 am 5 days a week. And it was just a room with a bed, dresser, and TV. Then a small bathroom with a tub that was too scary to sit in. We lasted a month and a half there. We stayed with a friend for a month but it was too far away to be able see my kids and keep my appointments with things. We ended up in a tent in another friend's back yard through pouring freezing rain and windy storms. We finally moved into a motor home in the front of the yard for a while where it was warmer, but it had rats! Now I was really depressed. How can things keep getting worse when you are trying so hard to do the right thing?
I was never that bad off as an addict. Reality is though. I was, just in a different way. I have inner peace now. I didn't as an addict. I can look myself in the mirror and know I am a good and loving person. I can be proud of myself. I might have had a place to live and all the other things I wanted as an addict, but I couldn't look myself in the mirror and be proud of who I was or even what I was doing. I will never ever forget looking at my son right before I was to go to the treatment center, and telling him what I was planning saying: "I know I have not been a very good mother for the last year" and him looking at me with tears in his eyes, nodding his head in agreement.
Still makes me cry today, but I am glad, because it helps me stay clean on those hard days. They had to pay the biggest price and they did not choose me for a mother or to live in this world. I chose that for them, so the least I can do is make it as happy and peaceful and loving as I can for them. Choosing to clean up and staying clean is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It is a struggle on a daily basis. I am the only person I know that has succeeded. I have read of others, but no one I know is still clean. Tyler is the only friend I have left and he has remained my best friend through all these years whether we are together or not. He is always there if I need him and for whatever I need. I am hoping to get my kids when school gets out. I will have been clean for almost 9 months by then. I am still trying to fix the damage I have done and pick up all the pieces of my broken life. One day at a time.
Yvonne,
October 28th, 2011
Wow! Reading your story is almost creepy. I had a similar experience. It all started when I was a kid. I never knew my father and my mother worked as a waitress doing her best to take care of me and my two sisters. Almost every week she brought home a new man and introduced him as her boyfriend. Then they'd wander off to her bedroom and we'd never see him again. It was like this until I was about 10 years old when my mom found the man she said she was in love with. We'd see him a couple of times a week and he seemed like a nice enough guy. Eventually my mom married him and everything went downhill. He was an alcoholic and would beat us when he was drunk. I tried my best to protect my sisters, so I always got the worst beating. That was around the same time I started using pot and drinking. I had to numb the pain. Soon enough pot turned into coke and coke turned into meth. I was a full-fledged meth addict by the time I was in college. It's no surprise that I failed out of college my very first semester. I ended up in jail on a possession charge and that was the first time in most of my life that I was sober. That was when I decided to go to rehab and get clean. I've only been clean for six months but I know that this is just the start of my life.
October 28th, 2011
I can totally relate to your story. Before meth I was an honest person. Meth turned me into someone I didn't recognize. I became a liar and a thief. It started with lying about meth but then I started lying about almost everything. Since my entire life revolved around meth I had to keep my entire life a secret by lying. Meth is expensive and since I was an addict I couldn't hold down a job, so I stole from anyone and everyone. I even stole my mother's wedding ring from her jewelry box. She took it off because she smashed her finger in a door and it was swollen, so I seized the opportunity to steal it. I pawned it off for $500 to fund my addiction. I wish I could say that's the only horrible thing I've done as a meth addict, but it's not.
When I finally came to terms with how horrible of a person I had become I decided to get treatment. I couldn't live with myself any longer. So, I went to rehab. I had a really hard time in rehab and relapsed twice while there. I'm so thankful that my therapists saw that I was working hard and didn't kick me out. I'm a new person thanks to rehab. I still suffer from a lot of guilt from the actions my addiction made me take, but I'm proud of the person I've become in the last eight months I've been clean.
October 28th, 2011
Going to rehab was the scariest thing I've ever done in my life, too. I had been addicted to meth for nine years when I finally decided it was time to clean up. I realized I had to do something when I stumbled out of my bedroom one afternoon after just waking up and saw my older daughter helping my younger one with her homework. I asked Molly, my older daughter, what she was doing. She told me that she was helping her sister with her homework and cooking dinner because I wasn't a good mommy. It's amazing what 9 year olds know. She was so right. I wasn't a good mommy. I was high all the time. I don't think I had ever helped my daughters with their homework and I can't remember the last time I had cooked them dinner.
I found a rehab that would take me for free, but I didn't know what to do with my girls. The rehab helped me to find a boarding school that would take them while I was in rehab. Making the decision to leave my girls behind while I went to rehab was the hardest decision of my life, but I know it was the right one. I had a lot of issues to work through in rehab. I had no idea just how hard it would be. I was there for almost six months before my treatment team and I felt like I was ready to leave, but now I feel like I can make it. I've been clean for almost a year and I have faith that I'll be clean forever and a good mom for my kids from now on.
October 31st, 2011
im an user and i need help i was clean for 5mo.or so and i started again and cant seem to stop,i hate the feeling my husband is getting mad,but understanding. i dont wanna push it any more,i need help,thank you for listening
January 18th, 2012
I can feel all your pain. And I must say you all are awesome individuals and someone very special as God don't make no junk. Well for the most part. I myself have 5 beautiful girls. Most grown now and families of there own. Through divine intervention was I able to challenge the beast who took 15 years of my life. I'm talking sever meth addict and dealer. Where I honestly can't remember a day that went by in those 15 years that I didn't have a minimum of three 60 unit shots a day. When people would talk about coming down or crashing I had no idea what they where talking about because that's something I hadn't done in 15 years. My oldest daughter is now a police officer my second oldest works for the state. My third oldest is in college and my two youngest girls are twins now 15 who live with there father. I made a promise to myself actually was a goal I had for the last 15 years and that was before I passed I wanted my twins to know the real me the one that was without drugs. Now at 15 they are finally and I myself am finally getting to know the real me. I've got 70 days clean and it took for me to be repulsed by the drugs the life and the people. Of coarse knowing that this addiction is bigger that I am and me getting on my knees literally and asking God to drive my bus from here on out as I'm a shitty driver. Yes it's hard and it's very lonely but I have peace in my heart now and can actually say I'm sober and learning to live a sober life. For all of you struggling out there your not alone for sure. It is possible I can promise you that! Playmates playthings and of coarse play places you MUST change. Life is good you just have to sweep the dirt away and you to will see it! God bless all of you clean and unclean.....
May 23rd, 2016
Jeannie, I just read your lil story, its helped me gave me hope I was looking for , I want to quit cause I see its possible. I been shooting meth for 6 years straight. god bless you all addicted.
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