My story: Meghan

“As an only child I often found comfort in my solitude. I would sit in my room for hours drawing, coloring, and playing with my little ponies. I grew a custom to being alone. My parents divorced after my first birthday. Both my mom and dad have two very different sides of the story. I blame it on my mother’s alcoholism, as does my father. Naturally, I went to live with my mother and visited my father on the weekends when possible and he paid child support once a month. I never saw any of the money and neither did my college fund. My mother lived the life of a vagabond, carrying me in toe from boyfriend to boyfriend leaving me always forced to adapt to my new surroundings annually almost like clockwork. This carried on until my mother met my future step father, Joe. Joe, had two kids a son and a daughter, they too lived with their mother.

The night I met Joe my mother asked me what I thought of him, I informed her that I didn’t like him and she replied, “Don’t you want me to be happy?” Everything was about her, story of my life.

I struggled my way through middle school emotionally, I struggled to fit in socially, I was constantly striving to fit in and look a certain way, but mostly I struggled with my awkward body finding clothes that fit me correctly and dealing with my removed shy persona.

From here I began to search for a substance to loosen me socially, I was twelve years old when I first smoked weed. I don’t recall any euphony but I do recall a sense of belonging and instant friends. From then my life went downhill, by that time my mom was a full fall down alcoholic, she lost her ability to work and went on disability, I took care of her.

In between three stints of rehab, I found a spy camera in my room planted by Joe, Joe was strict yet perverted. He owned thousands of pornographic magazines, so of course I found it as sexual abuse when I found this camera where I dress. He was never taken to court but he was kicked out. He is still married to my mother but they haven’t seen each other in ten years. By the time I was finishing middle school, I had endured enough. Mom was in a black abyss and Joe was gone. It was time for another rehab. With no one left to care for me, I went to live with my father and he took care of me.

In high school my drug use escalated, I used a different drug every weekend, sometimes during the week to get through school. I got ok grades and maintained a job and got good grades at a local community college, but quickly I was using all my savings in addition to paychecks coming in, I took a job in the city. I quickly upgraded to heroin. Still I was with out sufficient funds.

I went into my first detox on September/October, I got out on October 19th and went to live in Maine, the mission failed, I used any chance I got and upgraded to needles. I couldn’t see myself without opiates.

I was back and forth to Philadelphia to see my boyfriend Billy, we have been through a lot together, having been together for two and a half years. He went into treatment on February of 2009. I had to go stay with a friend that worked for a few days, until she called my father to inform him that I had relapsed.

I was put back into detox, put on Suboxone. An unfortunate series of events cause me to be placed into another rehab.

My mother has been drinking, using, and co-dependent since she lost custody of me. My father has been nothing but full of love, besides being hard on me in terms of school, it wouldn’t be a surprise/different to hear him yelling that I am “stupid, dumb, etc.”