Always an Addict

I recently switched doctors. Although my children and I shared the same doctor for over 8 years, it had become impossible to get appointments in a reasonable amount of time. This doctor knew everything about my family, and had literally been caring for my son since he was born. When she switched offices, we had followed her. Leaving her wasn't a decision taken lightly.

 I've been seeing my new doctor for over half a year now. My family was extremely pleased with her. I've been battling some pretty nasty health issues of late. On my last visit I was told they wanted to take a urine sample to see if there was another cause for my lower back pain. When they sent me an email update that the visit summary was available, I jumped over to see if the lab results were back. They weren't, but the lab summary stated, "urine today due to pain". Fast forward a couple of weeks when I log back into my account to see if the labs had posted yet, since my doctors office had not called with the results. Imagine my surprise when I saw that a full drug panel had been done on me! 

Due to my chronic pain issues, I do have a prescription of Hydrocodone 325/5mg. I am prescribed enough for 2 pills a day. Every single month I have meds left over. 

At each doctors visit I take my bottle with me. It's a habit I picked up in 2001 when I was first diagnosed and had only 4 years clean time. Since I have always filled out my doc profiles legit and checked the little box beside the question that asked about previous drug abuse, doctors worry about someone with only a few years clean that have health issues which cause chronic pain. I didn't mind....... back then! 

Now, I rarely even have a prescription for pain medication. Through the years, I managed to find alternate ways to manage my pain. I'm proud of that. Narcotic pain relief isn't really relief at all. It dulls the pain, bringing it back with a vengeance when the meds wear off. This typically results in the patient taking the medication every 4-6 hours to keep that rebound pain away. It's a nasty cycle. It's no wonder people become addicted to prescription medications so easily. But I know this! 

I've spent over a decade of my life working with addicts. I'm aware of how the medications work and why it is literally a physically painful process to come off of them once addicted. 

If I were going to abuse prescription medications, wouldn't I go to a pain clinic that takes one look at all my medical diagnosis and is ready to prescribe me anything I ask for? The same pain clinic's I've complained about for years because they don't want to manage your pain, but merely drug you enough so that you don't know who you are, much less feel pain? Why would I stick to a measly bottle of 60 5mg hydrocodone if I was looking to get high and abuse them? If I were abusing them, how could I have pills left over every month? 

This May I will celebrate 18 years clean time. 18 years of not abusing drugs, prescription medications or alcohol. 18 years is a big deal. I was 19 when I got clean. 18 years is almost half my life span. At 13 years old, I was prescribed an addictive medication. I despise that no one talked to me or my parents about the risk of addiction. I despise that, as a result, I lost the next 6 years of my life. I spent 6 years of my CHILDHOOD strung out. I've spent 36 years of my entire life CLEAN. Six years of MY life that was WASTED because a doctor felt it was more important to drug me then to deal with the effects of the abuse I was enduring. Six years of MY life that was WASTED because a doctor didn't care if I ended up addicted, as long as my parents kept bringing me back and paying the bill. I'm proud of the woman I've become. I lived through a kind of hell most people can not even imagine during the 6 years of my life that I wasn't clean. 

It wasn't easy getting clean. Getting clean meant I had to deal with my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Getting clean meant I had to feel emotions about incidents I just wanted to forget about. Getting clean is, to date, one of the most difficult things I ever did. As I've mentioned before, I wasn't even aware of what addiction was. Other addicts taught me about addiction. Told me what it meant, what their lives were like. Told me that I didn't want the life they had and I should get out while I was young. When I realized that I was addicted (I was 18 then), I started thinking deeply about what that meant. 6 months later I woke up one morning and declared, "I want to get clean". After the initial jokes of "take a shower" subsided, the same addicts who told me that I didn't want their life were the ones that sat by my bed as my body was wrecked for days. Yeah, getting clean was one of the worst experiences of my life. It ranks right up there with being gang raped. Getting clean is, most likely, the hardest thing any person will have to go through. It means making amends with those you've hurt. It means dealing with the hurt and pain you were trying to run away from. It means accepting responsibility for your actions. 

And apparently, to my current doctor, it means "Once an addict, always an addict".

Ironically enough, I accept the phrase "Once an addict, always an addict". I know to never take a prescription that can alter my senses if I am extremely sad, depressed, or feeling any type of negativity. I will lay in bed and suffer through my physical pain rather than take something that will also deaden the emotions I may be feeling. I know that, even though I never think about getting high anymore, that I easily could. I know that somewhere, hovering around the edges of my mind, is that girl that was so easily addicted and then kept with the addiction because it was better than dealing with the hell she was living with. The same girl who kept taking the meds even after she left her current hell, and told herself it was because of the hell she had run into. That girl is still somewhere deep inside of me. I hold all her memories, all her fears, all her reasons for running. I'm not that same girl, but I cling to the belief that she is still inside of me and could resurface. 

However, I know firsthand that having been an addict does not mean that you will never be able to remain clean I know that having been an addict doesn't mean that my pain can not be managed without abusing it. 

I know that if a doctor has concerns, they should DISCUSS THEM WITH ME, instead of being sneaky to get a drug test behind my back. I know that I deserve a doctor to be as honest and upfront with me as I've been with EVERY SINGLE ONE since the time I first got clean.

 I am angry. I am hurt. I even feel betrayed. I was told that my kidneys and bladder would be checked to attempt to determine if anything else was causing my pain besides the issue we knew of. Instead, they didn't check anything except to see if I was abusing drugs. I was lied to by my medical provider because they assumed that, since I readily admitted I had been an addict between the ages of 13 and 19, I must be an addict now.

 Guess my family will be searching for a new doctor. Honesty runs high on my list for a medical provider.

Addict

People keep pointing the finger and declaring, "That person is an addict! Why would you spend time with them?"

It is a knife stuck deep within me.

Because I am an addict

Always will be.

I know the struggle.

I know how it feels to relapse.

My issue is that so many have a stereotypical idea of what an addict is and judge accordingly.

When I call them out and say, "But I'm an addict" they proceed to tell me all the reasons it's different.

But it's not.

I KNOW that the only reason I was able to stay clean so long was because I got pregnant and had children right after getting clean.

Without that, I would have been like others.

Will It Go Away......

If I don't talk about it....... will it go away?

If I don't think about it......will it go away?

If I don't feel it......will it go away?

I just WANTED to believe he loved me. To prove to myself that the last 9 months were not in vain. That all the love, forgiveness, support and effort I put into the relationship was worth something. That I was "good enough", that my love was "good enough".

Yet, now I am looking at the entire situation and wondering why the hell I felt I needed him to validate me.

He created so much havoc in my life simply by the lies he told about ME. He told those lies to hide who he was, what he was doing. Those lies resulted in hurting, not only me, but his son, his younger brother, and four other children.

I have no respect for him left.

None.

That quickly and that completely.

He hurt CHILDREN. Shattered their souls and broke their hearts. Made them feel like they weren't good enough.

I have no respect for the person that chose to accuse me and put me down, in my own home, because he believed the lies. He hurt his own grandchild and two other children he knows NOTHING about. He knew the person had lied to him for years, had stole from him, had lied about him. Yet, maybe he, like me, just wanted to feel like all the years of his bailing him out, giving him money, giving him cars, providing him a place to stay no matter how strung out, giving him money even though it all went to drugs.....maybe he felt like he needed validation of his efforts.

Yet, I would NEVER attack other people, or children, just to try to feel validated.

No respect left.

I showed respect for both. Yet I have none.

I am done. Finished. No more chances. I have made a list of "requirements" that must be met for him to even attempt friendship again. I doubt I"ll ever hear from him again. The list would require sincere commitment to staying clean and after the last 9 months, I don't believe that was ever there.

I feel stupid. Very gullible, ignorant.

However, it is a learning experience and I will learn from it.

Orgasm

I didn't know I could have orgasms.

I thought I was broken. 

But then he gave them to me. 

Mind Blowing

  Earth Shattering

    Bed Soaking

  

      Squirting

        Whole Body Quivering

You never gave me those. 

You I had to train just to be able to move past "stupid teenage sex"

You trained well

But after 8 months I'm ready to have those orgasms again

I told you it was "good"

It was good, once you started heeding my lessons

But I'm moving on to 

Mind Blowing

  Earth Shattering

    Bed Soaking

  

      Squirting

        Whole Body Quivering

I'm sure while you're with your junkie girlfriends, you'll remember that I gave, to use your words, "the best head hands down" and wonder if the needle's liquid coursing through your veins is worth it. 

Endings and Beginnings

     I have a new nickname. Over the course of the last 15 months I've acquired it. My best friend refers to me as “Candide”. Candide is the main character in a novella by Voltaire. Candide is told by his mentor Pangloss that we live in the “best of all possible worlds” and that “all is for the best”. Yet, through the course of Candide's life, he finds these sentiment's hard to believe at times. He seems to suffer trials and heartaches unknown to most men, yet presses onward.

     The beginning of a new year always leads me to reflect back over my life. I've lived 36 years. Yet, as I gaze back over them, even I find it hard to believe that so many lives could have been lived within this one.

I am the drug addict that spent 6 years of her life drowning her pain and heartache in a deadened state so as not to feel.

I am the survivor of molestation, going through the years fighting the feeling that something must have been wrong with me for that to have happened.

I am the survivor of rape, having lost my virginity to such and drowning myself in self-condemnation.

I am the young girl that was out of state on vacation when her best friend died, lost in a world before text messaging and smart phones could alert her.

I am the girl that sat in the next room as her beloved friend fatally shot himself, so certain that life in that moment summarized what his entire existence would be.

I am the pregnant girl that watched as her best friends child was laid to rest, an innocent soul taken by grotesque abuse and murder.

I am the wife who was beaten and abused at the hands of the man that gave her children, knowing that her escape would more then likely end in her death.

I am the single mother of two, stricken with health issues and handed a death sentence, wondering how it could all fall apart just as it was starting to come together for the first time.

I am the mother and wife that gazed upon her children, some claimed not by birth, and wondered how she would ever meet their special needs.

I am the woman who thought she'd finally picked up the pieces and started over, only to learn her husband was using illegal drugs and having an affair.

I am the single mother of three that had to begin new, yet again, with an empty bank account and a child in the hospital.

I am the mother that held her children as they cried over their beloved pet and therapy dog having been viciously murdered by trespassing hunters.

I am the woman that shuddered to learn her diseases had come back and her prognosis was worst then the first time.

I am the woman that is fighting to keep her children in their home and struggling to hold it all together in the wake of insurmountable odds.

     I am distinctly and uniquely ME. I may never understand why one life could be filled with such despair and heartache. I may never know how one body can endure so much, when another seems to break at the slightest pain.

     I no longer seek answers. I no longer demand of God the reasons. I do not seek to know what further disasters may besiege me. I do not care to know when my end may come.

     Instead, I seek to look ever onward, pressing forward to the prize that will come to all men at the end of this world. I know that there will be a time in the end, when all wrongs will be made right. When their will be no more tears, no more pain. When death will be a distant past memory, and sunlight and warmth will fill all of my days.

     I look forward, knowing that the only condemnation I live in is that of my own making. Content to know there is a love and forgiveness that has always been mine. Peaceful in holding an acceptance of self that no man can take from me.

     I am more then I could ever hope or dream to be, simply because each of us were created to be just that. I am more then my dreams, my self judgments, my critical inflection.

     I do not embody the abuse that has been inflicted upon my body, my heart, my soul, my mind and my spirit. Sheltered deep within me is the core of my soul upon which no man has ever embarked and only His light can touch.

     I have felt comfort in my cocoon of transformation and yearn to feel the sun upon my emerging wings. I seek to soar above and feel the breeze ripple across my body.

     For with each ending there is a new beginning. A million lives wrapped into one lifetime. A hundred old souls gathered in the midst of one body.

     My life is what I make it. My days are in my perspective.

I am ME, and that is all I ever have needed to be.