My Drug History
By: Z. Moriarty
Tags: Painkillers, Addiction Recovery, Heroin, Drugs, Addiction

Hazy eyes.

I would say that my story began most typically like that of most opiate addicts… One afternoon when I was about sixteen, I had a routine operation from the orthodontist to have all of my wisdom teeth pulled out. They had given me Vicodin for the pain and I just liked how taking a few extra pills made me feel… This was my very first introduction to the high of taking pain killers. After that, I kept searching for and chasing some kind of high. To be honest, I grew up with wonderful parents and sisters, in a big house, in a friendly upper middle class neighborhood where everyone had perfectly neat green grass in their yards. For the most part, I wanted for naught… our parents didn’t want us to worry about anything except for getting A’s in school and going to college. I hate to admit it but I was very spoiled. But even still, I cultivated my own garden of increasingly dark thoughts…

After I was denied more pain killers from the doctor, I moved on to drinking alcohol and smoking weed with friends in high school. Drinking alcohol wasn’t very enjoyable for me. I think I was always self-conscious of how how my face would turn beet red, and I hated the hangovers. My weak tolerance for alcohol caused me to faint on multiple occasions. If it weren’t for my poor ability to metabolize alcohol, I know without a doubt that I would’ve been an alcoholic. I think my experience would’ve been akin to that of my grandfather’s who was a beer for breakfast kind of guy. He died not recognizing his family or himself.

I was introduced to weed around the same time I started drinking. My friends loved to hot box the car. When I graduated from high school, I went on to study biology at UC Irvine in Southern California. I stayed clean from drugs for a year or so and was doing well in college until I experienced a traumatic life event in my freshman year of college that I frankly would rather not describe. At the same time, I had an abusive boyfriend who attempted to control every aspect of my life. It took me years to break up with him, and I never coped with what had happened and dropped out of school. Basically, I tried to run away from everyone and everything. I ended up moving to San Francisco where I struggled to continue my studies at San Francisco State University.

In San Francisco, I found pain killers again through a new boyfriend. He had been using Oxy and tried to hide it from me at first. I was so in love with him or the idea of being with him that I thought I could fix him. He was a wealthy art student from South Korea and I rarely ever left his side. Soon our relationship revolved around using Oxy every day. It didn’t take me long to start using with him too. I used Oxy to numb the pain of my traumatic past and used it to keep running away.

My ex-boyfriend was worried about my Oxy use, and tried to stop me from using. However, it was impossible to stop using while he was using too. We lived together for about two years and eventually isolated ourselves. Even though we had access to a significant amount of cash, we both ended up maxing credit cards and borrowing money from friends and family. But still no one really knew what was happening. My family thought that I was just overspending on extravagant things. My mother told me that I was always good at keeping secrets, smart when it came to hiding, and good at putting on a brave face. Even in high school and at this present time, no one really knew when I was using unless I told them. It was only most recently when I started having health problems did my husband and family grow concerned about my drug use.

For a long time, I never thought that I had a problem with drugs… Growing up I was always the good girl… independent, studious, quiet… I didn’t want to accept that I had a problem with drugs until I started using Oxy and couldn’t stop without getting sick. When I started getting withdrawals from not using, I would need more to chase that high. At the same time, I stopped going to school, I let my car get parking tickets all the time and it got towed many times. I mention my car just as an example. My parents and grandmother drove all the way down to Irvine and surprised me with a Mercedes. They knew that I was depressed and maybe thought that gifting me a fancy car would make me happy again. I had learned to buy nice things as a way to cope at a very young age. As silly and materialistic as that sounds, that car was my most prized possession… but needing more Oxy became more important than anything else in my life. I neglected and avoided my family and friends, and my responsibilities in life. I eventually sought help after confiding in my sister and after using Oxy for about a year and half every single day.

However, when I sought help for Oxy I was prescribed subutex which is an opiate agonist used to treat narcotic withdrawal and pain in general. For the past 7 years I have been on subutex to help keep me stable throughout the day. I jumped around to different clinics and doctors in California and I was never able to stop taking subutex on my own. Even though it’s a prescribed medication, I am most certainly addicted to it because it’s still a pain killer. I would sometimes experience a high if I took a higher dose than normal and snort it, while also mixing it with other drugs. I just accepted that I’d be taking subutex for the rest of my life and the doctors who prescribed it to me said it was normal. My brain has been used to being on opiates for the past 7 years…

My disease progressed pretty slowly over time until I discovered Oxy… Oxy was my favorite drug of all time. As with all other drugs, I needed more and more to get high or just to feel normal. I was obsessed with it. When I stopped Oxy, I then switched to obsessing about subutex and weed. I tried to rationalize my drug use for years by telling myself that it was okay because the subutex was prescribed to me. With the weed, I told myself that it was fine because I thought, pretty much everyone smokes weed. With the ecstasy, I really didn’t think it would hurt me but then I started obsessing about it too. I always thought that since I stopped Oxy, it was the end all to my drug problem and that the ecstasy, and the subutex, and all the other drugs I had been taking wouldn’t hurt me or even compare to damage done when I did Oxy. It was so foolish to think this…

My drug use impacted my relationship with my family and husband the most. My parents continue to support me through all of this, but I caused them so much pain and great inner turmoil. Even though they don’t show it to me or talk about it, I can only imagine what it would be like to see your own child succumb to drug addiction. My sisters also continue to support me and don’t want to keep seeing me suffer. I used to be a lot closer to my sisters, but I have isolated myself so much because of drugs over the years that our relationship dynamics aren’t the same anymore. I have lost a lot of friends either by my own choice or they had just purposely faded into the background. For my husband, it hurt him a lot to keep seeing me sick, especially this past year … Even though I thought I was only really hurting myself, I was most certainly hurting those around me who cared for my well-being and happiness.

My drug use has affected all aspects of my life… The most significant would be my education, my finances and my physical health. My drug use has caused me to squander the wonderful opportunities I had to pursue higher education. I dropped out of school three times. I feel the most shame and regret about not pursuing my education and falling behind, especially towards my parents. Obtaining my degree is all my parents ever asked of me my whole life.

At first I was doing great at work and graduated to having more responsibilities and rewards, but then I started to feel really sick. I went back and forth to the doctors for a while. I had stomach problems at first and all the tests and scans and MRI showed nothing. But then I continued to get worse, I was throwing up everyday, all day; not eating much if at all, I always felt nauseous, and hardly slept. When I did sleep I had horrible nightmares and I began to fear going to sleep. There were times when I thought I was going crazy but I told no one. The doctors then told me that my symptoms were a “physical manifestation of stress.” At this point, I was so frustrated and exhausted that I decided to submit and get help.

Lastly, my finances have suffered a lot over the years. I spent so much on drugs and obviously did not care about managing my money. I always tried to rationalize the cost, but being an addict usually means having poor impulse control. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter if I was using or not using, I would always blow through money and max out all my credit cards and still look for more.

For the past few years, my life had become an endless loop of going to work and coming home to get high. My husband and I pretty much isolated ourselves, and most recently I became very depressed and was simultaneously experiencing a high amount of stress. In the last few months of using my own special cocktail of subutex, ecstasy, weed, anti-depressants and occasionally Xanax; my physical body began to show signs of distress. I was tired of feeling sad and exhausted all the time and the ecstasy gave me relief from the reality of life for a while. I ended up using ecstasy for about three weeks straight in combination with everything else all day, every day.

In the past, I had tried to stop taking drugs on my own without any help. I was never successful for very long. I hopped around with different substances hoping for some kind of relief. Whatever relief I did find was always short-lived. When I first stopped taking Oxy I had gone to the Ohloff Recovery Center, but I stopped going after only two days. I had moved back to my parents’ home and stayed sober for a few months before moving back to San Francisco and using again.

When I first started treatment my initial reason was for my physical health. I was exhausted from being sick all the time and I wanted to get off subutex and all the other drugs. However, I have learned a lot over the past two weeks and my thinking has shifted. I now want to continue staying sober not just for my physical well-being but my overall well-being. I want to live a content and peaceful life, and I want to achieve my goals.

This time I have accepted that I have a problem and have surrendered to the process. I know that drugs will only provide short-lived relief from whatever negative emotions I am feeling in that moment. There is a quote from Edgar Allan Poe that says, “I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”

I have accepted that as an addict, I will always suffer from the itch to use, from this brain disease, probably for the rest of my life. But I intend to complete this recovery program, and will continue to go to meetings, and will eventually find a sponsor, and will put in the hard work required of the 12 steps. I will remember to actually take care of myself for once. I have found the education and meetings both in and out of the program to be profound. I truly appreciate the new friends I’ve made, and the stories of people’s journeys that led them to maintaining sobriety. Another favorite author of mine, Joan Didion, once said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live…”