Posted by Anonymous on 2016/05/05 under Uncategorized I am a 36 year old, recently divorced, mother of three. I was born and raised in the Pacific North West. My parents divorced when I was about 8. My mother went to work. I was a stereotypical latchkey kid. Alone. I’m always alone. Anyway by 12 or 13 years of age I was experimenting with alcohol and drugs and sex and skipping school. By the ninth grade I had dropped out having been expelled my every available school in the area, mostly for poor attendance or being caught with or under the influence of marijuana. Drugs and alcohol, particularly alcohol and marijuana, have always been a big part of my life.Why the poor attendance and marijuana? Depression and anxiety. I’ve had it all my life. Even at a very young age. I hated the medication I was given and much preferred to self medicate. By the time I was 17 I was working for a landscape company and selling drugs for a living. I met my future husband Dave. Dave was 16 years older than I, and unhappily married. He was a general contractor and also one of the biggest weed dealers around. Despite our age difference we really hit it off. We got along so well. Even to this day we like the same things…we just never fight about the little stuff. Anyway, I got pregnant pretty much right away and had my daughter just a couple weeks shy of my 19th birthday. Things were good, not great, but good. We sold, grew and smoked weed. He worked construction. Raising a little kid. My dad passed in a car accident in 2001 and I received a small inheritance that I used to supplement our income for years. It’s all gone now. I never worked a real job. In about 2007 I decided I wanted another baby. And to buy a house. And stop selling weed and growing weed all together. I wanted to move away from this toxic circle of people we had gotten in with. I wanted a normal life. This was first attempt at getting clean. I quit the weed, the booze, the benzos. I used tapering schedules I found online. It took me about 4 months. But I did it on my own. I immediately got pregnant, stayed totally clean through out my pregnancy and had my second child 10 years and 2 days after my first. I had another child, a boy, in 2010. Our family was good and complete for about a minute. Being a very difficult baby, unlike my last two, I ended up developing severe postpartum depression that went untreated. I returned to my addictions. My husbands got worse. Fast forward 5 years later. We are both functioning addicts, just barley scraping by on SNAP and a failing drunk general contractors salary. I tried again to clean up and was able to stop the pills, but not the daily weed and alcohol. After 5 months of failed tapering I checked myself into a local detox for alcohol. At the time I averaged a half gallon of 100proof vodka ever three days and had been doing that for about three years. I actually had to go buy a shot glass to measure how much I drank. I didn’t even know. I just had “a few strong ones a night in my favorite cup…” Even though they are not a technically medical detox, they’ll give you Librium if you seem sick enough and beg for it. Seriously. I had too beg, vomit and my pulse and blood pressure went thru the roof. The send me to the ER for the prescription. Six days later I started attending an outpatient program, no one would support my going to an inpatient for 30 days. My husband refused to let me go and him be alone with the little ones for 30 days. I was attending weekly, doing ok, staying sober. Six months later, to the day, my husband was arrested for voyeurism. He had been filming our 17 year old daughter in her bedroom with her girlfriend (she is gay). They found the camera and the girlfriends parents called the cops. Our world was destroyed. Skipping over more family drama. I am now approaching a year without a drink. I am on the benzos and opiates again. I smoke weed daily. I am almost total relapse. My husband was my only friend. Gone. I have so much wrong with me. Thank goodness for the internet. I’ve learned, at least, my crazy has names and I’m not the only one. I’m not as embarrassed as I used to be to talk about the hair pulling, skin picking, uncontrollable hand flapping and wringing. The OCD thoughts. I’ve lost about 60 lbs in the last year. I’m never hungry. I weigh about 110 right now. I don’t sleep all night, I sleep all day. I eat Unisom and Benedryl by the box when I’m out of my other substances. I hate everything. I feel guilty for having my children. I feel guilty I’m a bad mother and I feel even worse that my 17 year old has to pick up all my slack. She isn’t just a victim of her dads perversion. But a victim of our substance abuse, she’s dealt with us all her life. Now all of this… I know I need medication. I’m afraid to start, because of side effects I had before. I hated detox, not because of the discomfort, but because of the people. I’ve never been arrested, I am unaccustomed to being yelled at for taking a plastic blue cup to my room or being treated like a criminal in general. Nobody WANTED to be there, they were all court ordered. Same with outpatient. Groups were so hard. I don’t know how to talk to people and inevitably it comes back to “why are you here?” and I almost felt like I needed to apologize for NOT being a heroin junkie prostitute who’d been gang raped a dozen times. They all have the same attitude my mother has “your life is not so bad, just pick yourself up and move forward…”. “It’s all in your head”. “Just be stronger”. I can’t. I just can’t. I’ve been to therapy a few times. I was last diagnosed with reoccurring major depressive disorder. But I’ve never been totally honest with my therapist about my drug addiction and I’ve never been totally honest with my D&A counselor about my mental illness. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. One doesn’t do the other and they look at me like I’ve grown a third head. I do have obamacare. So it seems its the bottom of the local barrel or nothing. I’m not a snob. I just want decent care. I don’t want to be treated like a criminal in another detox facility. Treated like a problem for needing medication. I don’t want some third rate, poorly trained kid with no history of addiction asking me “why do you think that is?” and telling me to “journal it” over and over. Summer is coming. I think my mother would watch the kids during their summer break from school for 30 days. I think. I really just need inpatient. I need to get sober again. I need a place to go crazy and not victimize my children further. I need to find out who I am and what I want. I need help. Lots and lots of help. A big part of me just wants to fall asleep and not wake up. I’m so torn. I care so much, but a big part of me doesn’t care anymore. Hopeless. Is the word for it, I guess.
My only sibling is a brother 2 years younger then me. He was sent to a school for the gifted in the second grade and continued to attend until high school. His school bus picked him up in front of the house everyday. I made my way thru the worst area in town to get to school.
We moved and used the last of the money in savings to buy a house and start over 100 miles and a ferry ride away from all our ‘friends’, family and acquaintances.
I quit outpatient treatment. They changed my counselor, I hated the new chick and her style of therapy. Internal family systems? I felt like she just wanted me to wallow in my worst memories. My depression go so much worse. I quite going to everything.
I am so depressed. I barely get out of bed to get the kids ready for school or slap something together for dinner. I cry, scream, yell. My house is filthy. I am a terrible mother. I feel so guilty and alone and worthless. I have no job skills. I’m too scatter brained to work anyway. I don’t have people skills.
Good facilities I find online cost a f***ing fortune. I cannot afford $25,000. No one I know has that, I don’t have the credit history to get a loan.