On one particular night, I went through my worst set of withdrawals. I swear, it’s like your own personal hell. I sat in the passenger seat of my car kicking in my dashboard and pleading to God, “Please just make all of this go away.”
I called numerous rehab facilities, hoping to find one that would take my insurance. Of course they wouldn’t, and I felt even more hopeless. I felt as if the rest of my life would be dictated by this drug. I was so angry with myself. I was so angry with God. I felt like He wasn’t listening to me, He wasn’t helping me.
I needed Him, and I needed Him to save me because I couldn’t save myself.
That morning, Walter and I drove to pick up another sack of heroin. I had been withdrawing for about 14 hours. We got it, opened the bag up and poured some out on my center console. I remember picking up that dollar bill and feeling the drugs enter my body. I took a huge gulp of blue Gatorade to get the disgusting taste out of my mouth. Then everything went black.
One red light.
That’s how far Walter got before looking over at me, to find my face blue and my eyes shut. I was making funny noises with my throat. Walter described the sounds as if I were drowning, gasping for air.
Not even a full minute from when that drug entered my system, and I was dead.
That’s what people don’t understand about this drug. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done it, all it takes is that ONE time, and your life is over.
I woke up in the backseat of my boyfriend’s mom’s car. She had come to meet us in the parking lot where he had pulled over. They laid me in the back of her car until the ambulance arrived.
I woke up confused and foggy. I thought I had been in a car wreck. I didn’t know where I was, how I got there or what had happened. The paramedics had shot me up with narcan; after 20 minutes of being lifeless, within seconds I was back.
God answered my prayers that day.
I was taken to the hospital where my family came to join me. They didn’t know what to say or how to act. I was throwing up, my memory was all over the place. I didn’t even know what to say to them. I just laid there. My mom and step-dad were at my apartment gathering all of my belongings while my dad and stepmom were speaking to the nurses and helping me talk with a psychiatrist. They brought me home that night. The date was 11/19.
All I ever wanted to do was come home.
For two weeks I laid in my room going through withdrawals. Cold sweats, restless legs, vomiting, sharp pains running through my body. I got up a handfull of times within those two weeks. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t drink anything, I just wanted to sleep but that would make it all too easy. It’s impossible to sleep. I was on lockdown. My dad took away my phone; my car was parked at my mom’s. I had no way out and being that my dad lives in a gated community, he made sure that no one had a way in. My mom would drive over to my dad’s to bathe me…yes that’s right. I couldn’t even take a shower on my own. The water felt like a thousand knives stabbing every inch of my body.
When the pain got the worst of me I remember trying to leave. My dad wrestled me to the ground as I beat the crap out of him. There was nothing easy about this process, for any of us. My parents had to be strong when I couldn’t and I thank them for that.
When you’re an addict you think everyone is your enemy, but in the long run they’re the ones saving your life.
