I learned about drugs in school and as I was growing up, I swore that I would never do them. In middle school and high school I hung out with the bad crowd that did use. But for some reason I never did. I just wasn't interested. When I was 17 I moved in with my dad and stepmom. For the first time I had no rules. I could pretty much do whatever I wanted. I started skipping school and hanging out with kids that weren't going to school. On Christmas Day I got stoned for the first time. I felt like I had missed out on everything, it opened my eyes so wide! Finally, I was funny and comfortable around people.
A few days after I turned 18, my dad, stepmom, and I got into a huge fight. The gave me an ultimatum: either shape up or get out. I got out. I left and went to stay in a one bedroom apartment with eight other people. It was there that I tried meth for the first time. I don't know what it was, maybe it just made the world come into focus, but I was hooked from the first time. There was this guy that was staying in the apartment, and he was not a good guy. He was a gangbanger, and he used to do unspeakable things to me. I still bear the emotional scars from that time and there are a lot of things that scare me to death when I am reminded of them. I was too scared to leave though. I had nowhere else to go. At one point a girl showed up, and I was the only one home. We hung out for a bit and started talking. She told me about this abandoned apartment building that she was staying in with a couple of friends. Then she said that I could join them, and I left as soon as I could.
Thus began my life of living on the streets. I missed my high school graduation. Ironically, I was right across the street, high as a kite, and filthy too. I got into a street gang, and started selling meth. I was not a very nice person. I grew hard and mean. I eventually moved to Seattle and then entered Job Corps. I stayed clean for awhile and there I met my first husband. That marriage lasted eight and a half weeks. I went home to my mom and stepdad, broken and alone. At first I just started smoking a little weed behind my parents' backs. Then I moved into an apartment with a friend. I ran into my high school sweetheart, and we got married two months later. I was stoned all the time. Not longer after we got married, I was diagnosed with a serious mental illness called schizoaffective disorder. I was 21 at the time of the diagnosis. I was also clean off of meth as well. It didn't last long.I was hanging out with one of my friends whom I had known since middle school, picking up guys and going over to her friend's house to party. They would buy meth and sit around and smoke it. I resisted for a little over a month, but I finally gave in and started smoking it too. I had stayed off it for over three years. I learned how to hide it, to appear to sleep, to eat when I knew that I should, and I did it all without my husband knowing. I knew that he had used meth in the past, but we had never used it together. When he came home high one day and broke down and told me that he had done it, I told him that I wanted to do it too. I never told him that I had been using for over a year with my friends. Once we started using together, our relationship fell apart even faster.
I finally decided that I had enough, I wanted recovery. I started outpatient treatment and quickly got into an inpatient program. I was encouraged by my counselors to be honest with my husband and tell him that I had been using much longer than he knew. I did, and it broke up our marriage. He couldn't handle that I had lied to him for so long and so effectively. When I graduated the program, I moved in with my little sister and my mom, recently divorced from my stepdad. Life was good for a while although I didn't have much ambition to do anything.
My husband and I started talking again. We decided to give it another try. I moved back home with him and very quickly started smoking weed again. Other than that I was doing pretty good. Then it happened. A few months after we got back together, he tried to rape me. I would have been able to move past anything else. I went to a shelter, got a restraining order, and walked away.
I moved to Phoenix in 2003. When I ended up back on the streets, I found meth all over again. And it held me for three more years. At one point I was living with my best friend, her boyfriend, and their three kids. I was using in secret with her boyfriend and we hid it very well. I hated myself during that time more than any other. I love children and her kids have a special place in my heart. I would get high in that apartment with the kids there. It was with utter despair and sadness that I decided that I didn't want to live that way anymore. I asked for help, and then I asked for it again. I asked until it sunk in that I was serious. April 24th, 2006, was the last day I got high. I shut myself off from everyone, and I ran to a safe place, telling no one where I was going. I tried very hard to work on my recovery. Then one night I was sitting in an NA meeting and something a guy said just clicked in my head and my whole attitude changed. I knew for a fact that I didn't want that life anymore, that I didn't want to go back. I wanted to live, and I wanted to be better. After completing the treatment program I moved back to Oregon to live with my mom and sister. I got a job, my mom sold me a car, and I started making a life for myself.
About a month after I moved back to Oregon, I got into an Oxford House. It's like a halfway house but not completely. There is no limit to how long you can stay. I got involved in the organization, and I worked very hard. I lived in Oxford until March 2008, a year and a half. In that time I was the Housing Services Treasurer, a Chapter Mentor and I helped open two new houses. I worked with the drug court and DHS to get women into Oxford Houses.
And I got better. I have been blessed time and again through the past two and a half years. That is not to say that I have not had low points. But even in my darkest times, I did not want to get high. It is no longer an answer for me. I understand now what people mean when they say in a meeting that the compulsion to use was lifted from their shoulders by the grace of God. I am living on my own now in my own apartment. I haven't had that before except for right before I got married the second time. I have a wonderful fiance who supports me in everything and loves me just the way I am. I am enriched by having my best friend back in my life again (the one I was using around) and getting to watch my kids grow up, I call my best friend's kids mine, because they are the closest thing to kids that I have and we are very close.
I enjoy a great relationship with my mom and my dad. He is clean too. He has almost four years of being clean. In fact I go to California every year to spend time with him, and we share our recovery. I am stable, and I have a great support system. Even from the depths of nothingness there can be hope. I just have to be willing to reach up and grasp it, and never let go. If I can do it with my mental illness then you can to!