From Block to Boss- The Diary of an Addict Part 1

Every morning I woke up, feverish, chills running down my spine. My skin felt like tiny needles were pricking me all over. It was as if my epidermis had the carbonation of a freshly opened Sprite. Nausea overcame all my senses. Shaking and sweating, I rolled over searching my nightstand for the cure. Checking the clock, it was 3 AM. My 6-month-old baby still soundly asleep. I opened the drawer on the table. Small, blue glassine bags tucked neatly inside individual mini Ziploc pouches, were strewn all throughout the drawer. I rifled through them, choosing the two that looked the fullest. I began emptying them on the screen of my phone. I used to use my ID, or whatever card was readily available to sort them into lines, but I didn’t bother anymore. What did it matter what shape it was in when I put the heroin up my nose? Shaking, I reached over and grabbed the first dollar bill that my fingers could reach inside of my purse. As carefully as I could, I rolled the bill into a tube and inhaled my instant cure. I lay back, letting my mucus absorb the brownish powder substance and let it drip down the back of my throat. Within minutes, the shaking stopped. The chills went away. My skin didn’t hurt to be touched anymore. I was well again. I peered out of my bedroom window. We were in the middle of a snowstorm. 20 inches of pure white climbed almost to the top of the window frame. Maybe today I’ll have some peace and quiet. Luckily for me, I wasn’t just an addict- I was the supplier as well.

The Road to Hell

At this point, I was in active addiction for 6 months. Prior to that- I wouldn’t speak to anyone stupid enough to do heroin. I never went to college when I left high school. I dropped out my senior year and immediately became a manager at McDonald's. I partied my ass off and got mixed up with the wrong kind of man. To make my younger years a long story short- I started using cocaine. The man I was dating robbed a sweet little elderly woman of her purse at a local supermarket. When the police came to question me, I denied having any knowledge of the robbery or him. Of course, they knew better. I ended up with criminal charges for lying. I continued using and on November 5th, 2007, I landed myself in the local county prison where my probation officer made me stay for 45 days. 19 years old sitting in a cold jail cell. When I was finally released I sobered up and started my road to recovery. I started working as a sever and almost immediately found the wrong kind of man, again. He was sweet at first. He catered to every need I had. He didn’t do drugs, just drank pretty heavily but that was normal for people my age. Slowly things started to change. He was overly jealous which at first I thought was kind of cute. Then it went to the extreme. I wasn’t allowed to look at another man let alone speak to them. At first, it was just yelling. Until it wasn’t. The first time he put his hands on me, he grabbed me by my hair so hard, he ripped a patch out the size of a half-dollar. I Had a huge bald spot that was almost impossible to cover up. Of course he apologized and it would never happen again. We lived with his brother at the time who would never do anything to betray his brother, so he did nothing to help me. Every time we fought, he would grab me by the hair and my throat. Each time ripping out more hair. I wasn’t allowed to shower by myself. If I did, I must be hiding something or sleeping with someone else he would say. Then he didn’t’ bother restraining himself anymore. It turned into a full-on beating. I’d go to work with makeup thick around my eyes. Trying to cover the bruises, but I didn’t fool anyone. Co-workers would offer me a place to stay to get away from him. But I never accepted. After all, he loved me. He would go out and sleep with other women. Usually, someone, I considered a friend. He isolated me to only his family. I had no one to turn to. One night we were out at the bar, watching a live band. I must’ve been .. looking too much at the lead singer. The next thing I knew, he had landed a punch right on my check splitting it open. Apparently, no one saw this. Or they pretended that they didn’t. This went on for five years, each time worse than the last before I took one of my coworkers that I had become close with up on her offer to move in with her two towns over. While he was out probably cheating on me again, I packed up what I could fit in my car and I left. One of the hardest things I had to do was force myself not to go back. He had successfully brained washed me into thinking what he had done was ok. But I did it. I stayed away and started once again, putting my life back together. My choice of men had progressed to a bunch of one-night stands. Terrified to let anyone in my heart again. So, when I became pregnant with my daughter, it was a big reality check. Her father, Shane, didn’t believe she was his daughter, so he wasn’t around during my pregnancy. I saved every dollar I had and found an apartment. The first time I lived by myself in my entire life. I did everything I could to stay on the right track and leave the past behind me. For the better part of seven years, I stayed clean and did right by my daughter. Just after her 1st birthday, the domestic relations office had caught up with him and he demanded a paternity test. Which proved that he was the father. He started visiting her at my home. We worked up to split custody once she was comfortable with him. This lasted for about six months before his own addiction came to light.

April 2015

My baby girl was now 4 years old. Shane had been absent most of her childhood, but I just wanted her to have a father, so I allowed him to see her when he was on his short stints of recovery. Now he was reaching out for help. He had left the state on the run from his probation officer for some random misdemeanor he had committed and was stranded in Texas. Shane made claims of wanting to fix his life. He wanted to be around his family and take care of his daughter. So, I bought him a bus ticket and offered him my couch. I was pregnant with my third baby at the time. After a month or so, old feelings began to spark again. I thought he was cleaning up and doing right for once. I was horribly wrong. Two months later I gave birth to my son. At the time I was working at a local truck stop as a cashier. Money was always tight, and we barely got by, but we survived. I was already in a probationary period with my landlord-I could not be late again. The day came when I had to go get the money order for my rent. I got to the store, had the cashier begin the process, opened my purse- my money was gone. I started calling my daughter’s father. No answer. Later that night he finally showed up. High as a kite. I wanted to kill him. My baby boy was just three days old, and we were being evicted. So many emotions were hurling through my body. I had no idea what to do. He promised he would fix it. We bounced around for a while. Staying with our friends. As he fought with his own addiction, I began to turn a blind eye. He would go into stores stealing whatever he could and have me return it for the money. Somehow during that time, he convinced the person he bought his drugs from, or ‘the plug’ as Shane called him, to let him start selling heroin for him. Again, I turned a blind eye. What used to roil me to my core became an everyday part of life and means of survival. He scored a deal with one of the people he sold to. The man had an empty, beautiful three-bedroom house that he had on the market to sell. He said we could live there until it sold- if we paid him in bundles of heroin. Shane was mostly good at what he did and he had enough clientele to make the deal work. Suddenly, we weren’t homeless anymore. I was so happy and blinded by the ‘good fortune’ I didn’t see what environment I had created for the kids. It was now 8 weeks after I had my son. I had had surgery done the day after he was born so that I could no longer have kids. My first period felt like it was literally going to take the life out of me. I curled up into a ball and rocked and cried. Nothing I did seemed to help. Shane came to check on me. He tried to console me and do anything he could to make me feel better. Until finally, the words I will never forget dared to cross his lips. He offered me a half of a bag of heroin. He said he knew how I felt about the substance, but he promised that it would almost certainly take the pain away. At first, I told him to get the hell away from me. But the longer I sat and cried, the more I could no longer stand the pain. I called him back in. Shane said I didn’t need to use a needle as he did. I could just sniff it as if I was doing cocaine. I caved. And he was right. The pain began to slip away, and I felt glorious. I had energy I didn’t even know existed inside of me. If I was being honest with myself, I loved the feeling, But I promised myself that it would be a one-time thing. Days went by and I kept my word to myself. I had returned to work finally off maternity leave. I was so excited to have some semblance of normalcy. Not a week later, I was getting ready for my shift, and Shane was nowhere to be found. I went out back looking to see if my car was there. My grey Subaru Legacy sat in its normal parking space. As I glanced down in the pouring rain, I saw his phone sitting on the concrete step. A few seconds later a police officer stepped inside of our backyard fence. He told me he had pulled into the adjacent parking lot and had spotted him exiting my vehicle. He recognized him from the warrant photo they had been circulating. His probation violation had finally caught up with him. After speaking with the officer, I frantically went inside and began making phone calls. One to my job, letting them know I had an emergency and could not make it in. The next, to the drug dealer I had never met, explaining his soldier would no longer be of service. What happened next caught me so off guard that the only thing I could say was, yes. Shane’s ‘plug’ was not happy to hear of his shortcomings. He stated that Shane was one of his top money makers and someone needed to hold down the fort until he came home. Mr. Plug suggested that since I already knew Shane’s clientele, that I should just take over the business and keep the money flowing. Then it dawned on me, without the income or the product, I would surely lose our home. There was no way in hell that I could afford the bills making a measly $10/hr. I accepted his proposal. I made the calls and let his clients know that they would need to contact me for the foreseeable future. The money that flowed in was ridiculous! I didn’t use the product like Shane did so I reaped ALL of the benefits. Within eight hours, I had profited over $2000, paid Mr. Plug and picked up more product. After a few days of that, Mr. Plug crowned me his Queen B. And for every package that I paid for, he gave me twice the load so I that I could lessen my trips to see him.

All Hail The Queen

I had split custody with my youngest two children’s father. So one night, when I had the house all to myself and my oldest daughter was fast asleep, I decided that I wanted to feel that glorious feeling I had felt before. I took out one of my prepacked baggies and dumped it on top of one of my Xbox game sleeves. I only did half the bag because I knew my tolerance was very low and didn’t want to overdo it. The sensation that came over me felt amazing. That rush of energy came back just like before and I cleaned the whole damn house. Again, I swore that I would not make it a habit. Occasionally was ok, right? As long as the babies weren’t home it was fine. And so it began. I stuck to my ‘rule’ that I would only do it when they were not home. Then I altered my rule, just as long as they weren’t awake. One of my clients took notice of my uptick in use and called me out on it. “This isn’t you.” He said. I brushed him off. I had a handle on it, everything was fine. I could stop anytime I wanted. I did not know at the time; how horribly wrong I was. One morning I woke up, sweating and feeling nauseated. I thought maybe I had the flu. I took some cold medicine and still didn’t feel ok. The client’s calls started coming in asking if they could stop over. Money still had to be made so I went downstairs and started setting up the meets. The same client that called me out on my drug use, stopped over and saw that I was bundled up in a sweatshirt and sweatpants in the month of August and asked if I was ok. I explained that I had the flu and he chuckled under his breath. This particular client had been a friend of mine for a few years prior to my reign as The Queen Bee. So, he took it upon himself to ask, “Sweetheart, how often are you using your product?” I explained my ‘rules’ to him and that I had progressed to doing one bag, every night after the children were tucked in bed. To which he replied “You don’t have the flu, you’re getting sick because you don’t have anything in your system. Why do you think the rest of your clients call you so early in the morning? Don’t you see their state when they come to see you? Once you build up a tolerance, your body literally needs the heroin to function. Otherwise, you become ill. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you go do one of your bags and see if you don’t feel better.” There was no way, in my eyes, that I did enough heroin to start getting sick like the rest of them, and to prove that I would do exactly as he said so that he could see for himself that I just had the flu. Again, I was wrong. I instantly felt better. I didn’t get the same rush of energy as I had before, but I felt normal again. After proving him right he suggested that maybe I should just sweat it out before the heroin dug its claws in me and wouldn’t let go. I thought this over and I knew he was right, but I liked how it made me feel. I did not want to stop. From that point forward, my usage progressed. I had to do a bag every morning when I woke up. Eventually, I quit my job because I was losing sales while I was at work and I made so much more money than I did with a legal job. Shane began to become suspicious of my drug use, but I lied and said I wasn’t using. I didn’t want him to worry while he was in jail. I think he knew better, but he continued to let me lie to him. Every week or so, I had added a bag to my regime. I was starting to feel sick in the middle of the day and I had to take care of the kids. I could not afford to be bundled up on the couch. If I had only known what life had in store for me, I would’ve stopped as my friend had suggested. Unfortunately for me, I like to learn the hard way, and the drug sunk its claws in my chest, refusing to let go.