The Silent Chaos

Why am I saying The Silent Chaos of Addiction?

With her castle made of scribbles; and the voices her horse and men.

Her scarred body her once beautiful land.

Silent chaos is her kingdom, forever she will reign.

Whispers ricochet off each wall inside her mind while her brain screams for someone, anyone to save her. Scattered and broken, she crumbles inside.

Like the nursery rhyme goes--

Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Addiction is a disease that plagues our world and is dropping our population handfuls at a time.

Drink after drink.

Needle after needle.

Hit after hit.

And even as our friends die all around us, we still let it's sweet poison kiss our lips and embed itself into our blood stream.

Will we ever learn from our own many mistakes?

No.

How bout as we watch the fading lanterns we watch every day, falling apart?

Again, no, probably not.

So why am I writing about addiction?

I'm not. I'm writing about the addict.

My name is Rachel Taylor, formerly Rachel Olsen but my friends call me Rio.

I'm an addict.

I'm also a recovering addict and currently sober for nearly a month now but let me tell you, it is damn hard to sober up and stay sober. We have to want it and even when we want it we have our really bad depression days and that makes us crave the numbness we fall into when we get high.

For 9-years I was a Methamphetamine and Heroin addict. Not just a once in a while fun either, but an extremist in daily using.

I started out smoking Tylenol PM, then it went to snorting Nutmeg-- Yes, Nutmeg will make you trip hella balls, almost like an acid trip.

My following culprit I found was Catnip and after the Nip it was Crystal Rose Food packets that they rubber band to a bouquet of roses at the grocery store. It is used to preserve flowers in a vase when you mix it in their water. And let me tell ya, that stuff gets you higher than Meth on Crack with a dash of Cocaine, a sprinkle of Heroin, triple dipped in acid and finished off with a roll-around in crushed shrooms!

Before you go thinking: Damn! That sounds hella good right now! Let’s fudging try this!

One: Don’t think I won’t slap that idear right outta there, buddy. I’ve been you and I’ve actually watched the aftermath. It ain’t perdy.

What it also does is causes congestive heart failure and an excruciating death that literally goes from healthy as a horse to 15% usage of the muscles and oxygen of your heart in 3 days tops. By that point the damage is done and you're dead before the weekend.

I know this because I watched a friend go through every agonizing breath as his lungs filled with fluid and as the nurses told him he needs to stop or change his lifestyle, he gave the ‘Eh, I don’t care' look. But that look quickly changed to utter terror when they told him he's dying.

Sadly, as soon as he got released he started drugs again immediately and on his 3rd day of congestive heart failure, we began preparing ourselves to lower his casket before the weekend ran to the finish line after the day he announced he was going back to the hospital.

At 16-years old I was snorting, smoking and eating Meth and Heroine. I was enjoying the effects of painkillers and happy not remembering I was a mother and hating everything life offered me.

At this time I had one child. I spent most of my time in trap houses not giving my body for drugs but I did give my heart and a lot of care for the broken, that's for sure.

By 21 I looked like I had come out of a concentration camp from World War II and that honestly doesn't even begin to cover how emaciated I truly looked. I think my mother was just being nice and didn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me I looked like death itself because inside, I was dead.

Once I turned 23 years old, I was never home, left my kids with grandma and was high nearly 24/7. Many times my mother peeked into my room and she thought my husband and I both were dead. She told me later on, she had to literally stop and hold her breath to see if we were still breathing. This is around the same time my husband and I got physically abusive again.

Every day I covered another bruise and him a mental gaping wound.

At 24 years old I had gone to Oxford sober living, which is the BEST place anyone can ever go when they truly want to get sober. It teaches you how to live on your own and adapt back into society. But,

I.

Was.

Not.

Ready.

And so the junkie's round 4 began and I found a love for the needle.

I am now 25-years old, sober for almost a month and on the path to getting my kids back.

You're all wondering what do you mean getting your kids back?

Drugs kill you and it kills your children. You lose them when everyone around you can physically see you crumbling. Your mental state falls, your health crumbles and you die in pain very, very slowly.

As an addict I was horrible. I used the excuse I never got my crazy years because I had a child at 16. But to be honest, that was a lie. I was an addict, I still am but at least I am now a functioning addict and getting help.

For the last 9-years I have been abused physically but it was not all on my previous love, Sawyer, I abused him mentally and emotionally when we both began using and selling drugs. I felt he was more into other girls and drugs than he was his family and his marriage. He was but as an addict, he wasn't meaning to be that way, it's just what happens when you dive deep into drugs.

Addiction is a plague that tears mother earth to the core. We pollute her and don't care and that's not okay. We lose everything from our kids and house to the last breath we have of life.

Addiction is killing us more than any virus ever has.

This is part of my story and I am proud to say I come into my brother's home, grab a drug test on random days when I come to see my oldest son, Dimitri, and drug test myself. I then I have one of the ones who live there sign a paper with my name and date on it and I send pictures of my test results to my DFS case worker, Jessica, who has not once given up on me in the year she has been on the case with my children.

I chose on my own to take drug tests twice a week and most the time I do a third one just for extra oomph! I have gone out of my way and bought the package of 12-panel dip tests and set it to reorder every three weeks and I pay out of my own pocket. I'm a proud Wal-Mart Associate!

My children were removed from my care June 6th of 2020 because of my mental health being questioned and they were right to do so. My oldest is now in my mother's care and my younger two, Anastasia and Benjamin, are in their father's care.

In the 9 years of being addicted to these poisons, I have lost so many family members, friends and my own family I created with Sawyer and it is an ocean of painful regrets that I now have to live with. Just as he has to live with that same pain of regrets because we both lost a beautiful friendship and our babies in our selfish need for our addiction.

I hope one day, I can rekindle those lost connections, especially with my children and husband.

In my time of sobriety and recovery I have met so many wonderful personalities and beautiful faces but only one managed to steal my heart and I want to thank him for even after I left to go, he stood beside me and has been a true friend and holds my, what I believed to be a cold heart, in his hands and showed me that I am not the picture everyone paints of me.

I am beautiful and I am bright. So thank you, Alexander.

This is who I am as an addict. And now as a recovering addict, I love and I love with everything

I have because so many lights go out every second that passes.

So ask yourselves, as addicts and as someone who is equal still, even as an addict, is not knowing if you will eat tonight or sleep out of the weather and in a bed really worth that next fix? Is your life and us losing your light to the stars really worth it?

I know I will miss your bright light.

Two: I saw my own life flash and when I came to, hours after I was long passed out. I was alone on the side of the highway, 8 miles from civilization and lost in the middle of nowhere because someone I trusted swapped out what I had been going to do and I took too much. I am alive because of a neighboring families dog.

To this day, I am still not quite right.

OMG, OMG, OMG! You’re story is so f-ing awesome!

NO, my story is sad and broken and terrible and anyone who thinks that those key points are cool has just as many issues as I do and the same exact cracks in their heart to match mine.

Addiction and being an addict is dangerous. Had the beast not smelt my flesh, I’d be dead as a doornail. But remember this, that could have ended with my body being torn apart and eaten by scavengers or wild dogs and then you’d never know my story. Instead you would be watching the news about fragments of human clippings and flesh ribbons snagged on tree bark found scattered and strewn on the side of the highway and far within the forest like a gruesome Criminal Minds episode.

Help me save the other fading lights like us.

With her castles made of scribbles; and the voices her horse and men.

Her scarred body her once beautiful land.

Silent chaos is her kingdom, forever she will reign.

We cannot rule addiction....

She reigns us.