THREE PERCENT

Friend, partner, neighbor, sister, mother, addict. I am twenty-six years old, a mother of three wonderful children, and I am a recovering heroin addict. I woke up one morning asking myself how I ended up pregnant at twenty and addicted to heroin. I asked myself why I went wrong, what I did wrong, how did I stray so far from the right path. I had the best example of what not to do and who not to be like, I also had the perfect example of the right thing to do, and the right path to go down. So how did I end up twenty, pregnant and addicted to Heroin?

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Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as simple as I wish it was, rather it’s a complex part of a doomed childhood. As I’ve gotten older I’ve it’s become clear to me that my parents are drug addicts and have been for as far back as I can remember, at least twenty years if not more. Now, of course, I didn’t know this back when I was growing up, I mean I noticed that my parents were always up late at night doing who knows what. But as a child that didn’t mean much to me, just like it didn’t make a lasting impression that they were constantly in their room with the door locked or hidden away in their closet.

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I may not have known about my parent's drug abuse at a young age, however growing up drugs were still a significant part of my family dynamic. Unfortunately, when I was younger my brother wasn’t around much, all I remember is that he was constantly getting in fights, he got kicked out of over ten schools, and ended up moving out at age seventeen. Around my brothers twenty-first birthday, he was the biggest drug dealer in Orange County bringing in hundreds of thousands in profits each month. Therefore, it came as no surprise when officers broke down our front door. I was fourteen when this happened, home alone with my ten-year-old sister, roughly ten maybe fifteen officers swarmed throughout my house. I wish I could remember if they ever even showed me a search warrant. One of the officers took my cell phone and had us sit on the couch where they kept an eye on us. Not one of them seemed concerned about my sister and I, we sat on that couch for maybe six hours before my parents ended up showing up, they immediately got arrested and ended up staying the night in jail.

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My brother ended up serving his first three-year term in OC Jail. He was out of jail maybe five months before he got arrested again. During his second three-year term my sister and I started selling weed for him since he had over ten pounds of it in our garage. By this time, we were aware of the drugs that my parents had both coming into and out of the house, I mean it was hard not to notice the traffic of people coming and going at random hours. During my senior year of high school, my best friend was struggling with Heroin addiction and got kicked out of his house, I, unfortunately, didn’t know about this at the time. He moved in with me, my parents didn’t like him nor the fact that he stood up for me when it came to my father being abusive. It wasn’t long before we got kicked out, with nowhere to go we ended up living in my car for about nine months.

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It was during those nine months that he introduced me to heroin, he lied to me and told me it was another form of marijuana wax. Honestly, didn’t realize what it was at first, friends had tried to tell me what it was, and I just refused to listen to them. I got curious now and then about why I started to not feel good now and then, and why my mood swings were getting bad. Sadly, I didn’t put it all together until I had moved in with a friend. Within the first week, he was asking me what was going on with me and why I was always sick days that my best friend didn’t come over. It was then that I realized I was starting to get sick when I didn’t have it for twelve hours or so. I had been using heroin for roughly six months, and I didn’t even know, I became addicted to heroin at eighteen.

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With the help of friends, I got clean and sober for about a year, until my new boyfriend and I moved back to my parents’ house. Things had changed so much in the year that I was gone, my parent's drug selection grew, as well as their client list, they had lost all concern for what happened in my house, they even stopped taking my sixteen-year-old sister to school. After a few months, I caught my boyfriend and my sister smoking heroin together, it wasn’t more than a week before I was completely addicted again.

Two years went by, and the addiction only grew stronger. I got kicked out again at some point, my boyfriend and I panhandled, lived in the car, set up shelter in the woods, stole from stores just, so we could eat. Sadly, when it came down to spending what little cash we had scrounged up for the day, we would always choose drugs over food. The thought of being sick without knowing how or when we would get more was utterly terrifying. It took a few hours of not having heroin before nausea started up, and the body aches, body sweats, chills, restless legs. That is what life had become, the constant struggle to do whatever we had to, so we could make sure we got more, it wasn’t even about getting high anymore, it was about how we were going to just be okay. The body’s tolerance to anything increases as usage increases, we were constantly having to increase the amount that we smoked and increase the frequency of smoking, we could never just enjoy the high.

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At twenty years old I was living at my parents’ house again, I was still addicted to heroin, and I got pregnant.  I tried for a few months to stop using but it was impossible when it was literally all around me, my parents even tried giving me pills to buy me off, so I would do work for them. Drug addiction had become so common, it seemed as if everyone was doing drugs. My sister and her best friend had been friends for about eight years, they became inseparable. She and I got so close that she became another sister to me, she was an incredible person and had such a beautiful old soul. She was also addicted to heroin, my sister and I smoked it, but she shot up with needles. The night before her mom was going to take her to a rehab program, she must have used more than normal. She passed away at the age of seventeen, from a drug overdose. This was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to overcome, but even that didn’t stop my using.

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A month later, I delivered a beautiful baby boy, who weighed six pounds five ounces, he was born addicted to heroin. At twelve hours old my son needed to the newborn intensive care unit, to receive morphine every few hours to keep him from suffering withdrawals. With no choice or say in the matter, I signed my parental rights away before he was even two days old. My son had to stay in the NICU for five weeks receiving medicine to slowly get him off the addiction. I lost custody of my son, and somehow my addiction was still my priority, the hold it had over me was incredible. I mean here I was at twenty-one, knowing the only way to get my son back was to get clean, and I just couldn’t do it. Once he was able to leave the hospital, my son got placed in the care of his paternal grandmother, while I was court ordered to attend an outpatient program, drug testing daily, and attend three AA meetings a week.

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My son was about two months old when I had my moment of clarity, what I had done to my son and what I put him through, it hit me like a mac truck, all at once. He was an innocent baby, my baby, and I put him at risk for my selfish reasons, I put my drug addiction before my child. It was that moment that I believe I truly became a mother, it was that moment that I decided I was going to get my son back and nothing would stand in my way, not even my addiction. A month into being clean off drugs, I had found out that I was pregnant, I believe this was God’s way of letting me do it again and do it right this time. After abiding the rules and testing clean for two months, I got my visiting hours with my son increased from four hours a week to six, then to ten, then to unsupervised, and eventually overnight. After nine months of doing everything correctly, the judge granted me full custody of my son.

 My social worker explained to me that only three percent of child protective service cases end up with reunification, that’s three out of every hundred. Ninety-seven out of one hundred cases end up with the child being adopted by someone else because the parent can’t get clean or stay clean.  Only three people out of one hundred are able to overcome the disease of addiction. It was then that she told me she was proud of me, and that I should be proud of myself, to never forget what I had overcome, and to always remind myself of how easily  it can all be taken away. Today, I have five years clean and sober, my boys are four and five now, and they are why I start and end each and every day thankful for my sobriety.

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When I got clean I had no choice but to shut my family out, they were all drug addicts and would only bring me down. I have watched them fall apart over the last few years. My parents lost the house I grew up in, to foreclosure and are now homeless, my brother is doing another three-year term, and my sister just did her second term and spent the last year in jail. My sister is twenty-three years old and has eight felonies, that I know of. She’s seen and done things I couldn’t even begin to imagine, she has also been through more pain then I can imagine. Not only did she lose her best friend at seventeen to a heroin overdose, but she lost her second-best friend at age twenty-two. She has now finally realized that she doesn’t want to continue the path she’s been on, what's the point? Look at our brother, he’s been in jail for twelve of the last fifteen years and he isn't changing anything. My sister wanted what I had, people that trusted her, that counted on her and loved her, she wanted a family. Today my sister is 14 months clean and sober.

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When people think about drug addicts they think of homeless crazy people, people who aren’t deserving of anything. Addiction is a disease just like any other, changes, and imbalances take place in the brain. One can become addicted to gambling, spending money, food, sex, drugs, alcohol, working out, running, eating, sleeping, its’ll the same disease though. Drug addicts don’t ask to become addicted to drugs, they don't ask to give their lives over the devil to control, to be looked down upon as if they didn't deserve respect. People think drug addicts do it to themselves, that they choose to do drugs, they choose to lie, cheat and steal, sadly if you have the disease of addiction once you try something, it’s impossible not to become addicted.

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Sadly, millions of people suffer from drug addiction, because of this they also suffer from depression, anxiety, anger, stress, pain, so many feelings that become unimaginable to the point that the drugs start to numb the pain of those feelings. Addicts feel pain because they do drugs, so they use the drugs to numb the pain that's caused because of the drugs. It’s a vicious cycle, one that you couldn’t ever imagine unless you’ve lived through it. Addiction is an epidemic that we as a country are suffering from, this isn’t just going to go away nor is going to get better on its own. Knowledge on this the greatest way to help, for every person that educated on addiction is one less person out there trying drugs and getting addicted. Next time you see a drug addict, hopefully, you won’t look at them the same way, and maybe you’ll give them hope, hope for a better life, you never know when that person’s moment of clarity will come. You could save the life of a person suffering from addiction.