BTS: Story

Inciting Incident

When I was young, I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood. I enjoyed the summers I spent on boats with my family, and in elementary school I was in the mentally gifted program. I was raised in a loving household, and on the outside my life looked great. Addiction has forever changed me and touched my life at a very young age.

Different forms of addiction – food, shopping, money, alcoholism, and drugs – touched each one of my family members. My biological mother suffers from alcoholism, and due to her untreated mental health conditions, she was not able to be a parent and show up for my siblings or me; that’s my earliest childhood memory of dealing with alcoholism and addiction. My father remarried when I was about four years old, so I’m thankful I grew up with a mother. My father experienced food addiction, and has suffered from diabetes since then. My sister Ilene was 32, when she died of an overdose from opioid use disorder.

No one had ever explained to me that my family members suffered from a disease and they were sick. I was taught from friends, family, teachers, and society that addiction was a moral failure. Much of my childhood was spent resenting Ilene and my biological mother. To me, they were just bad people. My family’s way of dealing with the chaos of many different issues was to become avoidant. It is much easier to put on a happy face and keep it moving.

My issues with substances began around 13 or 14 years old and centered on my desire to feel approval. As a young girl, I had extremely low self–esteem, and always wanted to feel acceptance from anyone. I was always looking for an escape. Instead of going to class where I probably would have excelled, I was drawn to hanging out in the woods drinking alcohol and experimenting with other substances. Alcohol and drugs gave me this freeing feeling of confidence I was searching for. At the time, I was trying to navigate a lot of challenging emotions that mostly centered around my family. Luckily, with alcohol and drugs most of my feelings diminished to nothing. I enjoyed not feeling self–conscious and feeling free from my own negative thoughts. In the ninth grade, I was considered delinquent due to not attending class and was forced to go to an alternative school. I graduated high school with a diploma and a poor education at 15 years old.

Plot point 1

At the age of 16, I thought to myself, “It is time to grow up and be an adult. I had my fun as a child. I really need to get my life together, so I am only going to drink alcohol. No more substances. I’m an adult now.”

I took a few college classes and I started working in clubs . Working in clubs was a whole new world for me, and I loved it. It was fast-paced, and we had this mentality in the service business that we work hard and play hard; there was lots of alcohol. To me, the most important thing was to be able to look good on the outside yet feel good on the inside as well. Since alcohol is accepted, I felt like I had finally found what worked for me to mask all of my feelings deep inside.

I quickly became obsessed with alcohol, I started drinking day and night and my first addiction was born.

When I was 18, I was at a bar where I was engaging in alcohol use that without my knowledge, included a much harder substance. I remember throwing up on the sidewalk of the bar and a person helping me to my hotel room. I vaguely remember the feeling of lips on my face and body before I blacked out. That night, I was raped.

The next day I was taken to the emergency room where I was met with the beginning of my interactions with law enforcement. I can say with complete confidence that my experience with law enforcement was far more traumatic than the rape itself. It was interview after interview, evidence after evidence, and discrimination after discrimination. I was forced to see my perpetrator throughout this process.

I was asked how much I drank, why I didn’t fight back and whether I had wanted to cheat on my boyfriend. I was treated like an annoyance, a troublesome obligation, like what happened to me didn’t matter.

The only thing the toxicology report found were the anti-nausea pills I took to deal with the side effects of my alcohol addiction. Because pills like this can cause drowsiness and fatigue, the case was dropped in the end due to insufficient evidence.

Confrontation

After that decision I sank into a deep depression.

As I wake up each morning, I feel an overwhelming weight in my chest, dragging me down like an anchor plunging into the depths of the ocean. It's as if I'm standing on the edge of a dark abyss, watching everything I once loved fade away into the distance. The world carries on around me, seemingly oblivious to the turmoil that rages within. I find myself envious of those who seem to navigate life effortlessly, wondering why I can't be more like them.

My addiction progressed from alcohol use to cocaine and then to opioids. I was always trying to find this chemical balance of what, in my mind, I thought was normal. If I used one substance, like cocaine, to come up, then I told myself I needed one substance, like an opioid, to come down; it was a constant ping-pong game trying to find some balance for my mental health.

In my early 20s, my family tried to do an intervention. It was successful, as I already was silently begging for help. I experienced many adverse health consequences of my use. I was looking at the pill bottles every day, but I never read the warnings. I know that taking too much of this medication could cause serious breathing problems, so I thought that meant chest pains or something like that. For me, the opioids actually shut off my nasal passages. I would have to sit up sleeping because I couldn’t breathe. It was so bad. I started taking a certain type of nasal spray which was very expensive, and I was coughing up phlegm that was green from my nasal passages. I don’t know if I had an infection, but I was always taking antibiotics for my nasal passages.

In my mind rehab was going to be this great, magical experience where I would get my life together. Doctors would help me and guide me. This was the cure!

Once I got to the detox, the people running the facility said, “What is your drug of choice?” I told them, “Lorcet.” They said, “Lorcet? What is that?” I told them that it’s hydrocodone. They did not know what it was. This was in 2009 or 2010, and they had no clue of what hydrocodone, Lorcet, narcos, or Vicodin was. So, I felt defeated right away, because I felt like if they didn’t even understand what my drug of choice was, how would they be able to help me?

The detox was one of the most awful experiences I ever had. I had packed the nasal spray I mentioned and Zantac that I was taking every day because I was having severe digestive problems from the opioids too. The people managing the detox had to take all of my medication away. They said, “We have to supervise what we give you.” I had hell in that place. I couldn’t breathe, I was spending all my time in the bathroom, on the toilet or in the bathtub trying to comfort myself with restless leg and arm syndrome. My blood pressure dropped with all the body fluids being lost. I told them I need to go to the hospital. I felt like I was going to pass out, so they called 911 and had an ambulance transport me to the ER. They had me on a stretcher in the hallway the whole time. They treated me like I was nothing. I felt like they thought, “Okay, we got a junkie in the hallway. Just let her sit there, we can’t give her nothing for withdrawal.” After I left the ER and they put me back in the ambulance and transported me back to the detox center, I called my sister. I said, “Come get me. I’m out of here.”

Plot point 2

After the 3 hours outside of the detox center I started using again to deal with the withdrawal effects. Around age 23, I started using heroin because it was cheaper.

I remember the euphoria, the bliss, the pure exhilaration I was feeling the first time I took it.I closed my eyes, allowing myself to be fully immersed in the ecstasy of this single moment. A symphony of joy cascaded through my body and the world around me seemed to fade into the background, including all the trauma that has built up in my life.

But I also remember the large feelings of shame that came with each small bag of dope. I would often think about how I was the new failure in my family. Another junky, another castaway, another rotten branch in our family tree. Shame and guilt kept me isolated from family and friends for a long time. Shame was a reason I did not reach out for help.

When my father passed away, I did not dare to come to the funeral.

Too large was the feeling of shame.

Too large was the sensation of disappointment, of being a mistake.

I did not want to bring my family further sorrow by showing them the wrack that their daughter has become, the failure that their sister has become, the deadbeat their aunt has become.

That day, I remember feeling scared and ashamed that my dad was watching me from heaven while he had already lived in torture with my sister’s addiction.

My thoughts became a tumultuous storm, and each negative emotion churned in the tempest. Self-doubt, self-loathing, and guilt joined forces to drown any glimmer of hope that dares to surface. Time seemed distorted in this deep depression; days stretched into eternity, while moments of genuine joy slipped through my fingers like sand. I yearned to find purpose and meaning again, but the pursuit seems futile. It was like trying to grasp sunlight in my hands—beautiful, but unattainable.

As I sank deeper into the abyss, I stopped seeing the light and I realized that my will for existing has faded. I could not take it anymore …

Climax

I am lying beneath my window in my room, the twilight tints everything inside in a cold, bleak hue and an even colder gush of air surges above my head.

My hands are shaking, my heart is racing and my vision is blurred from the tears.

Thin blood runs down my body as I continuously charge the needle into my arms but either I pierce through my vein or I slip out, and I have to pick up the syringe from the puddle of blood that has slowly formed around me.

As the last ray of sunlight vanishes and my room is completely clouded in shadows, I finally hit the vein, I see blood flowing upwards into the pump and I push down the entire load into me.

At first, my mind is still a whirlwind of thoughts, gradually, as I surrender to the weightlessness of my pillow, the world around me begins to fade. The distant sounds of traffic outside become distant echoes, and the soft glow of streetlights filters through my curtains like distant stars.

With each rhythmic breath, I drift further away from reality, like a boat gently pulled by the currents of a calm sea. The boundaries of consciousness blur, and the tangible world dissolves into a realm shrouded in suffocating darkness that seemed to devour all light.

The boundaries of my physical form dissolve, and I become a mere observer, floating in the vastness of my subconscious. I was overcome by a surreal sense of detachment, as though I was observing myself from afar. The sounds around me faded into an eerie silence, and a feeling of weightlessness enveloped me.

My sister found me later that night, unconscious, without a pulse, and blue. When I woke up, I had been told I was in an ambulance on my way to hospital, and I had overdosed on Heroin. I was 24 at the time. I remember the paramedic saying to me, “Come on, Elliot. Stay with us. You’re too young”. I was too young. Too young to have experienced so much pain.

Resolution

Despite my near death experience, I returned to use as soon as I left the hospital. I would make the endless empty promises of “In two days, I’ll stop using”. My recovery was a delayed experience. I entered rehab for the final time where I have been substance free since January 9th, 2017.

Today, my biggest area of support right now are my family, friends, professional peers, and most importantly, my dog Rambo. Without the support of my loved ones, I do not know if I would be here today. Despite my behavior, they never gave up on me and were always willing to help me seek treatment.

I graduated with honors in 2020, and I'm currently pursuing a master in Clinical and Counseling Psychology. Currently, I'm interning at a community mental health center, focusing on co-occurring disorders and substance use. I would love to sit here and say that I am not bragging, but in reality I am incredibly proud of myself. It took awhile to get here, but I’m here and it feels good.

Who I am today and where I am today is something I never thought was possible. I truly thought I was going to be dead by now, at the age of 24. I think everyone in my family did. Today, I am able to participate actively in the relationships that I neglected while I was utilizing.

My oldest sister was one of the relationships that was impacted the most. Today, I am aunt to her son, and she is one of the closest people to me. That would have never happened if I did not engage in my recovery journey.

If I had to go through everything I have gone through to be able to help people who have shared similar experiences, I would do it in a second. There’s nothing more I would rather be doing than helping those who need help the most, yet do not receive it. To me, it is about giving people who are voiceless, a voice.

There is so much stigma surrounding mental illness, trauma, and substance use, and that stigma creates huge barriers for people to feel safe to open up and seek help. There is also so much misinformation and a faulty narrative surrounding the “drug epidemic”, and this is leading to tremendous harm – both for people who benefit from prescription opioids for pain and for people who live with a substance use disorder.

I share my story because I now know that people who use drugs aren’t bad people, regardless of the drug used or how they came to use them. The person who started using opioids for the purpose of getting high is not a bad person; the person smoking crack cocaine is not a bad person; the people we have locked up for their drug use through the War on Drugs are not bad people. I now know that people who struggle with addiction most certainly did not choose to become addicted – that like me, and probably like my mom, most people believe that addiction will never happen to them.

I share my story because we need to move beyond just looking at drugs. We need to move beyond the drug epidemic’s whitewashed tale of addiction.

As society, we need to put less emphasis on the substance use and more emphasis on why the substance use. People utilize substances because they are hurting. These are people who have experienced significant trauma. These are people who exist within our society, yet continue to be ostracized.

I share my story to give hope that regardless of what drugs we used, how we came to use them, what we look like, how much money we have, or what we’ve experienced in life, we can and do recover when given the resources, support, and services we need, when we need and for how long we need them.

I share my story so others know that they’re not alone and there are people out there that care; me being one of them. We are ready when you are. You are valued. You are loved. You are supported. You are worthy.

The Story