Addiction Has No Face

“You DO know you could be facing a felony heroin charge, right?”

I nodded my head, handcuffed to a cold concrete bench as the officer talked to me. How did I end up here? It was December 23rd, 2017, and I was 17 years old, high, sitting in the booking area of the county jail mid-afternoon. Just 4 years prior I had been a straight-A student, an athlete, a babysitter, a loving sister and upstanding daughter. And here I was, facing a felony heroin charge staring at the bag of drugs and paraphernalia they had found in my bedroom just an hour before. I wish I could say that this story is made up, but it is my reality. My story is a long one, and the events leading up to this very moment are a tale for another time. However, I ask that you bear with me... I will explain addiction from an addict’s perspective.

I grew up in a loving home. I was one of the lucky ones, not everyone is as fortunate as I. My mother was a school teacher and my father worked as a 911 dispatcher for my local police station. My parents have been happily married since before I was born, and I grew up a Christian with a family who was active in our church and faith. I have a brother 3 years younger than me and have had multiple foster siblings throughout my life. I was always supported in everything that I did, and my parents closely monitored what I did and who I was with, or so they thought. I was raised in a loving home that taught me acceptance and dedication. I had a happy childhood with memories I will cherish forever, at least the ones the drugs didn’t erase from my mind. Nobody in my family struggled with addiction, it wasn’t something I was exposed to.

I was a straight-A student throughout grade school. I babysat for all of my mother’s coworkers. I was an equestrian (horseback riding) from a young age and found my passion in training and riding horses. I had a group of good friends who cared about me, and vice versa. I was loved by everybody around me and supported just the same.

That’s why nobody saw it coming when I smoked weed for the first time at 14 years old at a park by my house with some people from school. Nobody saw it coming when I started sneaking out at night to party and drink alcohol with the high-schoolers. Nobody saw it coming when I put a tab of acid on my tongue for the first time and tripped for hours inside of a Subway sandwich shop, or when I snorted cocaine for the first time off of my acrylic nails, or when I started to lie about where I was or who I was with. Nobody saw it coming when I lost my virginity at 15 to a guy who couldn’t care less about me. Nobody saw it coming when I began to sell drugs to fund my own habit.

You see, I started showing signs of addiction at a young age. I was obsessive over everything. When I started horseback riding lessons at the age of 8, horses were the obsession. I wanted to be around them ALL of the time. I spent my free time researching them, I drew pictures of them, I fantasized about getting a horse of my own. I saved hundreds of photos on my phone of horses, I watched thousands of videos about them, I wanted my whole room decorated with them. And for every hobby or interest I had thereafter, it was the same deal. But as a child, nobody thinks much of it. How about the time I was on vacation with my family at 12 years old in the middle of Times Square in New York having a mental breakdown because my day wasn’t scheduled minute for minute? I couldn’t stand the thought of “going with the flow.” Everything had to be planned, because I was obsessive. What about the time I cried on my bedroom floor because I knew I couldn’t save all of the homeless people and animals in the world? You see, these are addictive personality traits. Obsessiveness and the desire to fix everyone and everything are two traits you would find in a textbook alcoholic. Those are just two of many signs that I showed throughout my upbringing, but nobody sees those traits in a child and thinks, “this is addictive behavior.”

Everyone around me was smoking weed. I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood. It wasn’t ghetto, but 14 year old children experiment with things. My friends could smoke occasionally or just on the weekends. I wasn’t the same. After the first time, I did it daily for years to come. But at some point it wasn’t enough. I was chasing the feeling I got the first time I got high. I tried more drugs and fell in love all over again. Each drug was like a new world opening up for me. Where had they been my whole life?! I was able to maintain my act for a long time. Nearly 4 years to be exact. I was able to lie so easily and pull it off because I was such an ideal child. “Going out with friends” was an acceptable explanation to where I was headed off to when my parents asked because I had always been such a trustworthy child. I had no idea I was an addict for a long time. Everyone around me was experimenting with drugs and alcohol, I genuinely thought that I was doing the same.

But 4 years of self-destruction came crashing down quickly. I ruined my family. I ruined the relationships with everyone I knew and loved. I burned every bridge I had. I ruined my future. I ruined my reputation, my family’s reputation, I almost costed my father his job. And not once did I feel a pang of regret or remorse, because all I cared about was my next high.

People often assume that addicts come from terrible backgrounds, and often they do. But an addict doesn’t always look like the homeless guy across the street or the girl who grew up with addict parents. It’s not always the person who grew up in the “ghetto” neighborhood or your friend’s mother who has a little too much wine every night. Sometimes, it looks like the “perfect” child with the good grades and upstanding character. Sometime’s it’s the person who was raised in the ideal household with the ideal family and no real reason to do drugs at all. Addiction has no face. Addiction does not discriminate. It can happen to anyone, anywhere.

Often times I am asked if I believe that addiction is a disease or a choice. My answer is always the same: you can be addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, sugar, caffeine, the list goes on and on. Any mind-changing chemical can lead to addiction. I always ask: if people can be addicted to sex, do you expect everyone to remain a virgin in case they are unknowingly a sex addict? Of course not! However, you can become a sex addict after just doing it one time. Similarly, how can you expect someone to never try alcohol or drugs because of the off-chance they become addicted? Addiction is a disease. It lives inside of people who are addicts from the time that they are born until the day they die, and you never know that you are an addict until you have already become addicted. At this point it takes over your mind and your ability to make good decisions. It takes the steering wheel to your life and yanks it in a completely opposite direction than where it had been. You make the choice to try the drug or the alcohol or the sugar or the sex or caffeine. But once you have made that choice, the addiction starts making the rest of your choices for you.

My story has a happy ending. Not everyone is as fortunate as I. I was lucky enough to get the chance to restart my life. After multiple treatment centers, I found a program that worked for me. I sought help, and I got sober at 17. I’m now 18 with 9 months sober and counting. For the rest of my life, I will struggle with addiction. I won’t be able to have wine at my wedding or a beer on game day. I won’t be able to smoke a little weed to “take the edge off” after a rough week at work. There will never be such thing as “social drinking” or “weekend drug use” because I quite frankly cannot use in moderation. I will likely never set foot in a bar again. I will always struggle with the PTSD from things I encountered during the period of time that I was using drugs, ranging from sexual assault to witnessing a shooting to having a gun put to my head to having one of my closest friends pass away. These are things that I have to battle in my day to day life because of my addiction. But I am healthy. I am sober. I am happy. I am living. I am not only alive anymore, I am truly living.