This Is My Story In A Nutshell: Learning to be and love Amy again

Methadone saved my life. Yes we’ve heard this a million times from me but a more important aspect of my recovery is methadone GAVE me a life. I am not the same person I was in Novemember 2010 when I walked into the clinic that first day less then 90 lbs and starving to death. I was so delirious and emaciated they wanted to call an ambulance and send me directly to the hospital. Of course I refused, all I cared about was my fix and I knew the first dose of 30 mgs was not going to do anything for me. I wanted in and out so I could get right. I didn’t know when the last time I had eaten was but it’s why I called the clinic in the first place. There was only about maybe a half a cup or so of dry white rice, dusty in a cupboard, crack pipes and needles on the table, fridge unplugged and empty. I couldn’t stand up without holding onto something. The last thing I remember eating was a week two weeks, I don’t really know and it was a small, maybe 1/4 cup of white rice with a packet of Italian dressing on it. I was dying.

It took five months before I quit shooting heroin even with the methadone because I was no where near a blocking dose and would not quit and they would not increase me because of the potential of an overdose. They suggested impatient two different times and I refused. I was a lost cause. Once they said you either go to impatient or you have to leave, I got my act together. It took some time but I got there, I learned, I listened, I shared, I went to the doctor and found out about my weakened heart. I even went to a dentist. I saw my counselor almost daily for nearly two years. I ran a client group, I worked hard and then, my best friend took her life three hours after I had an argument with her about letting her stay at my house while she was drunk. I had taken her to the pharmacy earlier to refill her prescription which she took every single one of the five bottles. The guilt, the burnout, the superiority I felt over other addicts was overwhelming. I did what I would normally do in that situation….I got high. 

I stayed high that entire summer trying to keep myself from feeling. I tried to die, I did, it’s no secret everyone knows my overdoses that summer were on purpose, the only person who didn’t know was me. The last one should have killed me, just two months after my friend took her life. I was angry, I didn’t want to live and I didn’t deserve it, it should have be me not her, she had little ones, mine were grown. I reluctantly called the clinic. That’s when I realized my own kids could have found me, dead, with a needle still in my arm, vomit in my hair and what then. What life would they have then? I went back to a new clinic and began to start from scratch. I was not the same person anymore, I was broken and no matter how many people I reached out to, no matter how much writing I did, studying addiction and counseling techniques, I could not fix myself.

It wasn’t until this past spring 2014 I realized I had gotten to a point where I was waiting to die. I decided I had two choices. I could die, even though I had failed in the past, I could do it right this time or I could live. Living would require work, dying would not. So I obviously choose to live but it has not been easy. All of this happened while I was clean because something very important had not taken place in my recovery. I had not forgiven myself. I hated what I had done and blamed myself for things that happened to me that were not even my fault. I had to learn to love my self, for the first time in my life, really learn to forgive myself and love myself. Which I have been doing ever since. 

I share my story and intamate parts of it for you, all of you who read my blog. Maybe just one of you will read my story and identify with it and I will feel it was all worth it to save one addict, one person, from themselves. Keep getting up, keep fighting, we are worth it, we are not garbage, we are not a drain on society or a waste, we can change. Start right now.