by: Debbie Wicker

Dear Mindy,

Addiction is a terrible disease but it is possible to rebuild your life one relationship at a time. Many churches offer a program called Celebrate Recovery that helps with the rebuilding process. You can connect with others like you and together work on restoring the trust with the people in your life you care about.

From your description it sounds like you’re not using but you haven’t found the happy, joyous and free part of recovery. I can tell you it’s there for you if you SEEK it.

You must be so strong to have stopped using such a powerful drug now you must use that same strength to seek a new life and a new support system that will stay with you.

You can also learn how to reestablish the lost relationships in your life that are GOOD for you while discarding the harmful ones. Trust is rebuilt one small brick at a time but it can happen.

I’m not sure why you want to talk online but I do work with addicts and would be willing to talk privately with you if you think that would be helpful. I do encourage you to seek help in your local community as well.

If you would like to speak to me in person let me know by responding to this post and I’ll let you know how to get a hold of me.

Good Luck and keep up the GREAT work you’re already doing,

Debbie

by: Anonymous

Debbie-please do get a hold of me. It’s easier for me online because of the no job, no car, no money situation. Plus, I’m not ready to really admit in person to what has happened to me and my life. Lots of friends and family have no idea and I would rather they didn’t.

Thank you for responding. I read what I wrote and it brings tears to my eyes, as what you wrote did. What I wrote doesn’t even begin to describe the hurt, devastation and embarrassment I have inside still.

by: mindy

My daughter was 10 and my son was 5. We had just left my husband and were staying with my parents. Remember, I had no job and no license, so it wasn’t real interesting!

I applied for job after job and I had just left a job as an office mgr after 12 yrs at a buy here/ pay here car lot. I could find nothing.

So when my ex whom I met while he was just finishing his prison sentence at the work place and who I had left after a year together to go back to my husband for the kids, walked back into my life….I was overjoyed! He does bad things but truly is a good person.

My mother hated him because he had been in prison and forbade me to have my kids around him so whenever he came and picked me up i had to have a sitter, but it got me out of the house and with him so it was doable.

He brought some heroin over when my parents and kids went to Florida and stayed with me (mom never knew) but all i remember is sleeping after i did it and i was like oh well, he likes it, its not bad.

I was 30 yrs old and knew nothing of it. I didn’t even know anyone who had done it. Well he got me more and more and when my mom kicked me out the day of my daughters bday party because i wanted to help decorate, i was pissed!

I had no license and she said if i drove my car she would call the cops, no job, no home……i had to leave the kids. my ex (by then bf) picked me up and all the garbage bags of my stuff my parents were setting in the rain and took me to his friends apt who wasn’t even staying in it.

I stayed there for 2 weeks totally depending on him for a ride and phone. Then he found a place in Akron on Arlington ST that was missing windows, doors, bathrooms and made a deal that he would fix it up for free rent for 6 mos.

Meanwhile we started getting heroin everyday because he was working this great paying construction job. So everyday after work we went straight there then back to house to work on it. We manged to get it painted, cleaned have bathrooms and a furnace put in thanks to a prison ministry he had volunteered at many times before for.

So no worries, we were making it work. Then i returned to my office mgr job and it includes collecting payments all day then giving them to owner at the end of each day. Well one day i had 300 and snuck out before he could ask just to use it on heroin. i used 100 and told him i lost it but he knew and fired me. best job i ever had.

So instead of improving i kept focusing on how my mom quit speaking to me and when i called and told her i was killing myself she sent police to house to check on me. She would not budge from the letters, calls, visits, talks thru my dad……nothing.

Its been 3 yrs, she is all i have. My dad is really my step dad and all family is 2 hrs away. So this fuels my fire more and i am determined to get high to feel better-no hurt. Then it got to where i had to not to be deathly sick …..omg … its the worst.

by: mindy

I pawned everything, screwed people over, stole, anything for money to get high and not be sick. The 5 days they say it takes to get clean seems like forever when u feel that bad…… one day feels like a week.

My bf begged me to get help although he kept using also. i went to sub doc and ended up selling them so we could get high!

When he left me in June of last year and i was being evicted from 25 a month rent and utilities included you know it was bad. He couldn’t take me choosing it over him even though he never quit. I loved this man, still do.

I ended up moving in a motor home with a friend at a campground cuz i had nowhere else to go. we stayed there until Jan. when he bought a home and let me move in. Nov. i found out i was pregnant. my bf had been coming around almost daily and seemed happy then over Christmas last year was gone for a week then another week went by and i was like whats going on?

Here he had had a stroke and was at clev clinic where his mother refused me seeing him in icu. When he moved to diff room after getting better, he died on table twice, i went up there and he told a friend he didn’t want to see me…..i was devastated and walked in there anyways.

We had a relationship that i made him prove over and over and over that he loved me cuz I’m so insecure and he was turning me away in a situation like this when i was preg with his baby????? dont think so.

he told me he was changing his life, not talking to old drug friends or me, said i was his trigger. my heart is still broke, still haven’t dated or talked to other men and still love him and my daughter is now 8 mos old.

He hasn’t even seen her or called. I don’t ever want to use again and be sick but how do u make the pain go away?