Hi. My name is Becky. I am 33 years old, a proud mother of two beautiful girls, registered nurse and I am a drug addict.

I have been in recovery for over two years. It does get easier I promise. My addiction problems started for me in June of 2008. I had two elbow surgeries within three weeks of each other and that was all it took.

I received pain medication before the first surgery and after each surgery. I was a registered nurse. I knew that these drugs were addicting. I was definitely not becoming addicted! Yeah right!

I kept telling myself that I can stop anytime I wanted to but I felt that I had a right to take the medicine I was in pain or so I thought.

Besides my surgeries I was being physically and emotionally abused at home. Taking these medications helped deal with those pains too.

My addiction became so bad that when the doctor that did my surgeries would not give me any more pills I just went to another doctor for something else.

The pain I was having when I went to these doctors was always vague. It was the classic back pain or tooth pain. When I couldn’t get the pills from a doctor I was instantly mad.

Thinking, who is he to tell me I am not in pain, I will just go to someone else. I started to use different pharmacies so they would not catch on to what I was doing.

I even started to tell the pharmacies I didn’t have insurance and that I was paying in cash so that they would not trace it. It became to be that I was so desperate for pills that I stole from a persons residence.

I got arrested on October 22, 2008. The cops came to my house and took me to be arraigned that day. Two days before my arrest I had tried to kill myself with an overdose of pills. As soon as I took them I thought, What are you doing you have two girls that need you! I made myself vomit and luckily the majority of the medicine had not yet been digested.

I told the officers of this event and when I was arraigned they sent me to an inpatient psychiatric facility. I was detoxed there and received extensive counseling. While there I found out that I had bipolar 1.

It made sense, I had weeks where I would not sleep for three days and felt like superwoman, then I would crash and not want to get out of bed for a week. I was put on medications for the bipolar disorder but the underlying addiction was still there.

I was in the facility for thirteen days. I was released and my whole world began to collapse. I lost custody of my kids, lost my marriage and lost my job. I attended AA Class three times a week and NA once a week. I only attended AA due to the limited availability of NA classes in my area. I found myself a sponsor and slowly worked through my demons.

There were days when I wanted a pill so badly I could taste it. I could actually smell the way the pills smelled. I called my sponsor each time. What she told me makes me laugh to this day. She told me to stop what I was doing and stare at the wall. She told me to feel the feelings that they will go away if you just feel them. She was right, they do go away.

The first couple of weeks I found myself staring at the wall a lot. Then the feelings got a lot weaker and weaker. About three months into my recovery I thought to myself ‘I can do this’.

I had the most wonderful parents in the world. They took me in and helped me recover. I met a man in January of 2009. He has been with me every step of the way. He knew when I was having cravings. He knew when I was sick. I slowly got my life back in order. Have joint custody of my kids. Living with the love of my life. And taking each day as it comes.

It will get easier. Drug addiction is not something that is cured in days or weeks. It takes years and years to come to terms with. The old saying goes “Once an addict always an addict” but it doesn’t say once an addict now a recovered addict!

You can do this! Just try.

There are a lot of ways for help. Just find it and do it. You have to be the one to ask for help. It took me a long time to say, “My name is Becky and I am a drug addict”, but I did and now I am a stronger person for doing it!