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The author wished to remain anonymous.
This article covers my experience with polyaddiction in adolescence, from how family was impacted to when I finally saw legal consequences.
My name is not so important, but my tale is.. Among every other tale everyone else has to tell. Everyone has their own unique, sometimes rocky roads and this was mine.
As an oddball, unique in ways some came to appreciate although unique in some ways that led me down the wrong path. I hold a sense of secrecy, stubbornness, impulse and recklessness that forms who I am. Everybody has traits that can be seen as both positive and negative depending on context, and all it takes to tumble down the wrong road is a few wrong contexts.
This can happen to anyone – Every therapist I visited that didn’t work expressed shock at how high my grades were and I always managed to be a teacher’s favorite, perhaps due to my goofy attitude and my attitude pushing away my peers leading to me never being a distractment.
For foresight, I was a lonely child – An odd child. I was homeschooled until grade 9, although I fought it tooth and nail and later on my parents shed the same amount of tears I could’ve drank in a day realizing the depth I had gotten myself into. Although they never comprehended anything past the tip of the iceberg, never dipped a toe into the murky waters surrounding that were to blame for my behaviour. Denial is a comfort, it was for me as well.
At the age of 10 or 11 was my first experience,my mom going out to the dollar store- As I was speaking with an online friend,Rigby,who was 16 at the time －I claimed to be the same age.He was in New York, always popping off about his mischief and smoking weed/getting drunk.Being homeschooled and having a very rough relationship with my mother and undiagnosed ADHD, loneliness..It all built up and I was looking for an escape. A door opened much too early for me, and it was the wrong one. I pulled the chair over to the closet and hopped up, drinking unknown amounts and feeling the burn down my throat. The same burn I’d feel many more times, within my nostrils..My throat..And deeper within my soul,a burning fire I was always trying to numb. “What happens if an 11 year old gets drunk?” I searched up on Yahoo Answers..And I suppose my life today answers the question. From my highs, my first few days in high school- Getting drunk with a bunch of grade 10s and an 18 year old at 14, drinking with my coke dealer at 15..To my lows,drinking mouthwash..Drinking hand sanitizer.. Highest in alcohol content,although repulsive.
I’ll never forget the aftertaste of codeine/acetaminophen and alcohol-An impulsive move to end my life whilst I was 13.Perhaps if I had real alcohol it wouldve done it, perhaps that burn from the hand sanitizer I forced myself to drink along with gatorade and 20 pills kept my fire going..I threw up the undigested pills and went on,never sharing the tale of the experience with my family. As addiction thrives in secrecy,lurking in dark depths.
I drank at school, as I smoked and indulged in cocaine – Having a routine of swapping marijuana for expensive alcohol a rich girl would steal from her mother’s locked away cabinets. It’d make me feel sick, save for the coolers I rarely obtained. Cream rum, cherry brandy, bottles of vodka, tucked within my backpack. It felt like a flex, something cool, a few certain classmates I’d smirk at and point within my bag. “What is that?” They’d ask, already probably being quite aware.
And as the liquor made me feel, I truly was sick – Chasing away anyone that was a good person with my behaviour, combined with a cry for help I’d ignored any responses to.
Later along the line, words my father said to me that I always felt rung true deeper in my soul – “No good person would want to be your friend until you fix yourself”. But I didnt want a good person to be my friend, in my cycle of self hate and harm I willingly only attracted a crowd that could only bring me down with them.
It ended one day, when my mother and father – After arguing about how my behaviour grew increasingly violent, speculating whether or not I was on drugs, installed a monitoring app on the new phone they bought me after I had smashed my old one in a fit of rage over something minor.
On the final day before my parents figured out my addiction issues, I went all in. Drinking a bottle of cherry brandy within my first two classes, then half a bottle of Smirnoff ice on the way back to my pals house at lunch break. I didn’t make it back to my next class – Head spinning and gut wrenching; vision blurring.. I laid in her shed whilst she and her sister returned to school. I think I reflected truly on my life choices then, heaving into empty cups and laying in her house on the brink of consciousness.
How do peers effect it? Smoking weed has begun to be a much more commonplace among adolescence, but I recall niches such as teenage boys always opting for beer and uppity girls always getting wasted on weekends, sharing images of eachother in drunken stupors and even as far as sharing images of eachother at toilets.
“What should I do I’m too drunk?” I asked a friend, “drink more” she said back to me. I knew it was wrong but didnt comprehend a thing in actuality.
I made it to my fourth class, present although not there mentally.
When I drank a bottle of jagermeister to myself along with purchasing cocaine three times the first time my parents let me stay for lunch break at school after discovering my addiction to cocaine, that was the first time I saw consequences in the eyes of the law. I was on my way out of the class, ‘Headed to the washroom’ to get my 3rd bag that day. I had been clean long enough but alcohol felt incomplete without it- A common problem with alcoholic users who combine it with cocaine. It forms a chemical called Cocaethylene in the liver which heightens toxicity and addiction potential.
My vice principal sat me down, searched me – And nothing was found on me as I had already finished the bottle and bag. “I figured I had the wrong person,” She stated before letting me out. I ran straight to the lot to meet my dealer, a friend of mine in his early twenties – To tell him the tale, laugh it off, and go back to class. Before I could do so, my vice principal ushered up to me with a teacher that wasnt my own.
Undoubtedly, it was me who was accused. I was brought back to the office, more nervous than last time but still self assured because what are the odds? And searched more thoroughly – Nothing was found except my juul, which warranted a call from my dad.
She remarked my pupils being large and confirmed that I did smell of alcohol as my peers had always noticed, and I denied it further pleading with her to not call my dad – My mind running rampant with excuses.
She did indeed follow through with calling my dad, who had much more prior context to confirm the tale in his mind. I pleaded with him again to not tell my mother, making up tall tales and blaming it on other kids, but he did. Alas, I was breathalyzed and tested for drugs. I was able to fake the test using water and heavy stalling, although not the breathalyzer.
I got into heavy trouble for the alcohol, my parents treated it as a sin. Due to alcoholism running through my family, breeding fear, and increasing prohibition perhaps later on in youth I was more compelled to it. Although I still walked the grey line on the cocaine, I convinced them it was a mistake I drank the alcohol (Same excuse I used when I ended up hospitalized for alcohol poisoning after throwing up blood), and that kids were bullying me for my past addiction claiming I had cocaine.
As it’s easier to believe a loved one innocent than guilty for matters that pull at the heart strings, my parents ruled out the cocaine part.
A week later, my actions were forgiven and I was out drinking yet again with my peers. “Come home now,” My mother demanded over text. After a brief argument I accepted defeat and my father came to pick me up.
He gave me a talk, just as he usually would in these periods of my addiction coming to light, which I brushed off. However, it was different than any other time. I was sat down in the family room, a pit in my stomach – The gathering that would always lead to my punishment. It was revealed my mother found the baggie of cocaine I never finished, taped behind a poster in my room. It was beyond me how anyone wouldve thought to check there but she certainly did. After being bombarded with words of shame and guilt, I went back to my room, phone taken away and defeated. The very next day, things escalated.
I would threaten to run away from home plenty in these times, in which my mother would always respond to me saying she’d call the police – I was a 15 year old girl and the legal age to disregard parents wishes and emancipate yourself in my state was 16. A screaming match escalated, perhaps hitting deeper this was the very first time my parents had found any substance on me . Only paraphernalia was ever found, a coke straw the first time I was confronted.
I dashed towards the door during one of these fits, and my father, who had always been a role model and aspiration to me and a very gentle man took physical aggression on me for the first time. His hands around my neck comprehending me against the wall so I couldn’t dash out, I screamed so loud my mom called the cops.
They spoke with me and my parents, ignoring my side of the story and settling that I could get by without a charge if I spoke to a rehab specialist at my school. I agreed.
Of course – This was the same rehab specialist my parents had fruitlessly sent me to speak to multiple times before. She greeted me cheerily, asking if I had finally found it in me to visit her. I informed her that no, the police made me go here. She swiftly made me sign a forum confirming we talked (falsely) and let me go.
That was the last time I touched cocaine and alcohol until the next year, in which I grasped moderation. Will it stick? I’m not sure, but uncertainty can be a promise for better rather than worse.
In conclusion, I learned that you cant stay on top of the world forever and looking back at it I was just chasing a dragon – Itll be the same as the first time this time, it’ll make me happy this time, it’ll be even better this time.. But was it ever? When you normalize poor behaviour having no prior concept of normalcy you push yourself into a deep hole, and digging yourself out isnt a single leap or linear but a mindset and a willingness you choose every day. I chose life over death after choosing a path of death.
Was it truly my choice? I can’t answer that. Choice is a concept and we are all living among concepts and stressors every day, everybody had different coping mechanisms and vices and not all of them are good ones.. I’ve since found joy in simplicity, I’ve let go of the deep angers within me and let go of the blame.
Although it strikes me sometimes to think of the disappointment I put my family through, and the fact that nothing was ever quite the same or clicked back into place I’m still living and breathing, I’ll continue to make mistakes and I’ll continue to learn how to live. If it didn’t matter either way, I chose to stay. I’ll live with myself for today even if I cry another day.
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