I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to blow up my life. It was smaller than that—older friends, a bottle passed around, a line, a night that ran a little too long. Weed, vodka, pills, then meth and heroin. Each “why not” made the next one easier. By the time I realized I was in over my head, I’d already stopped caring whether I could touch the bottom.
From sixteen to twenty-two, I lived in a loop. I stripped. I escorted. I did some cam stuff and “titty streaming” before that was even a phrase people said out loud. I told myself it was fast money. Technically true. The other truths were less glamorous: couch surfing until the couches disappeared, leaning on older men who were more landlord than boyfriend, a couple stays in shelters, and a few stretches where “home” was whatever I could carry. I had a pharmacy tech job for a while—mail order, no customer service—which I lost after getting picked up with meth. If you’re wondering how you juggle an addiction and a job like that, the answer is badly and for not very long.
A typical day was brutally simple: get high, stumble through whatever shift I had, get high again, pretend there was a plan, get high again. I spent money on things that didn’t matter because nothing mattered more than the next hit. When the come-down hit, I’d hate everything, including myself, and the only fix I knew was the one that started the cycle again. If I did ask myself, “Why did you do that?” the honest answer was: autopilot. I was a passenger in my own body.
People ask about sex like it’s the interesting part. It isn’t, but I’ll say this much: I slept with a lot of people. I couldn’t give you an exact number because dissociation and drugs turned time into static. Forty, fifty, more—it blurs. The sex wasn’t empowering or exciting. Most of the time I was too numbed out to feel anything but the idea that I should pretend I did. The highs at the beginning were huge—that rocket-launch warmth, the sense that nothing could hurt me, that soft, heavy nod where the world receded like closing a door. Later, those same highs turned gray and thin. I kept using more, thinking I could catch that first feeling again. You can’t. You only catch consequences.
The scariest night wasn’t some cinematic chase. It was quiet. I injected after two friends. I watched both of them go slack, breathing wrong, and I couldn’t move. I was “locked in”—tunneling vision, no voice, no body, like my mind had a front-row seat to my body quitting. We all woke up. I wish there were a lesson in it besides luck, but that’s the truth. Luck and the fact that someone shook me hard enough.
If you want to know what meth did to my body: my teeth were already a mess—crowded, orthodontics that made things worse. Meth didn’t help. I’m proud I’ve only had to pull one (not counting wisdom teeth). As for pain meds later on, I learned to set strict lines. After surgeries, I asked for the shortest opiate prescriptions possible and leaned on non-opioids like ketorolac. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke weed. Caffeine is my one messy relationship and, fine, it’s 2020-forever—who doesn’t have one.
I didn’t have one clear “rock bottom.” The whole era was bottom. What changed was slow: detox, then day treatment. Being “babied” through withdrawal felt humiliating and lifesaving at the same time. When the fog thinned, feelings came back in jagged little pieces. I relapsed. I relapsed again. Each time I stayed clean a little longer. I didn’t have some noble internal compass—I had repetition and people who refused to give up on me.
One of those people became my husband. We met in a shared class while I was getting my pharmacy tech license. We were studying different things, but our schedules crossed and then our lives did. He knows as much as I know about my past, and I’ll be honest: I don’t know all of it. That’s what dissociation does; it shreds the timeline. What he gave me wasn’t rescue. He set me up with therapy and medical care, sat in waiting rooms, advocated when I couldn’t string a sentence together, kept me safe without wrapping me in bubble wrap. He did this impossible thing: he let me fail enough to learn and then stood there, steady, when I turned back around. If you’ve ever loved an addict, you know how hard that balance is. If you are an addict, you know how rare it is to let someone love you like that.
Early recovery made me sentimental about boring things. Grocery lists. Rent paid on the first. Waking up and remembering the whole day before it. People ask if I miss anything about the old life. The adrenaline, sometimes. The feeling of not having to be responsible. But that’s the lie I told myself to survive: that freedom is the absence of responsibility. Real freedom is having choices again.
Do I run into people from back then? Sometimes. It’s usually tense. Some are angry I “left.” Some want connections I won’t provide. Some I’m angry with for things my body remembers better than my mind. Boundaries save me there. “No” is a full sentence. Walking away is not a betrayal; it’s a skill.
There’s stigma you can feel before the first word is spoken. I get why people are suspicious of a past like mine. History does repeat itself unless you build your life to make it harder to. So I count clean time in years now. I keep routines I used to mock. I tell new doctors the whole truth. I avoid the romances that feel like ambulances, lights flashing, siren blaring, everything urgent and nothing safe. I’m faithful in a way the younger me couldn’t have imagined. That matters to me.
People want a moral about drugs and sex and body counts and whether you can “make a ho a housewife.” My answer is boring and true: people change when the conditions for change exist and they do the work. I did the work. I had help. Both things are required. If you’re waiting for the world to make it easy, you’ll be waiting a long time. If you’re waiting for a hero, start with the unglamorous one in the mirror—sleep, food, meetings, therapy, the next right call to your doctor, the friend who will take your keys when your hands are shaking.
As for the future, I don’t posture like I have a five-year plan. I’ve got a decent job. I’m learning to be responsible with money I used to light on fire. My relationship is four years in and solid. Three years clean turned into more. We’ve talked about kids. Before we decide, I want to sit with a genetic counselor—there are things that run in my family—and an OB-GYN who will give me the medical truth, not a wish. That might sound clinical. It’s also love. It’s the opposite of autopilot.
If you’re still in it—in the loop, in the fog, in the shame spiral—here’s what I wish someone had told me in a voice I could hear: You are not uniquely broken. The first time doesn’t come back, and chasing it is how you lose everything else. Withdrawal ends. Feelings return. They will not kill you. Tell one person the whole truth. Give someone you trust permission to make the call you can’t. Ask for short prescriptions. Choose boredom for a while. Guard your sleep like a prescription. Keep showing up even when you relapsed yesterday. The day you hate yourself the loudest is the day to go back to treatment, not the day to disappear.
I don’t feel “saved.” I feel present. I make coffee in a kitchen that’s mine and kiss a man who knows the worst of me and still asks how my day was. I go to bed sober and wake up remembered. The story isn’t glamorous, but it’s good. I built a life where the most exciting thing is that I get to keep it.