3 months in rehab?

When I was 13, I took a D.A.R.E. program at school, which I am sure most of you have as well, and I vowed to never to drugs. They were bad, and made you a bad person if you did them. That is what the schools taught, and still teach as my own children are in the program now. By the time I was 15 though, I was using drugs almost every day.

It always starts the same way, right? First you smoke cigarettes, to be cool like the other kids. Then you sit in a room while everyone around you smokes a joint, saying "No" each times it comes around to you, but getting a little contact buzz in the meantime. Then, the contact buzz seams to fade, and eventually you take a hit off of that joint and cough until you feel like all of your insides are going to come out of your mouth. Eventually the coughing goes away, and you feel relaxed, and at peace.

The peaceful feeling doesn't last long though, so you smoke more. Soon, you are sneaking out of your house, just to get high, not see your friends. Staying up all hours of the night, knowing you have responsibilities the next day (school).

One day, it is too late to get any sleep for school the next day, and I have to go or my dad will find out what I have been doing. Someone offers me a line of meth. Nope. I will never snort anything in my nose, or use needles, I do draw the line somewhere. So, he wraps it in a piece of toilet paper and tells me to swallow it with water like an aspirin. I do it.

I go to school, and stay up for 2 days straight. No high, actually, it took my high away and I felt very alert. The discovery that I could sneak out of my house, whenever I wanted to, drink and smoke weed with my friends, then swallow an "aspirin" and feel fine to go to school the next day, was the beginning of my downfall.

Eventually, I don't remember how or when it happened, someone talked me into snorting the meth in my nose. Not a pleasant thought, but the effects were immediate and seemed to last longer than swallowing it like a pill.

I started doing other drugs: shrooms, cocaine, acid, pills (lots of pills, which is probably why I hate them now). But none of them hooked me the way meth had. I could do anything on meth, because I had all the time in the world. What would you do if you didn't have to sleep? I was a straight A student, despite the partying because I had so much time to study.

This went on for a little over a year. I was walking to the gas station to try to get an adult to buy me cigarettes, and I was a little light headed after being up for a week and a half. It would pass though, it always did. But, this time it didn't. I passed out. I don't remember anything. I woke up 2 days later in a hospital with IV's in me, I was handcuffed to the bed.

I was really scared, then the doctor came in and told me that I was not under arrest, my dad asked them to cuff me to the bed so I wouldn't try to run away. He was putting me in rehab. For 3 months. The reality of what was happening slapped me in the face like my own father had hit me. 3 months!?!?! There goes my friends, my A average, my drugs, my life! How could he do this to me? He took everything that I cared about away from me.

When I was transferred to rehab, I was so depressed that I just stayed in bed for the better part of the first week. They made me come out to eat and sit with them during group and activities, but I didn't want to be there. I never went thru detox, so I must not have been that bad, but I was definately feeling a loss of self. What would I do when I got out? I was lost. I had been that person for so long that I didn't know who I was anymore.

Rehab was a bust. The kids in there were way worse than I was. Two girls escaped during an outing and were caught 3 days later and put in padded cells in solitary. One kid tried to kill himself with his shoelaces (at which point we all lost ours so he couldn't try again). Another kid went into detox so bad that his body went into shock and he ended up in a drug induced coma until the detox was over. I was pretty messed up, but I had nothing on these kids.

I went to school, did my therapy (single and group), and earned my stars to leave. Everything is based on how good you are. You can get extra snacks, go on outings, have weekend home visits. I was very good, and my dad decided that he would pull me out early. After 2 1/2 months in rehab, I went home.

While I was in rehab, my dad had moved and bought a house in a new neighborhood, in another town. He thought that by taking me out of the situation that started this whole thing, that it wouldn't start up again. I felt like an outsider going to the new house. I had only been there once for a weekend visit. It never felt like my home, partly because it never was, I wasn't there long enough.

It took less than a week for my boyfriend to contact me, and invite himself over while my dad was away at work. My dad left Sunday night and came home Friday night, my mom was in Ohio. Everything started back up again, although I was a little more careful this time around. I never stayed up for more than 2 days at a time without sleep. A month after leaving rehab, I turned 16. Still being very careful, I went out with my friends, had a little to drink, a little to smoke, and a little to snort. One thing I learned from my almost-overdose was moderation.

Obviously, rehab didn't work for me. Although I learned alot while I was there, it was going to take something more to get me to stop for good. Then, it came. 3 months later, I found out I was pregnant. That was it, I quit on the spot, and in the 14 years since then, I have smoked weed twice and never touched the other drugs. Not bad for someone who was in rehab for almost 3 months, huh?

(See "Can you imagine" blog for story of finding out I was pregnant)