My name is Paige, I’m a 26-year-old single mother. I battled addiction for 14 years, before ever realizing it was a problem. I’m proud to say I am a completely sober woman today, raising awareness of the issue by sharing this story.
Sobriety has always been such a foreign concept to me. So when people would tell me they were sober, I’d never really put much thought into it. Instead, I’d congratulate them while I sipped my whiskey. Then move on to the next topic of conversation, whatever that may be.
My struggles with addiction started when I was 13. It began with a bottle of wine I’d snuck into my room; from there, I experimented with weed; at some point, though, I found pills. Let me tell you; I loved drugs; if it was a downer, I was down for it. As a teenager, though, it’s tough to get ahold of them. So I’d end up stealing my mother or grandmother’s Xanax, Lortabs, Klonopin, whatever they had a prescription for, I’d stick my hands in the honey jar.
I was 16 when I got baker-acted the first time, which means I got sent to the mental ward and held for 72 hours. After that, I was baker-acted three times within six months. The last time, my family decided to send me to La Amistad, a rehab that will also rehabilitate teenagers. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the program seriously and manipulate my counselor into believing that I was doing better, so I got released after either 60 or 90 days.
Seven months after my release, I flipped my car driving down the highway. I won’t go into the gory details, but I almost lost my leg and needed nine units of blood. That first dose of pain medicine ignited a 14-year long battle with addiction. When I was 19, I walked into a psychiatrist’s office and told him I had terrible anxiety. I walked out of that office with a script for 90 Xanax. I was giddy. I popped two as soon as I picked up the prescription. That first high, the one we as addicts keep chasing, was terrific; I chilled out, I felt light and free. I got home and started drinking, oh man, adding alcohol on top of the pills; phew, I was invincible. So invincible, I ate through the first bottle within a month, and by the time I got through the second bottle, I was a completely different person. I was stealing makeup from stores, lying to my ex about what I was to go on my stealing sprees. I thought I was untouchable. Then, Welp, I got touched, I got arrested and forced to get sober.
Now, I wasn’t using constantly; there were periods of non-use; I won’t call it sobriety because if I found anything, I’d take it. So I just wasn’t actively seeking anything out. Over the next six years, if I received pain pills for whatever reason, I’d eat the whole bottle in a couple of days.
In October of 2019, I left my ex, becoming a single mother who never got to party when she was a teenager, who hadn’t been single since she was 16. So I went wild, started partying, and had “fun” I was drinking every night in complete denial that I had a problem. I felt this emptiness inside me that I didn’t want to feel, so I tried filling it with liquor, sex, anything I could to get rid of the feeling.
February of 2020, I met my most recent ex, the moment we began dating, he immediately started working on skewing my views of hard drugs and explaining to me that society’s views of them were all wrong. After a while of hearing these things daily, you begin to believe them. Which eventually led to me snorting my first line of heroin and a four-month battle with hard drugs. I made the conscious decision to get off drugs by September of 2020; the next addiction I had to battle it out with would be drinking. After a very long three-month binge, I got highly suicidal towards the end; I won 50/50 custody of my son and made the intentional decision to put down the bottle for good. I relapsed for three days with alcohol and am proud to say I’m back to 25 days completely sober. The relapse was a vital part of my journey, though; I’m not upset by it. Instead, it was pivotal in showing me what was important in my life and how blind I had been.
I’m incredibly self-aware; I always have been. I’m able to pinpoint my emotions and why they’re happening. I understand that my undealt with childhood, medical, and most recent traumas only fueled my addictions. Anytime they would pop into my mind, I’d immediately numb it, to push it aside, to stop the thoughts in their tracks. Sobriety isn’t just about not drinking or using; it’s about figuring out why you started in the first place. What are you trying to numb? What emotions do you feel when you pick that bottle up? Figuring out the answers to those questions is vital.
Today, I face the emotions head-on, I let them roll over my body like a wave, and eventually, they subside independently. Then, I make sure that I dig deep and get to the root cause of the uncomfortableness. In doing this, I’m slowly healing from all the traumatic events that I buried. I’ve begun to take my therapy more seriously, which has been a tremendous help. I started writing about my addiction, my fight for sobriety, in all of its gory detail; not only could it help a struggling addict, but it may also help shift someone’s perspective on addicts still struggling with the disease. It’s been a long road getting here, but I wouldn’t change a single thing. That road gave me the knowledge and firsthand experience of an epidemic that very few people understand.
Editors note: Check out Paige’s compelling & inspirational blog here! beatingtheaddiction.com
Wow. You’ve been through a lot of hard times in your 26 years. I’ve had some similar issues dealing with a crapoy ex who only fueled my use. Sucks when kids get caught in the middle, then other family passes judgement and it makes me feel helpless and angry. Do you have any support systems? You talk about figuring out why we started in the first place. I started smoking cigarettes in high school because my friends did, but I honestly don’t know how I started using. Sounds like I need to figure that out. I mean, I did it to have fun at first but that goes away as you know..Idk..thanks for this.