Confessions

Staying in a cheap hotel one night my boyfriend and I bought a little over two hundred rollers in crack. All the money we had went on crack that night. We kept making trips to go get it until in the early morning when we ran out of money. We were mixing it with vinegar and shooting it. You crave it really bad so we had eight benzos. I hardly had a tolerance for them. The last bit he was taking advantage of and tricking ne ao that he got more, and took my last shot. I got mad bitching and took almost all of our benzos. I completely passed out mot remembering a thing. I don't even remember dreaming. Whenever I woke up I was as sore as j have ever been. I believe I was anal raped jn my sleep. I was sore for days I could not even sit down. I asked him about it he denied it, but I swear to god I believe I was raped. K made jokes about it after the fact months later, but now that I'm sober it disgust me, and I regret I did not go get tested at the hospital. I remember being sore for days, I was terrified to go.to the bathroom. It was crying pain, unexplainable

Today ai relapsed on pills, and spent 40.00 on a Morphine 80. We parked at a local park. The car was full with four people including myself to shoot our morphines. An undercover SUV pulled in and I spilled 70% of mine. I've been a financial situation for a long time ever since my boyfriend went to prison. I can't even hardly support myself, or pay all my probations, to stat out of jail. When I do make money its always illegal, sales, robbing people. Today after feeling stupid I just have this overwhelming feeling of failure. I feel as if I'm so tired of risking my life, I'm so tired if my suboxone, tired of my life in general. I have no car, no parental support. I'm just screwed. My boyfriend also financially drains me screaming he is hungry and I don't give him respect. Here I am with a sub to hustle and 5.00 FML I just wanna give up.

After AD relapsed and was causing all kinds of hooey in our home...drinking, lying, manipulating us for money, stealing clothes and money from his brothers...he was removed from our home by his brothers and dropped off in the city he had been homeless. He spent over a week on the streets, most of his time posting awful things on FB or harassing me via FB and phone. His usual story is telling us he has a job which for all these years was always a lie. He called me insisting I come to a Thai Restaurant so I could see he wasn't lying this time. It seemed so important to him and so my sister & I went for lunch and he was our waiter! He really has a job! My jaw needs to be picked up from the floor. The place was close to closing after lunch and I heard the other employees talking. The owner hires recovering addicts, street people and those who have had trouble with the law. They do have a problem with retention so they are severely understaffed. I heard them offer AD 7 days a week work between this restaurant and another they own. He is living in a fleabag hotel right now but he can take busses to and from work. Now, to see if he can keep this job. It's the perfect set-up because they know about the legal troubles and addiction issue and they are willing to work with it. He did say he may move into the shelter for a month or two to save money for a rental. Not going to get too excited yet but this is a positive development and a chance...

Missymae is out of surgery, it went well, handling the pain with less meds than prescribed. She will be home on Thursday and post soon.

This is for anyone following my story: my Alzheimer's and vascular dementia afflicted mother is in more trouble. She assaulted one of the people at her care home and although she has yet to understand this, she will be moved to another place as soon as one is found for her. She will have less freedom, probably more medication and the people areound her will be there for the same reason she is: potential violence to not staff but to other people. She also managed to escape from her care home and was brought back by police. She scarcely recognized the place upon her return even though hating it has been the main focus of her life since November. She was hospitalized later because of her COPD. Now that I am back from my visit (did my visit trigger her assault on the other patient?), I try not to think of how all of this will turn out. I have my addict son to worry about. He has seemed very empathic about my worries over my mother, but honestly, sometimes the rages he goes into remind me of her rages and I wonder I there is not something seriously, seriously wrong with us genetically. Like her, HE spends a lot of the time hating where he lives and like her, he seems unable to make another plan for himself. The only plan he has for his life is to get more money and services from my husband and me; it is hard not to feel bitter about that. People have frequently pointed out on this site that his problems sound like more than addiction but that might be wrong. I know that other people have similar situations: Dyanne, Wannarun. I could have written many of their posts myself.

Now that I am learning to stop trying to control my son's life, I have a lot more time for other relationships.  Most of the damage has been repaired by working my own steps in Nar-Anon.  But my daughter continued to be pretty unforgiving toward me.  She was the good child who caused very little trouble, followed all the household rules, has achieved quite a bit of success in her career, and continues to live a productive life. 

But there are scars, wounds that won't heal, fears that won't go away.  We had cars vandalized by angry drug dealers, lawns graffitied with gang symbols. 

One weekend, I was at my lowest point.  I had been held hostage in my own home for years and I needed a break.  My daughter was 22 (still living at home), my son was 20 and also at home.  So I went out of town for the weekend.  While I was gone, I told my son to 1) Clean his room 2) mow the yard 3) don't have anyone over while I was gone.

Well, I guess you know he did not clean his room or mow the yard, but he did have drug dealers and strippers over doing cocaine all weekend. 

My daughter locked herself and our pets in her room and had a loaded gun pointed toward the door.  She didn't sleep all weekend, and finally called my cell phone on Sunday to ask when I would be home.  She broke down and told me that she didn't want to ruin my weekend by calling sooner.  I was on my way home but still two hours away.  I told her to call the police.  She had thought that I would be angry with her if she called them. 

I told her that I loved both of them, but if one child of mine was putting the other child's life at risk and scaring them so badly that they had a gun and were locked in their room, then he deserved what was coming.  When I got home, that was the first time I kicked him out.  I gave him 15 minutes to pack a bag. 

Since that day, my relationship with my daughter has improved, but still not to the point that I feel good about.  She's 27 now.  Lives two blocks away.  We walk our dogs together a few times a month, eat out once in a while, have a few heart to hearts about problems at work etc. 

Fixing this is taking "one day at a time".  I've learned so much, but I haven't learned enough about making amends when it comes to the people who were hurt the most when I was crazy trying to fix my son. 

One of my daughter's closest friends, 23, is about to lose her 54 year old mom due to alcohol abuse. We are actually related to this girls father and he and I went to grade school together. He is also an alcoholic and both of them were still smoking weed last I knew. Last week, Sue fell down the stairs in her home to the cement basement floor. Her husband found her in a pool of blood with blood oozing from her mouth, nose and ears. Her blood alcohol level was a .35. She has been in a coma ever since, on life support with bleeding in her brain and severe swelling in her skull. They thought at first she might wake up with no idea how bad her brain was damaged. But, she is not progressing and the bleeding won't stop so on Sunday if nothing changes, her family faces the decision whether to disconnect her from life support. My daughter's friend is devastated and the family is shattered. The son is accusing his father of pushing her down the stairs because he saw so many violent fights between them as is typical in addicted families. I remember my husband was always afraid this would happen to his mother when she was drunk or high. Addiction leads to insanity, jail or death but any active addict I've ever met thinks that they are the exception- including and especially my son.

I have to admit much of the time I am hesitant to share how well my AD is doing, I don't want to make anyone feel bad. Most of you know she is graduating and off to law school. She has also begun training in domestic abuse response and paralegal. The last few months she has organized a recovery speaker series every Tuesday night at her College, with the grand finale being a movie showing of "the Anonymous People" ( a documentary about ending the stigma). She's just about got the theatre pre sold out, to recovering addicts, judges, prosecutors, mayors and university Presidents. She's been on one radio program and about to do another. Everyone knows her name not as an addict but someone who's making a difference ending the stigma. Her life is good without drugs, she's not ashamed, it's what made her who she is, she just got back from a cruise where she spoke at an on board AA meeting. My point is recovery and people in recovery are everywhere. Our addicts can embrace it a little or a lot...oh and me I start my classes may3rd for CDAC.

I am in the UK trying to clear out my mother's possessions from the flat where she has lived for ten years and checking out her situation. She is in a dementia care home and her dementia tortures me. She wants to leave badly, she thinks she can manage on her own (age 90) and even proposes to go back to live in the house her parents had back in the 1920s and 1930s, where she grew up. She has regressed and while she knows who I am, I think, she is referring to my uncle (age 89) as a little boy she could always manage. She is ENRAGED every day. She thinks people are stealing from her. I could go on, but the set of attitudes and postures are, I know, actually not unusual. But this is my mother and her face is screwed up and she says that living in this place is like living under Hitler and she will not tolerate it, that if I cannot help her, then she has no use for me and on and on. I just crumble inside and feel as though I cannot live on with her like this. I cannot soothe her, she willfully misunderstands everything I say and will not be distracted (as all the articles say I must manage to do). This is how she was treating her partner and I hated seeing it, but I did not feel I was unraveling when I was just an observer. I have tried to be supportive to them both, and now I cannot soothe myself. All these feelings are so familiar, but I have not had them for sometime. I am actually by nature or nurture too anxious a person. Her partner is so weak physically, blind, and having chest pains. He is a nice man and loves her so, and this is so hard for him. I do not see how he has managed since the Alzheimer's Diagnosis three years ago. If something happens to him, there will be no one to visit her here, but our US institutions are barbaric compared to the ones here -- the place she's in is kind of like a small boarding school, but with locked doors. Good food, people who serve coffee on trays, home made pastry every day, private room. You don't see that in the U.S. So far as I can see, my mother is the only one who clenches her fists, screws up her face and threatens people. She has pulled the attendant's hair when she is in one of her takings and she swears at them. We took her out today (UK Mothering Sunday) and upon return, she did not at first recognize the place although she did recognize the people. She was charming as she commented how much the place was like "the old place," affectionately greeting staff and other residents by name. Then she saw it was "the old place," and the **** hit the fan and kept hitting the fan until her partner and I slunk out like people who'd just avoided a bar fight through cowardice and submission. You can't reason with her, you can't change the subject and she is relentless and as cruel as she can possibly be in her attacks. No strategies for self-soothing. Starting with physical anxiety symptoms teeth on edge, throat closing off, nausea, the runs, loss of appetite. So far, only dizzy a couple of times and breathing OK but constantly tearful when alone. Numb face. I would do ANYTHING to make this better. Will be home in 72 hours.

Dog used to mention that his budget was so tight that he was sick of balogna.

Every once in a while, I like to fry some bologna in a skillet and eat it with crackers and cheese.  When I do, I think about Dog and say a little prayer that his time in jail goes quickly and he gets a fresh start with a clean slate and a hopeful future.