I posted this in Creative Corner and it was suggested I post it here too, and I thought it was a good idea.

I remember when I was around the age of ten, I had my first beer. At the time, my dad was a raging alcoholic and kept cases of beer cool in the fridge. He'd tell us kids, "Don't get into my beer or else we will have problems!", yeah right, he'd be so drunk at the end of the night, he wouldn't remember how many were left. I was going through a lot of abuse at the time that I couldn't confess to anyone. After all the family went to bed, I'd be raped almost nightly by my cousin. I seen my dad fall so many times from being drunk and just stand right back up without any pain, that I wanted that feeling as well. The feeling of complete numbness, so maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't feel the abuse. Alcohol did what it was supposed to in one aspect, I was numbed out many nights when he'd come into my room and take a little more of my innocense. That all changed by the next morning, though. I'd remember what happened the night before and be struck with fear all over again. By the time I was fourteen, I no longer drank to just numb out. I drank because I felt I couldn't survive without it.

By this time, my cousin and his family had moved away and my resentments towards him kept building and building. Resentment towards myself started building as well... Resentment towards myself because I didn't tell sooner, resentment towards myself that I wasn't strong enough to make him stop. I felt such hatred towards myself, that I either wanted a way out of life, or a way to feel better. Growing up, I seen my brother and my sister use drugs and they seemed so care-free that I figured I'd give it a try as well. In this town, meth and crack cocaine are the major drugs, aside from alcohol. I made friends with a girl I knew was on meth. She was so strung out most of the time... Jumping all over the place, giggling at nothing, and seemed to have so much confidence in herself. I wanted that, who wouldn't?! So she introduced me to "the devils drug", meth. I remember the first time I got high. We were at a party, in a small room with about fifteen people in there. They had three meth pipes and baggies of meth, passing them around so we could all get hits from it. I remember taking that first deep hit from the pipe and within two seconds, had this sense of well-being. I kept hitting the pipe time and time again, the more I hit the pipe filled with meth, the more confident I became. For the first time in my life, I had what I had been searching for my whole life... Freedom and a sense of self-love.

That was the beginning of a long, drawn out addiction that almost took my life. What started out as using to feel better about myself turned into an addiction of HAVING to have my dope or I'd get physically sick. I still drank, had begun using crack when I wanted to mellow out from the meth a little, and was using up to $1,000 worth of meth a day. I couldn't support my addiction any longer by paying money for it. I couldn't steal money from my parents anymore because they started hiding their money from me. I did the only thing I knew possible to do in order to get my dope and keep from getting sick... I began prostituting myself. In the beginning of my addiction, I seen teenage girls my age prostituting themselves for drugs and I always told myself I'd never be that girl. Well, I was sadly mistaken, because I became that girl. The drug that I became so attached to in the beginning because of the love I felt for myself soon became the drug I resented for making me hate myself so much more than I ever did before. Everyday and everynight, I lived my life trying to sell myself so I could get high. I was a full fledged junkie and I hated myself for it. I wanted out of the lifestyle so bad, but I was so scared of getting sick like I seen my brother get so many times, that I continued using for awhile longer.

One night, me and a few of my drug buddies went to a party in the next town. We only knew a few people there, but the one thing we all had in common was we all were junkies. A lot of that night is a huge blur to me. I know I drank a whole lot of liquor that night and smoked way more meth than usual. It's almost as if it was a movie, where you watch some parts than fastfoward to a different part. That's how I remember that night... Some parts I remember clearly, other parts I don't remember at all, and some parts I wish I could forget. That night, I was brutally raped by three guys, two of which I knew. I kept blacking out off and on through the whole experience, but will never forget the pain and the pleading I did begging them to stop. I woke up the next morning bleeding from both ends and my face was pretty messed up. I couldn't walk good at all from the pain, so I crawled my way into the livingroom and screamed for help... One of my so-called friends woke up and rushed me to the emergency room where I was given 23 internal stitches and 28 extrernal stitches from where they had forced themselves and god knows what else inside of me. That was it, I was done using and done drinking... Or so I thought.

My mom came to the hospital to pick me up and she wanted to press charges against the guys who raped me... I wouldn't let her. You may ask why, I sometimes ask myself the same thing... The reason I didn't press charges is because I put a lot of the blame on myself. I chose to go to that party and I chose to get heavily intoxicated and high. Had I been thinking with a clear mind, I wouldn't have been there to start with. My mom begged me to press charges or at least tell her who the guys were, I refused. The doctor told my mom that I looked horrible, my mom said, "Of course she does! She was just raped!", and the doctors reply was, "No ma'am, your daughter is an addict and needs help. Look at her. She can't sit still for two seconds, she has bags under her eyes, and her skin is hanging off of her. Please get her some help."... My mom brought me home and we had a long talk. I was ready to get some help. I told my mom everything from when I started using, to the prostitution, to every detail that I remembered from that night. She sought out help for me. She called many places and programs and finally got me into an intensive out-patient treatment program, but first I'd have to go in for several days and detox through inpatient.

Detox was the worst experience by far in my life, physically. I had tremors and shakes, sweating uncontrollably one minute and freezing the next, body aches, couldn't eat, had nightmares when I was able to sleep, puked so many times... I felt like I was dieing, but after 6 days of detox, I was put back out into the real world and started the outpatient program. I did considerably well for the first month in a half. Made clean and sober friends there, learned a lot of new things about drugs and alcohol and how they affect you, and was learning how to live life on lifes own terms instead of my own terms. It all came to a stardling hault when Johnna started the group. She too was a meth addict and was sent there by Child Protective Services in order to get her kids back. One night Johnna asked if I wanted to go to her house and watch some movies, I agreed and we left after group let out. That was such a huge mistake... Johnna had a bag of Ice (a form of crystal meth) laying on her kitchen table with the pipe laying beside it. She asked if I wanted to use, and at first I said no. She kept pressing and asking if I wanted a hit off of it and I told myself one hit wouldn't hurt anything... Well, I took a hit alright. That one hit lead to another month of constant usage. I still went to group, and somehow went unnoticed that I was using again. I was fooling everyone around me, yet the one person I wasn't fooling was myself. One night Johnna and I went and scored three baggies full of Ice and smoked it all by ourselves. As I was driving home that night, I started seeing things which I hadn't did since I was in my full fledged junkie stage. Then my body started cramping up. Next thing I know I'm pulling over and puking my guts up. I finally made it home and as much as my muscles were aching, I ran to the bathroom where I continued puking and having sudden convulsions in my arms and legs. It was like detox all over, except this time it wasn't detox... I had overdosed. My mom knew what was going on, so she got me a wet wash cloth and put over my head as I lay flat on the bathroom floor. Everything was spinning, my breaths getting shorter and shorter, my muscles tightening up on me... I knew at that very moment I was fixing to die just like my brother, except I was dieing in my mothers arms. I started praying, "God, please give me one last chance. I know I'm not worthy and I know I need help, please give me a chance to get the help I need."... I woke up the next morning laying in my bed peacefully asleep. I woke up, muscles still aching a little and had no appetite, but aside from that, it was like nothing ever happened.

I went to our Intensive Outpatient Group that following day and admitted to our group administrator and the group as a whole that I had been using for the past month and who I was using with. They asked both myself and Johnna if we really wanted to get clean... Johnna said no, I said yes. Johnna was asked to leave the group while I was embraced with hugs and cries from my friends being thankful that I was alive and really wanting to get help. It's been 8 months since all that happened, and I'm still clean today. I'm learning to forgive myself for my wrong-doings and I'm slowly learning to let my resentments towards my cousin go. I've learned that it's ok for me to make mistakes and it's ok for me to not be perfect... I've learned that in order to love myself, I have to forgive myself. I'm proud to say, I've started loving myself a little. I can't tell you how hard the struggle of not using each day has been for me, but it's been so worth it not to use and lower myself to the things I had lowered myself to before. I've learned that there IS life after self-destruction. I can proudly say that I am a recovering addict and alcoholic and that just for today, I will not use.

Thank you for allowing me to share my story.