How I Found Recovery! Part 3

I HAVE BEEN CLEAN FOR 14 YEARS, 11 MONTHS, and 14 DAYS!

A TOTAL OF 5463DAYS!

From that point on my addiction took off in full force. I went back to work but didn't really care much, I did however care about the welfare of my patients, what I didn't care about was my well being. I was feeling guilty about leaving my mother alone and the feelings that I was trying to deal with, with the loss of my dad it was to hard for me, so I continued to self medicate. At the time I was offered to work in the ER as the charge nurse from 11 to 7 and I jumped at the chance. You see in the ER they have every kind of medication available on the market and as the charge nurse I had the authorization to the medication room. So when a patient needed any type of medicine it was one for the patient and two for me. That lasted for about 9 months before my supervisor realized that I had been taking extra medicine, so they offered me to go into a rehab. I had no other choice to go if I wanted to keep my job, so I played the game and went for 30 days. When I got to the rehab I knew I didn't have the same problem as everyone else in there, so I played the game until my time was up. The day I got out of rehab I went and bought my drug of choice which was cocaine and at this point I was more out of control than ever. I went back to work and didn't take anymore medicine at least for a few months. It wasn't until I was really sick from withdrawals when I couldn't find any cocaine that's when I went back to taking drugs from the hospital. Yep it only lasted a few weeks before my supervisor once again realized that I was taking more medication. This time they didn't offer me rehab, they brought me in front of the board of directors and suspended my license for 1 year. If after 1 year I tested clean they would reinstate my license. However it took another 5 years for me to get the license back.

After losing my job, since I had saved some money I thought the only job I had was to see how high I could get and for how long. I went on runs for days upon days and months upon months. For God's sake I was so out of it that I got a tattoo and didn't know I had it for a week. The only thing that mattered was I didn't want to feel anything for anyone and especially for myself. I didn't go home much to see my mother because I couldn't bear walking into the house without my dad being there. So I continued to bury myself in my first love, my best friend and his name was COCAINE.

It was shortly less than a year when going to buy my drug of choice that I had hit bottom, as I was walking out of the house of my dealer, the feds were busting the door down and I was arrested for possession with intent to deliver. At the time of the bust I was so high that I really didn't have a clue of what was about to happen. I was brought to jail and when I was brought in front of the judge, he asked me if I was offered a plea bargain, which I had been offered, they wanted me to turn states evidence on my dealer, which I politely said no to. They had set a bail of a million dollars on my dealer and he made it within a half hour so there was no way I wanted to be looking behind my back for the rest of my life. The judge told me since it was the first time I had ever been in trouble that he was going to cut me a break, he gave me two choices, rehab or jail. Since that was an easy choice for me I went into a rehab once again in Cumberland, Md.

I had been court ordered to this rehab until they saw fit that I could fit back into society without the use of drugs. I thought this is going to be easy after all I'm not a drug addict. For the first 30 days I was not going to admit anything because of course I wasn't anything like the people that were in there with me. You see to me a drug addict was the person standing on the street corner begging for money, or the person stealing, or the person selling their bodies for money to buy drugs, or the person sticking a needle in his arm, and the homeless person. I didn't have to do any of those things so to me I was okay, I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. They made me go to these meeting every night, and the people there were standing up staying "Hi my name is _______ and I'm an alcoholic". I thought to myself I don't have that problem, so for 1 month I sat there not really even paying attention because I had nothing in common with these folks. I was assigned a counselor and she brought me into her office to see how I was doing, of course I told her I was fine and I was ready to go home. She said to me, I haven't seen you participate in any of the meetings or the classes they made me go to, I really had nothing to say. We talked about my family and she asked if anyone knew I was here. I said of course not, it's not like I'm sick and going to die so why would I put my family through any of this, it was my problem not theirs. She told me the first step is to admit I had a problem and that I needed the support of my family. One of her request was that I call my mother to let her know where I was. She handed me the phone and she dialed the number. Shit, after all my mother had been through with the death of my father, this for sure is going to kill her. When I heard my mothers voice I said to her, sorry I haven't called you, however I'm in a rehab because I got caught buying drugs. There was a long silence on the phone, she then wanted to know when, how, and why. She said I'll call your Uncle Louie and we will get you out of this mess. I started yelling at her that I didn't want anyone else to know that all I had to do was go through this rehab for a few more days and then I'll be home. I told her I would call her when I knew exactly when I would be leaving. After hanging up the phone my counselor told me that I needed to participate in this program. I thought that would be easy, whatever you need me to do to get the hell out of here I'll do.

To be continued............