At around 14 my girlfriends were getting into speed to lose
weight... I just used it
to get energy, to get through the day... I was still using all their other drugs, downers,
pain pills, muscle relaxers, psychotropics (all prescribed by someone too someone)
and alcohol... Now, I was speed-balling, as it is called. Still suicidal and had overdosed
successfully a few times by now... Even though some how I was still alive ???
There were also many inhalents on the market, I expereimented with during
these years. That you can still find today like Rush, Head Cleaner,...
As I've already stated at 15, I was married (to my first husband). That is when
addiction took on a whole new meaning in my life, or I had found another drug, called relationships. One reason I had married so many times... They were also an addicts.
My husbands... They all had their drugs, as different as they was...
It was during my first marriage when I was 15, when I also discovered L.S.D. or Acid,
from here on I would go on to use almost every drug available on streets, telling
myself, as long as I never stuck a needle in my arm I was not an addict, or like those
people... I had seen many of them... and wasn't going to be one of them... as long
as the Doctor gave me my shots... LOL !
This (my first) marriage was very abusive (like all the other 4 since) and I did my
best to lye in my bed (each time), that I had made for myself, believing that marriage
was for life (each time), until death do you part. Remember, I said earlier I was a
church going girl. I believed in and loved God and his word very much during and
through-out all of this and was just ignorant enough for awhile to believe the vows
I said had come from scripture and were the will of God. I tried to live up to them
each time even though once I had learned they were not. Because they were vows
I had made before God. This nearly killed me a few times. Trying to maintain this
word/honor. But I do not believe... God meant for our spouses to kill us.
When I was 18, I found out I was pregnant the first time. So, I started trying to
clean up and I quit everything. This left me in D.T.S. at first, I used pot to get
through the D.T.S., and then I moved to Arkansas at that time, (not only to
help my grandmother, who was blind, with my grandfather who had been left
paralyzed by strokes) but to get away from the temptation of using with the
old crowd, my so called friends... A step my husband didn't want to take, so
I tried dragging him along with me, kicking and screaming.
We had already had problems before this, but this only made things worse. Then
I lost my first child in my eighth mo., after lifting on my grandfather trying to put
him back in his bed... That, was a log on the fire... My husband was angry and cold.
I choose to use old coping skills and got drunk. He would drink and abuse me, than
I'd drink some more and use again. It was a vicious circle..
I lost three more children, 2 pregnancies, a set of twins (the last) during this marriage
before the birth of my son. (None of the miscarriages had anything to do with drugs
or abuse of drugs... Later I would find out why I had such a hard time carrying...)
I would get clean, he would abuse me... I'd end up pregnant... I'd miscarry, he'd get
angrier, abuse me more... and I use some more...We blamed each other...
That's when I started studying, started educating myself again, taking classes.
First in religion and biblical research, turning to God for the answers. Then a boss
of mine said something about college, a dream, I had forgotten about and never
thought possible... I was told I wasn't good enough, and didn't have enough money
for that. No one had ever encouraged me to attempt that. I had dreamed of it. Yet
the schools I attended while growing up never even acted as if it was an option.
I had grown up admiring my dad's mother, the blind grandmother in Arkansas, who
had lead me to Arkansas. Her name written in the sidewalk in front of " Old Main ",
the first building on the University of Arkansas's Campus where she had attended,
when she was younger, in a time when not many women were higher educated. She
was amazing to me, I would study the way she did everything. Her house was always
clean, she made everything from scratch, including soap from lard. All blind. I would
wait until she left the room and then run over and I'd close my eyes and try to do it
as good as she did. LOL ! I found I wasn't good at it at all... Being blind that is... Later
I would also understand this need to understand how she did it...
I told my boss, I could never afford college and had never graduated from high school,
because I had married. He told me about the G.E.D., Grants and Scholarships. How
they would help me pay for school...
That got me thinking, maybe I could go to college. I started checking into it and found
out if I could and what I had to do. That's when I got my G.E.D. and applied to the
" University of Arkansas " and got excepted...Wow! It was all so amazing to me and
I soaked it up, and I still am...
That's also when I found out I was pregnant with my son. The doctor said, I couldn't
carry and go to classes, with my history... I would have to lay in bed through the
pregnancy. I had a history of miscarriage, addiction, abuse, suicide attempts, and
I had been having many health problems for a long time... Fatigue, muscle pain,
weakness, loss of appetite, loss of balance, loss of muscle control... I told him if
" God " wanted me to give birth, I would. That he was the one in control... Not him...
that I had laid in bed for three months of the last pregnancy, and lost my children
anyway. I felt God wanted me to go to school, so I went.
I gave birth to my son in Oct. of 1987, took my son to classes with me after he was
born. I had talked to my professors about it at the beginning of the semester when
I found out and explained I did not want to break bonding with my child after he
was born... I also explained he might not be born, that I was determined to go to
school, and leaving it in God's hands... One female professor gave me a hard time
and told me I should go home and stay home, that I had no business being there.
I dropped her class, and signed up for another one.
I had some of the best professors anyone could ever ask for, they went out of their
way to accommodate me, even helping to care for my son, while I was in their
classrooms. I'm not sure if it was my ignorance, school, the birth of my son, the illness
that slapped me in the face, when I awoke in severe pain and paralyzed one morning
in almost my entire body (as I had mentioned earlier ).
It could have been my fight with illness, school, sobriety or a combination of all that
ended my marriage, that year. We had been married 8 yrs. our son 6 mo. old when it
ended.
Maybe as the old saying goes we just grew apart...
My illness would be another battle, that would never end. Like my addiction... As well
as, another threat to my sobriety... Prescription drugs has always been a battle in my
life.
Because, doctors love to write prescriptions... Pharmaceutical companies pay them
kick backs to do so... Health Care and Medicine is Big Business. I didn't fully
understand this completely at first... I just trusted they were there to help me and
heal me... As I had always been told... There is no money or profit in healing...
Money is made by writing the next prescription, and the next... It wasn't until, a
neighbor I had recognized some side effects I was having, she was a nurse, and she
asked me if the doctors had me on medication. I told her of all the drugs they had me
on, and she told me not to just trust them. That they were paid to write prescriptions.
That I needed to read about the things they were prescribing me, educate myself, on
my illness, and treatment options... Because they weren't really about healing... (and
an epiphany occurred)
I would struggled with this for years, trying to remind myself not to just trust them.
But when you are in pain, crippling... For instance, one morning I awoke in severe
pain and all my fingers had twisted completely around backwards. That kind of pain
and just the sight of it, the fear... that sets in... All makes you run to a doctors and
beg them for help... 8 specialist looked on my x-rays scratching their heads,
whispering to one another, they had never seen this before, they were amazed they
were not broken, but did not know what to do or how it had occurred... So they
wrapped them down on tongue depressors, with tape tightly, as to straighten them.
Gave me a bag of tongue depressors, a roll of tape, lot's of muscle relaxers, and
pain pills = "narcotics" and sent me home.
This is the way it would be for years, they would play guessing games, and prescribe
me lots of pills = "narcotics" to kill the pain. It was easy to justify taking all their
drugs, for my pain. Hell they made me legal and somewhat OK... Not to mention,
I wanted to believe they were trying to help me.
Eventually, forced to quit school, by the illness attacking me, divorce, now a dead
beat ex who refused to pay his child support, even after I gave him the house
(against my lawyers advise). Combined with my being unable to work due to illness...
I would be left homeless with my child who was now a little more than a year old.
Unable to care for myself or him. I had no one to turn to but the family who had
raised and abused me. Who were in Ky.. They took in my son, but there was not
room for me. I ended up on a cot, in a tent, in a field behind their house. I was
paralyzed nearly completely by now. I lay and worried for my child, inside the
house and prayed he was alright and at the same time was grateful for the little
care they gave me and him.
Because, I was homeless, battling addiction, illness, and in distress... All of which
affected my thinking process and I had no address to write on their forms, so with
out an address, I was told there was no aid or help from outside sources... and no
one at any of these offices at any time suggested to me to just get a P.O. Box for
an address to write down on their forms. In fact it was years later, after I had
gotten on my feet, that someone who had found out what I had been through
asked me, " why I didn't just get a P.O. Box at the time ? ".
As the weather grew cold, as the winter drew near, and the snow fell... The cold
and dampness only increased my pain. One night as I laid in the cold, and my pain.
I felt as if I was going to die. Angry, I began to scream out at the Lord. I asked
him if he was just going to leave me here to die after all of this, that I had already survived...??? In fact I told him, I guess you are just going to let me lay here and
die...! and then He said to me, "If that is what you want to do..." I thought how
hateful that was of him...? I said, what do you mean if it is what I want to do ?
I have no choice ? I'm in pain and cannot move... He said to me, "You have
always had a choice and have always been in pain and it has never stopped you
from moving before..." That which stops you is in the mind, you must discipline
your mind to dealing with the pain... As you already know..."
I said, I cannot walk... He said to me, " Who told you that ? " This shocked me
because... These were the same words he had said to Adam in the garden, when
he was hiding from the lord and this confused me... So I began to think. What
does he mean, who told me that ? Then I remembered, back when it all began
years before, the morning my fingers were all upside down. All the doctors
whispering... One of them had said, eventually, I would not be able to walk, that
I would be crippled by this. Then I said to the father, is that it, is that what you
are talking about ?
to get energy, to get through the day... I was still using all their other drugs, downers,
pain pills, muscle relaxers, psychotropics (all prescribed by someone too someone)
and alcohol... Now, I was speed-balling, as it is called. Still suicidal and had overdosed
successfully a few times by now... Even though some how I was still alive ???
There were also many inhalents on the market, I expereimented with during
these years. That you can still find today like Rush, Head Cleaner,...
As I've already stated at 15, I was married (to my first husband). That is when
addiction took on a whole new meaning in my life, or I had found another drug, called relationships. One reason I had married so many times... They were also an addicts.
My husbands... They all had their drugs, as different as they was...
It was during my first marriage when I was 15, when I also discovered L.S.D. or Acid,
from here on I would go on to use almost every drug available on streets, telling
myself, as long as I never stuck a needle in my arm I was not an addict, or like those
people... I had seen many of them... and wasn't going to be one of them... as long
as the Doctor gave me my shots... LOL !
This (my first) marriage was very abusive (like all the other 4 since) and I did my
best to lye in my bed (each time), that I had made for myself, believing that marriage
was for life (each time), until death do you part. Remember, I said earlier I was a
church going girl. I believed in and loved God and his word very much during and
through-out all of this and was just ignorant enough for awhile to believe the vows
I said had come from scripture and were the will of God. I tried to live up to them
each time even though once I had learned they were not. Because they were vows
I had made before God. This nearly killed me a few times. Trying to maintain this
word/honor. But I do not believe... God meant for our spouses to kill us.
When I was 18, I found out I was pregnant the first time. So, I started trying to
clean up and I quit everything. This left me in D.T.S. at first, I used pot to get
through the D.T.S., and then I moved to Arkansas at that time, (not only to
help my grandmother, who was blind, with my grandfather who had been left
paralyzed by strokes) but to get away from the temptation of using with the
old crowd, my so called friends... A step my husband didn't want to take, so
I tried dragging him along with me, kicking and screaming.
We had already had problems before this, but this only made things worse. Then
I lost my first child in my eighth mo., after lifting on my grandfather trying to put
him back in his bed... That, was a log on the fire... My husband was angry and cold.
I choose to use old coping skills and got drunk. He would drink and abuse me, than
I'd drink some more and use again. It was a vicious circle..
I lost three more children, 2 pregnancies, a set of twins (the last) during this marriage
before the birth of my son. (None of the miscarriages had anything to do with drugs
or abuse of drugs... Later I would find out why I had such a hard time carrying...)
I would get clean, he would abuse me... I'd end up pregnant... I'd miscarry, he'd get
angrier, abuse me more... and I use some more...We blamed each other...
That's when I started studying, started educating myself again, taking classes.
First in religion and biblical research, turning to God for the answers. Then a boss
of mine said something about college, a dream, I had forgotten about and never
thought possible... I was told I wasn't good enough, and didn't have enough money
for that. No one had ever encouraged me to attempt that. I had dreamed of it. Yet
the schools I attended while growing up never even acted as if it was an option.
I had grown up admiring my dad's mother, the blind grandmother in Arkansas, who
had lead me to Arkansas. Her name written in the sidewalk in front of " Old Main ",
the first building on the University of Arkansas's Campus where she had attended,
when she was younger, in a time when not many women were higher educated. She
was amazing to me, I would study the way she did everything. Her house was always
clean, she made everything from scratch, including soap from lard. All blind. I would
wait until she left the room and then run over and I'd close my eyes and try to do it
as good as she did. LOL ! I found I wasn't good at it at all... Being blind that is... Later
I would also understand this need to understand how she did it...
I told my boss, I could never afford college and had never graduated from high school,
because I had married. He told me about the G.E.D., Grants and Scholarships. How
they would help me pay for school...
That got me thinking, maybe I could go to college. I started checking into it and found
out if I could and what I had to do. That's when I got my G.E.D. and applied to the
" University of Arkansas " and got excepted...Wow! It was all so amazing to me and
I soaked it up, and I still am...
That's also when I found out I was pregnant with my son. The doctor said, I couldn't
carry and go to classes, with my history... I would have to lay in bed through the
pregnancy. I had a history of miscarriage, addiction, abuse, suicide attempts, and
I had been having many health problems for a long time... Fatigue, muscle pain,
weakness, loss of appetite, loss of balance, loss of muscle control... I told him if
" God " wanted me to give birth, I would. That he was the one in control... Not him...
that I had laid in bed for three months of the last pregnancy, and lost my children
anyway. I felt God wanted me to go to school, so I went.
I gave birth to my son in Oct. of 1987, took my son to classes with me after he was
born. I had talked to my professors about it at the beginning of the semester when
I found out and explained I did not want to break bonding with my child after he
was born... I also explained he might not be born, that I was determined to go to
school, and leaving it in God's hands... One female professor gave me a hard time
and told me I should go home and stay home, that I had no business being there.
I dropped her class, and signed up for another one.
I had some of the best professors anyone could ever ask for, they went out of their
way to accommodate me, even helping to care for my son, while I was in their
classrooms. I'm not sure if it was my ignorance, school, the birth of my son, the illness
that slapped me in the face, when I awoke in severe pain and paralyzed one morning
in almost my entire body (as I had mentioned earlier ).
It could have been my fight with illness, school, sobriety or a combination of all that
ended my marriage, that year. We had been married 8 yrs. our son 6 mo. old when it
ended.
Maybe as the old saying goes we just grew apart...
My illness would be another battle, that would never end. Like my addiction... As well
as, another threat to my sobriety... Prescription drugs has always been a battle in my
life.
Because, doctors love to write prescriptions... Pharmaceutical companies pay them
kick backs to do so... Health Care and Medicine is Big Business. I didn't fully
understand this completely at first... I just trusted they were there to help me and
heal me... As I had always been told... There is no money or profit in healing...
Money is made by writing the next prescription, and the next... It wasn't until, a
neighbor I had recognized some side effects I was having, she was a nurse, and she
asked me if the doctors had me on medication. I told her of all the drugs they had me
on, and she told me not to just trust them. That they were paid to write prescriptions.
That I needed to read about the things they were prescribing me, educate myself, on
my illness, and treatment options... Because they weren't really about healing... (and
an epiphany occurred)
I would struggled with this for years, trying to remind myself not to just trust them.
But when you are in pain, crippling... For instance, one morning I awoke in severe
pain and all my fingers had twisted completely around backwards. That kind of pain
and just the sight of it, the fear... that sets in... All makes you run to a doctors and
beg them for help... 8 specialist looked on my x-rays scratching their heads,
whispering to one another, they had never seen this before, they were amazed they
were not broken, but did not know what to do or how it had occurred... So they
wrapped them down on tongue depressors, with tape tightly, as to straighten them.
Gave me a bag of tongue depressors, a roll of tape, lot's of muscle relaxers, and
pain pills = "narcotics" and sent me home.
This is the way it would be for years, they would play guessing games, and prescribe
me lots of pills = "narcotics" to kill the pain. It was easy to justify taking all their
drugs, for my pain. Hell they made me legal and somewhat OK... Not to mention,
I wanted to believe they were trying to help me.
Eventually, forced to quit school, by the illness attacking me, divorce, now a dead
beat ex who refused to pay his child support, even after I gave him the house
(against my lawyers advise). Combined with my being unable to work due to illness...
I would be left homeless with my child who was now a little more than a year old.
Unable to care for myself or him. I had no one to turn to but the family who had
raised and abused me. Who were in Ky.. They took in my son, but there was not
room for me. I ended up on a cot, in a tent, in a field behind their house. I was
paralyzed nearly completely by now. I lay and worried for my child, inside the
house and prayed he was alright and at the same time was grateful for the little
care they gave me and him.
Because, I was homeless, battling addiction, illness, and in distress... All of which
affected my thinking process and I had no address to write on their forms, so with
out an address, I was told there was no aid or help from outside sources... and no
one at any of these offices at any time suggested to me to just get a P.O. Box for
an address to write down on their forms. In fact it was years later, after I had
gotten on my feet, that someone who had found out what I had been through
asked me, " why I didn't just get a P.O. Box at the time ? ".
As the weather grew cold, as the winter drew near, and the snow fell... The cold
and dampness only increased my pain. One night as I laid in the cold, and my pain.
I felt as if I was going to die. Angry, I began to scream out at the Lord. I asked
him if he was just going to leave me here to die after all of this, that I had already survived...??? In fact I told him, I guess you are just going to let me lay here and
die...! and then He said to me, "If that is what you want to do..." I thought how
hateful that was of him...? I said, what do you mean if it is what I want to do ?
I have no choice ? I'm in pain and cannot move... He said to me, "You have
always had a choice and have always been in pain and it has never stopped you
from moving before..." That which stops you is in the mind, you must discipline
your mind to dealing with the pain... As you already know..."
I said, I cannot walk... He said to me, " Who told you that ? " This shocked me
because... These were the same words he had said to Adam in the garden, when
he was hiding from the lord and this confused me... So I began to think. What
does he mean, who told me that ? Then I remembered, back when it all began
years before, the morning my fingers were all upside down. All the doctors
whispering... One of them had said, eventually, I would not be able to walk, that
I would be crippled by this. Then I said to the father, is that it, is that what you
are talking about ?
