Lifestyle of an Addict

Get ready, this is a long one, but its an important piece of the puzzle of my lifestyle living with D.


After acceptance of who D really was, a drug addict, it wasn't long before his friends and family members became comfortable using drugs around me.  I was somewhat curious about the drugs so I would stay in the room unless they asked me to leave. I found myself mesmerized by how many different drugs one person would do in the same day. Living there I learned pretty much everything there is to know about the lifestyle of a drug addict. The one thing that stands out in my mind is they Live to get high. Their day begins and ends with them chasing a high that I believe they will never find. Many of them told me all it took was just one time of trying meth for them to get hooked, and yet they all begged me daily to try it "just one time".  Meth wasn't the only drug I became familiar with. They had a routine and it wasn't long before I knew what they were going to want to do before they said anything about it.

His mother had a routine that she followed at the first of the month after getting her disability check. She would pay for gas in my jeep for me to take her around to pay the power and water bill, go pick up her HIV meds, and go to the dollar store to buy items for the house. Also, received $300 in food stamps so I would take her to get groceries but she would only spend half or a  little more on groceries then go exchange the rest of her food stamps for drugs. The drug dealers would get her card & pin number, go to the grocery store then return it to her with her drugs. If she wanted $50 in drugs then they would buy $100 of groceries. This was a monthly thing that I observed not only from D's mother but from several other people.

For D, his routine was every week beginning on Friday.  Friday was payday, and that always made me dread the weekend. First of all D was suppose to give his mother money for the bills and help buy groceries for the house. Also he promised to help me pay my jeep payment and insurance since I was taking him back and forth to work. He never did this. The most he did was give his mom $25 or $40 to keep her from yelling and arguing with him He would buy food for himself from walmart's deli or a $5 dollar pizza, oh yeah one time he bought about $30 in groceries, but he complained about having to do it. Lastly, he would put a few dollars of gas in my jeep but it was never more than just enough to get him back and forth to work.

So, on Friday after picking him, his dad and his uncle up from work the first thing they all wanted to do is go was to the beer store. After getting home he would eat supper then he would ask me to take him down the road to a friends house aka "the camp". It didn't take me but just one time to figure out this "friend" was a drug dealer. There were five men that he would go to regularly, aside from getting random items from real friends or other family members. One of his regular (ice aka meth) drug dealers just happened to be one of his cousins. He would get his drugs, go back to the apartment and hide in our room or the bathroom to do them. After about a month of being there he was more comfortable with me being there and he would do his drugs in front of me both smoking the meth and shooting it up his veins. I hated the thought that someone would be so addicted to a drug they would put needles in their veins. I was sad for him, he didn't like that he had to do this but he had been a meth addict for so long that smoking it didn't really get him high anymore. He would go through a gram or more in one night.

Most times he would get finished and ask me to take him back to get more, or he would call up someone else to get something different. There were many nights we were awake till 1 or 2 a.m. because he had gotten high and was what they call "geeking", its where he would always say he was looking for something but he never would find it. He would pull the couch apart, or pull everything out of the closet, he would raise up the carpet to look under it, and many many times he would think he dropped something in my jeep so i would have to let him go "geeking" through my jeep. I hated this and often I would get very angry with him because I would have to get up and go to work the next morning where he could stay up for days with little or no sleep. It was very unfair, yet I continued to put up with it.

Every week D would be broke by Sunday night or Monday at the latest so when I would get my paycheck every other Tuesday, he would ask to borrow money and promise to pay it back on Friday. If I said no we would fight, not physically but verbally and it was always more intense than my husband and I ever fought. D would cuss me, call me names and even threaten to hit me. He never did hit me but I was always scared he would so therefore I always gave in to what he wanted. Once one of his family members told me hat he said he didn't care about me that he was only using me for my car and money.

I know your probably wondering why in the world did I agree to do this, why did I continue to live in these conditions. I was afraid to be alone. I knew I couldn't go back home because I had already begged Jamie to take me back and he said no. Jamie had a girlfriend that made him happy, she treated him better than I had and so he had no reason to take me back. I felt stuck. I had the opportunity to go stay with my father but I had a really good reason for not staying there. I also had my brother's house but they have helped out people in the past and all it did was put a strain on their family.

In other words, I didn't want to be a burden to anyone. I felt as if I sort of deserved to put up with this lifestyle. I did this to myself therefore I had to get myself out of this situation. Little did I know but I was sinking deeper and deeper into depression and eventually I began feeling hopeless and I started having suicidal thoughts.

I didn't understand why I was going through this. I have always said I believe everything in life happens for a reason. God doesn't make mistakes, and if God brings you to it, he will get you through it.