Sunday, November 18, 2007

Living With Addiction ~ Part I


I lived with addiction for years, I am writing about it now for a couple reasons...


1. I hope writing about it will help me relieve some of the anger I still harbor inside.

2. I hope that I can help just one person in my situation overcome the hell they are living in.

The 2nd person I married was a prescription pill addict. He would do incredibly stupid things to get his "fix". In the beginning I was either blind, stupid or just plain unwilling to see the truth on what was going on in our lives.


We lived together in (NY state) for quite some time before we actually got married. There were several trips to the doctors, several trips to the pharmacy's, and several ER trips. He had a Dr. in "his pocket" that would pretty much give him whatever he wanted at one point. Once a month he would get Demerol for his so called headaches and a continuous prescription of vicaden.

In New York state, doctors have to turn over certain prescriptions like Demerol to a certain authority this way the certain authority knows that the doctor is not over prescribing the drug to people like my ex. The prescription is actually written in triplicate. I guess you could say they have a prescription drug watch dog. I'm sure they have the same requirements for Oxycontin. This is why he could only get Demerol once a month. He would liquefy the Demerol and inject it with a hypodermic needle and proceed get high.

The injection sight would often become infected as he didn't put a lid over the liquefied Demerol, and contaminants would get into it. On four occasions the infections became immune to antibiotics and had he to be operated on...

Oh goody! More Drugs!

I believe at some points the friendly drug doctor had cut him off looking back now. Things could be quiet for months at a time. You see we lived about 2.5 hours north of New Your City, however he went there pretty much every week for work. I didn't know what was up when he was there.

Of course, when he would get desperate, something would happen so he could get his drugs.
I remember one occasion, waking up in the middle of the night hearing a man saying "SIR?" repeatedly. Shadow, our cocker was barking wildly and blue lights shining on and off in my bedroom. We kept a 357 and Colt 45 in the house then and both loaded, I didn't even think to grab one when I put on my robe and went to the top of the stairs.

I yelled down, "What's going on?!?!"

A familiar face poked his head around the corner, and he replied, "Police Ma'am, are you alone up there?" Good thing I didn't grab one of the guns huh?


Long story short, I was alone upstairs, my ex was laying face down on the floor downstairs with the phone in his hand and the glass was broken out of our coffee table. The police thought there was an intruder.

I knew the police and EMT's because of my job and the fact that we lived in a very small village.
The EMT's offered to let me go to the hospital with him in the ambulance, I declined. I said I would meet him there. The doctor in the ER said he had a severe migraine and some sort of issue with a vessel in his eye. He prescribed loratab and imatrex. The imatrex was not covered by insurance and loratab is generic & therefor cheap so I picked up the 2nd. The imtrex was $100.00 for 3 tablets and was a relatively new drug for migraines at this time.

This was one of the problems though, every time we went to the ER the doctors would back him up with his pain complaint.

To Be Continued...

Living With Addiction ~ Part II

Living With Addiction ~ Part III

Living With Addiction ~ Part IV

Living With Addiction ~ Part V

Living With Addiction ~ Part VI

Living With Addiction ~ Part VII

Living With Addiction ~ Part VIII

Living With Addiction ~ Part IX

Living With Addiction ~ Part X

Living With Addiction ~ Part XI

Living With Addition ~ Part XII

Living With Addition ~ Part XIII

Living With Addiction ~ Part XIV

Living With Addiction ~ Part XV

Living With Addiction ~ Part XVI ~ Freedom?

Life After Living With Addiction ~ Part 1

Life After Living With Addiction ~ The End!









Photo courtsey of Deviantart

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Finally in here to read. I already would have flipped out over the coffee table and people in the house. Still reading ...

Lysa Napolitano said...

This happened in a town as small as yours. Had the blue lights not been flashing I may have flipped and shot first...