Life On Life's Terms

There is nothing that we can go through that drinking and using drugs won't make worse.

It was clinical depression that led me to experiment with drugs and eventually get addicted to marijuana. I was dealing with constant thoughts of suicide (and even homicide), low energy and a pervasive sense of sadness.

As a child I had to figure out everything on my own. I never got advice, good or bad, or was encouraged to talk about anything going on in my life. Feelings were unacceptable, especially anger (on my part). There was no support of my extracurricular activities -- I was often the only one on the entire swimteam that never had family at the meets. It was okay for my stepfather to have temper tantrums and beat the crap out of me. When I moved in with my biological father, his wife was the only one allowed to get angry.... She was angry all the time. They never speculated that the reason I was crying all the time, and had problems getting up in the mornings might be due to depression. I wanted to see a counselor -- but of course their guilt over their abuse prevented them from taking me to one. And I'll bet that they really wanted to continue to do drugs.

In my way of figuring, it was the death of my biological mother, the serious sexual abuse I went through at eight years old, and the emotional and physical abuse of my stepmother that caused me to feel so crappy all the time.

I was very much against drugs until I turned 17. I started smoking cigarettes and experimented with the marijuana I stole from my biological father's stash. It used to make me laugh. But it made me all but mute. I didn't have much to say while on it. I couldn't think clearly. So I rarely used it between the ages of 17 and 25. I experimented with LSD after I got out of the Navy and was living with my ex-husband. He used to rape me while we were on LSD. When I wasn't experimenting myself -- I was against drugs, especially manufactured ones. I didn't like the effect drugs had on the people around me.

That dislike of manufactured drugs kept me away from psychiatrists. I knew for most of my adult life that I had serious depression, sometimes really black depressive episodes. But the possibility that it was situational always stuck in my mind. I didn't try suicide till I was 27. But, thoughts of suicide were constantly with me.

One cannot live with clinical depression. It is not life on life's terms as far as I'm concerned. Life doesn't hand us constant sadness and pain unless there is something WRONG with us. I had a chemical imbalance that needed treatment. I am pro-necessary-medication in my recovery precisely because of this.

I've suffered several losses since I got into recovery -- at least 7 friends have died that I know of. I lost my freedom when I was locked up. My kids are with their adoptive parents. People don't seem to want much to do with a schizophrenic woman, no matter how lucid she is. My whole family took out a no contact order against me. I even broke my ankle in February of 2007 and had to get surgery on it. (I really busted it badly.)

It was a God thing. I was prescribed oxycontin and Vicoden while healing from surgery. I was so afraid. Where I was living though, when I was recovering from the broken ankle, they doled out the meds to me as prescribed. I didn't transfer addictions, thank God/dess.

It is necessary to maintain a positive attitude and live in the moment to cope with "stuff" that happens to us. It is important to keep perspective, because there is always someone who has it worse. That kept me alive during my depression, really it did. I did learn some coping skills before I started using marijuana constantly. Recovery to me, meant relearning some old coping skills. I read a lot. I do good deeds. I don't beat myself up. I don't pay attention to the rabid criticism of my family any more. Things simply don't hurt as much as they did when I was being sexually abused, or living with suicidal tendencies. Faith, too, is key. I asked God to prove Himself to me several times, and He did -- even though this scared me. Knowing that I have a soul and it will not die helps me immensely.

Denial is not a river in Egypt, but denial is a stage of grief, and can be a healthy one at that. Addiction keeps us stuck in denial. We don't deal with our feelings and healing is much slower physically and mentally. Eventually, pot was giving me serious anxiety attacks in addition to not helping with the depression or psychosis.

I never want to go back to that.