Sometimes we just have to look at our lives and say, “It can’t go on like this something has to change.” And that is when the best things start to happen.
“I woke up one morning and I just said, ‘This is enough. If I’m going to do drugs, I’m going to lose my baby girl.’ I went to my parents, and I had told them that I needed help. And that’s when we started seeking information about the treatment center. I met a counselor, and she changed my whole life.”
These are the words of Meagan, her words lacked no conviction as did her desire to change. Meagan started drug abuse early in her life and she felt the effect that it had on her immediately. Not in a month, not in a week, but within the first few days. Her family saw her struggling but they never left her side.
Addiction is one of those crippling diseases that makes you short-sighted and unless you feel extremely terrible at some point you can’t get yourself to stop. For some by the time, the pain is extreme and they begin to realize how bad their addiction actually is, it is already too late. But for every story of misery, there is a story that is riddled in the same agony, something that is cut from the same cloth, but it has a different outcome only because the choices that people made were the right ones. Meagan is that story, from a downward spiral into the abyss to a slow climb out of the purgatory.
In her own words, Meagan explains, “I can’t say why I did it, but I was just fed up and Mad. Once I started using opiates I changed into a completely different person. I didn’t care about anybody, I would steal, and I would lie.”
She regrets the kind of person she had become and the only reason that she chose to get her life together was with concerns for her daughter. Listening to Meagan gives us an insight to what goes on in the mind of an Addict, for most of the time that she was using the substance she didn’t feel like herself, she felt like she had lost control of her ability to think. And the only thing on her mind was how she was going to get her day’s dosage, and that is what happens with many drug addicts. They seem to lose control of who they are and all they end up caring about are the drugs.
She goes into further detail explaining how the drugs not only impacted her mental state but also took a toll on her physical condition, “I would wake up in the morning and my legs would be throbbing, I was throwing up, I was freezing all the time. It is excruciating.
And it got me so bad that I didn’t think I would be able to get out of it.
Drug Addiction is excruciatingly painful and it manifests in people, and it changes who they actually are to the point where they don’t care about anything else as long as they can get their dose of the drug. People stop caring about what they eat, how they will earn a living, it gets so bad that people end up needing the drug just to survive. And they lose their mind when they don’t get it, they end up committing crimes to be able to afford drugs. Most of them end up on the streets. Drug addiction is not a joke and people need to understand that.
It is really difficult with addicts, because when they are using as the term is called, they are often not themselves and they refuse to seek help, and they hide the fact that they have been using so that someone doesn’t take the drugs away from them. The way that drugs can take control of a person’s life is really ruthless. It completely separates them from society which is why it is important to check in on people that use drugs.
Dealing with addicts is really sensitive and tricky, it’s like walking on eggshells. It is painful for people who are drug addicts to start recovery but the pain of still being an addict is worse. It is painful not only to the addict themselves but to the people around the, their loved ones, their friends, and family. Meagan’s dad said, “You have your child just disintegrating in front of you, and you feel helpless.”
Meagan is a story that we all should look at, with pure determination to not let her life go off the rails. She started her recovery with her daughter in mind and Meagan realized that she would lose her daughter if she didn’t leave the drugs. She joined a rehabilitation program and has turned her life around. She grabbed her addiction by it’s throat and threw it out of her system. Now she helps people that want to quit drugs and helps them see how the drugs have been destroying their lives
She says, “I have been sober for over a year and a half now, and I’m trying to complete my grade 12 now. And I used to be ashamed of telling people my story and now I just want to help people, because I have been helped.”
“I am feeling what it is like to be normal again”
