800-671-4304
Sponsored
I didn't think my life was different from anyone else's growing up but it was.
I didn’t think my life was different from anyone else’s growing up but it was. My mother was addicted to prescription drugs given to her by multiple medical doctors throughout my entire childhood. There wasn’t a day when I would came home from school that I didn’t find her passed out on the couch. I would of course have to make us dinner and clean up, which I did and didn’t think anything of it. I actually thought every kid did this when they got home. My father did not want anything to do with me and looking back on it, I realize it was probably due to my mother’s addiction.
At the age of 6 I was placed in a foster home for about 3 months because my mother decided to drive to the pharmacy with me in the car to pick up her prescription for Phenobarbital. She was too intoxicated to get out of the car and told me to go in and get it. The pharmacist wasn’t about to give a 6 year old child that prescription and asked where my mother was. I told him, he went outside and immediately called the police after speaking with my mother briefly. I was then taken away and I remember crying and feeling so alone. Oddly enough that alone feeling was somehow comforting to me as I was technically alone all the time due to her addiction.
On my 12th birthday my mother and I went out to a nice restaurant to celebrate. She had already taken her drugs which she now mixed with alcohol. She started slurring and before I knew it she was nodding off right into her soup bowl. I was mortified and grabbed her arm and she started screaming at me in front of everyone there. Again, I was mortified and angry! I was angry that I was put into this position of caretaker and just wanted to be a kid having fun.
I blame the medical doctors, but I also blame my mother for her addiction. I hated prescription drugs and what they did to her and to me. They ruined her life and mine. I made a decision at that time to pursue a career in helping others holistically and became a Chiropractor.
Later in her life she did finally get clean, but at Christmas of 2002 she was acting weird again. She was not making sense and slurring so I checked her purse and sure enough there was a bottle of Vicodin. I told her to please leave and go home. She asked me to let her stay one more night and I refused. I told her I would not do this anymore, I had done it all my life and I was done. She left and on New Year’s Day 2003 I found out she had died of a heart attack related to complications from her diabetes. I still live with the guilt of not letting her stay one more night.