“She Was a Nice Girl”- A
Heroin Addict’s Story
She appears
clean, well-kept and is considered fashionable in accordance with Seventeen magazine standards, with a
designer blouse, dark jeans, leather shoes and jewelry which ties her outfit
together perfectly. Her nails are neatly polished and her hair appears smooth
and silky, pulled back in a neat ponytail. Her parents are professionals, her father an insurance salesman and her
mother a first grade teacher. She grew up in a nice neighborhood with one
younger sister with who she held a close relationship. Her parents were very much involved in her childhood, even paying a
rather high tuition for her to attend a prestigious private high school.
Surrounded by tears of sorrow and expressions of shock and disbelief, in her
coffin she lies. She is a beautiful seventeen year whom could have had the
brightest of futures. But she has a secret. A secret no one came to terms with
until it was too late. She is a Heroin
addict.
She always
said she would never try drugs, president of the ‘Teens Against Substance Abuse’ organization in middle
school and consistent recipient of the high honor roll. She played sports, was
even voted Most Valuable Player of the girls’ soccer team. A “nice girl”, she
was well liked by her teachers and peers.
Like many
teens, she went through a “rebellious stage” at around age sixteen. She began
dating an older boy and surrounding herself with an older crowd whom challenged
authority and abused high allowances from their wealthy parents. All it took
was one party. One Percocet. One was
enough. She was hooked.
Soon she
could not go a day without at least one Percocet.
And then she began needing one every twelve hours. Every six hours. Every
three. She began needing more and more to get the same result the drug had initially given her. And soon,
the “feel good” (high) of the Percocet pills no longer existed. She
found that she needed Percocet just
to wake up in the morning and carry out a day of basic tasks. A task as simple
as brushing her teeth could not even be imagined without Percocet.
Her parents were well off financially
and gave her money to buy things that she wanted. But even an unusually steep
teenage allowance could not fund the high price of Percocet, especially as she continued to increase her dosage of the
drug. Before she knew it, the “nice
girl” was stealing to buy pills.
From her friends. Parents. Grandparents. She even stole from her younger
sister’s piggy bank.
Dreams of becoming a veterinarian and
playing college soccer were put on hold as she found herself injecting Heroin into her veins. Another addict told her that the Heroin high was comparable to the Percocet high at less than half of the
cost. She cringed at the idea of injecting a needle at first. She didn’t see
herself as the type of person whom would do such a thing. But she needed it.
Couldn’t live without it. Didn’t care about much of anything else. Just needed
the high.
Her parents were in denial. As they
had always been close with their daughter, they noticed uncharacteristic
behavior. The school even called expressing concerns about their daughter, as
her grades were declining and she had been kicked off the soccer team for
failing to attend both practices and games. They addressed the behavior of
course, “grounding” their daughter and providing standard lectures. However, at
the end of the day, they shrugged it off, telling themselves that their
daughter was simply going through a phase and would soon come out of it. They
didn’t know that their little girl wore long sleeves, even in the hot summer,
as a means to cover her track marks.
Or that she had gone as far as having sex with a stranger for money to fund a Heroin fix.
Eventually, her parents recognized
that a drug problem existed. But
they loved their daughter and trusted her enough to believe her when she said
that she was fine and could quit using without professional help. Her mother,
in seeing how much her daughter was suffering from withdrawal, even gave her
daughter money, knowing in the back of her mind that it would more than likely
find the hands of a Heroin dealer.
It was her sister whom found her
unresponsive on that rainy spring morning. Her twelve year old sister. She
found her surrounded by syringes, her face lifeless and her body cold as ice. The
discovery was enough to send her sister into a tale-spin of depression, a
depression so severe that she spent a significant amount of time in a
residential mental health facility.
This story may seem like a long shot.
A rare incidence. But in fact, stories like this one are increasingly common. Heroin use has spread like wild-fire in
the state of New Hampshire,
affecting every population, even the “nice girls and boys”. And codependence is just as common, an
understandable reality. Parents are instilled with the instinct to protect
their children from pain, and there is no easy way to process and support a
child’s struggle with addiction.
So How Do I Ensure that My Child Does Not Meet the Same Fate
that the Girl in this Story Met?
Parenting is more stressful of a
job than ever. As we continue to hear about the rise of such fatal drugs as
Heroin in the state of New Hampshire; support from professionals trained
specifically in working with families dealing with addiction issues is more important than ever. Self-Empowerment NH, LLC specializes in
working with families suffering from substance
abuse issues. Through both individual counseling and family counseling;
Selfempnh is here to serve as an empathetic, confidential and non-judgmental
support system.
Self-Empowerment NH, LLC is also excited to announce half and full
day presentations, one in which is titled
Signs and Symptoms of Substance Abuse
in the Workplace. Signs and Symptoms of Substance
Abuse in the Workplace is an interactive presentation geared for parents
and educators seeking education about youth substance abuse. Learn about the
signs and symptoms of youth substance
abuse by drug of choice, and appropriate steps for intervention and
recovery. For more information about the signs of youth drug abuse, counseling and group services and/or presentations, please contact Lori Magoon, MLADC, LCMHC at (603)470-6937 or selfempowermentnh@gmail.com.
You are not alone. Open the door to self empowerment.
Open the door to a better tomorrow.
