Dying was her only way out, one addict thought


Fourth in a five-part series, PORTRAITS OF ADDICTION, exploring the opiate-addiction crisis and its impact on our community.

RELATED: After addiction ends, stigma often lingers

By JORDYN GRZELEWSKI

jgrzelewski@vindy.com

BOARDMAN

Sitting at her kitchen table on a July night in 2013, Jessica thought about killing herself.

“I just wanted to die,” she said. “It was my only way out, I thought.”

To look at Jessica, 24, today you would never guess that the perky young woman with beautiful blond hair and a quick smile almost died because of an opiate addiction.

“Life is a miracle today.

Every day I wake up so grateful to ... go do what I do,” she said.

It was a long journey to this point.

Jessica, whose real name has been changed because she would only speak on the condition of anonymity, started abusing substances when she was 13.

“I got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, and my whole world got turned upside down. I got real depressed, real anxious, and didn’t know how to deal with things,” she said.

At the time it seemed normal.

“I just thought that’s what high school kids did. I was drinking a lot at that point, and smoking some pot,” she said.

Fast-forward a few years, and Jessica’s problem began to spiral out of control.

“My parents got a divorce when I was 20, and my grandpa died the same year. And that’s when the opiates kind of kicked in,” she said. “I did not want to deal with anything. It was just the darkest time in my life.”

“One day you think you’re out having fun. The next day you wake up thinking you have the flu when really you’re dope-sick; you’re withdrawing,” she said. “It’s the worst feeling in the world.”

The breaking point came when Jessica got caught for stealing more than $10,000 worth of checks from her grandma. At that point she had the option to get treatment – right as her friends went from pills to heroin.

While she waited to get into treatment, one of those friends died.

“I remember waking up going, ‘Oh my God.’ Like, jealous she died,” she said.

Jessica got into a treatment center Oct. 4, 2013. A few weeks ago she marked 18 months of sobriety.

Christina, 36, of Boardman, has a story that starts much the same way.

“It didn’t really kick in to a full-blown addiction until my 20s, but I first started drinking and experimenting when I was 13,” said Christina, whose name also has been changed.

“I think a lot of it was trying to fit in,” she said. “It was people I grew up with my whole life, and we’d always experiment. They were able to stop, but I wasn’t.”

She remembers the point when she wanted to die.

“My mother passed away when I was 29 years old. And after that, I tried to basically drink myself to death or die of an overdose,” she said. “I understand being at that point where you want to die. I’ve been there. A lot of drug addicts have.”

Today Christina, a single mother of two, has been

sober for six years.

THE ADDICTION

Jessica and Christina’s stories aren’t uncommon.

“It happens all the time. People receive a prescription and become addicted very quickly,” said Dr. Daniel Brown, medical director at Meridian Community Care.

“There’s genetic factors there. There’s also personality factors there – some people are just more prone to becoming addicted,” he explained. “A lot of times, maybe the person has some mood disorder issues, anxiety or depression. They take an opiate and suddenly they feel good.”

Neither Jessica nor Christina ever used heroin, but Brown says that’s often the next step.

“Eventually they need more, more, more, and it starts losing that effect, so they need stronger and stronger things,” he said. “The thing with heroin, if somebody’s not taken any opiates, no pills, nothing like that and you gave them heroin — heroin is so powerful and so addicting, you could be hooked on the first dose.”

Not only is it addictive, it’s lethal, especially if treated improperly.

“If I had 100 people who were chronic relapsing opiate addicts, and I kept detoxing them and sending them out on the street, eventually I’d have about 10 people left,” Brown said.

“Someone who’s repeatedly relapsed has a very high likelihood of dying,” he said.

For many addicts, experts say, using drugs isn’t about getting high; it’s about feeling normal and not getting sick.

Anna Howells of Boardman, who lost her son, Dennis, to an overdose in 2013 and now is an executive director of Solace of the Valley, learned what addiction is like from Dennis.

“I’d always say, ‘Why don’t you stop? Why don’t you stop?’

“And he said to me one day, ‘Mom, if somebody was holding your head under

water, what would you do? You’ll do anything to get a breath of air.’”

“It’s like a light bulb that goes on and off, on and off, and it gets faster and faster,” she said. “Holding your head under water is when I really realized, well yeah, I would probably do anything to get that breath.”