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The true story behind my addiction with "HEROIN"Ashley IsaacsMy name is Ashley and I am an addict. I was born in Cincinnati Ohio. I’m the youngest of 5 siblings. I grew up with 4 older brothers.? This is the true story of my Heroin Addiction. So, I’m supposed to tell you what my life was like as a child, how my life was when I was using and what my life is like now. I’m not going to give you some sad luck story about how my childhood was so bad.? I’m not going to use that as an excuse for why I turned to drugs because that wouldn’t be true.Growing up my dad struggled with alcohol, which did cause some problems between my parents.? However, my parents are still married and they are getting ready to celebrate their 32 anniversary. Growing up, I had everything I could ever want. My parents always worked hard to teach me right from wrong. In fact they moved from Cincinnati, Ohio to Fayetteville, Ohio for the fear I was getting mixed up with the wrong people. They worried I would start trying drugs. The odd thing is, my first exposure to drugs was when I moved to Fayetteville.When I was 15 years old, I smoked pot for the first time. I didn’t really like it. I got really sick from smoking it.? I can count on my hands how many times I have smoked it in my life time.? Around age 17, I drank for my first time. I ended up getting really drunk and my friends and I got pulled over by the cops. Somehow, we ended up talking are way out of a DUI and the cops thought I was crying because my boyfriend and I had just broken up. Throughout school I tried different types of drugs. When I was 17 I tried meth for the first time. I hated it too. I was up for 3 days with out eating. I didn’t know if I was tired, or hungry when I was coming down from being high. In fact, I was talking about how I felt in the middle of class and someone told me to shut up and I made a comment, which resulted in the ?teacher getting mad at me. I? snapped and I got in the teacher’s face and I started screaming and kicking the table toward the ?guy who made the initial comment. I tried to throw my purse through the window. The teacher asked me to leave the class room. So, I stormed out of the class room and hit my hand into a brick wall and broke it.? Later that night, I went home and I slept for 24 hours.School for me was more of a social thing. The only reason I got up and went to school was to see my friends. It’s by the grace of God that I Graduated high school! I accredit that to a teacher who didn’t give up on me. I graduated from high school in 2004. After school, I moved out of my parent’s house into my own town home. I was working 60 plus hours a week for a car lot. I started to drink a lot.? I figured, why not? I was 19 years old, out on my own and I was making good money.My excessive drinking led me to getting raped in my own place.? After that, I started drinking a lot more in order to cover up the feeling of guilt that I had. I really felt like it was my fault that I got raped. I had convinced myself that if I wasn’t drinking or hanging out with those people, it never would have happened. I ended up starting to date someone who I went to high school with. He quickly noticed my drinking habits and he told me I was a drunk and that he couldn’t have me around his child. From that day on, I didn’t drink often. I didn’t want to be called a drunk. He and I ended up winning custody of his child. At 19, ?I became a new mom over night. It wasn’t easy! I traded my fun, for a life as a stay at home mom.Once we moved in with each other, a lot of things changed. He wasn’t the same person. He started talking down to me and he found ways that he could control me. My life was a living hell with him! I feel in love with his child. His daughter stole my heart and I didn’t want to leave because of her.In November 2007, my mother called me and told me that we needed to have a family meeting. I asked her what it was about and she told me to just come over and to bring my boyfriend.? He asked me what I thought was going on, and I told him it had to be about my brother Marcus.? He asked me how I knew it was going to be about my brother and I told him that I had always had a feeling ?that something would happen to him. When we got to the door, at my parents, house my mother meet me. She told me that my brother, Marcus, had overdosed and ?that he was in a coma. The hospital told us to wait to see if he would come out of it before we drove all the way to Florida. In the middle of the night the hospital called and said we needed to head that way as soon as we could because it wasn’t looking good.My family and I got in the car and drove down to the hospital in Florida. When we got there, they told us that Marcus was fully brain dead and that he was not going to come out of it. We had to make the hard decision to remove him from life support. November 13, 2007 was the day I lost my best friend/ brother. He was the only person in my family that, I felt, understood me. My mom told me to not talk about it on the way home.? She didn’t think my father could handle it. So, on the way home, we acted like nothing happened.When I got home, I woke up my boyfriend to let him know I was home. He then went on trying to get me to have sex. I told him that my brother just died and that I couldn’t believe he would think that I would want to have sex. He told me that it didn’t seem like loosing my brother upset me. Only a heartless person wouldn’t care if there brother died! I asked my boyfriend for a week to not have to take care of him or his child. ?I just needed time to wrap? my head around it all.?2 days later?he came down with pink eye. When he asked me to put eye drops in his eye, I sighed. He responded by telling me that he was sorry that my “ f’in brother” died, but I’m sick.? Everything I ever felt for him turned to hate January of 2008. I left him and moved back in with my parents.My first addiction was men. I would jump from one relationship to another, just trying to fill a void in my life.? That only worked for a while. I could never find happiness. March of 2010, I ended up having to go into the hospital and I was given morphine. I feel in love with the feeling that I got from it . It gave me such a rush through my body. In April of 2010, I was talking to my friend about how the morphine made me feel. She told me that if I loved the feeling of morphine that I would love heroin. I told her that I was down for trying anything, but I had to take a drug test the next day so if she still had it after my test, I would do it with her.The next day I returned to her house and she still had the heroin. Who would have guessed she would have saved it. That is not something that heroin addicts are typically able to do. I watched her mix the heroin up, pull it up in the needle and then I turned my head as she shot me up. I felt the Heroin rushing threw my veins all the way to my head. I was instantly hooked. From that day on, the rush that I got from heroin was all I could think about. I constantly anticipating the next time I was going to get high. My friend and I decided we should move in together. This was a bad choice on my part because we started to use everyday. There were days where we had trouble getting heroin and my friend would just lay in bed crying and feeling sick. I couldn’t stand to see her that way. I would do whatever I had to in order to make sure she wasn’t sick; even if it meant that I was going to be sick from withdrawal.My friend ended up leaving me and I ended up going into full blown withdraws. In order to stop the horrible withdraw feelings, I shot up with a “rinse” and I developed Cotton Fever.? As a result, I had a bad seizure in the bathtub at my house. I tried every way to reach my friend, but no one answered the phone. I ended up going through the complete withdraw process. By the time I started feeling better, she showed back up and told me how sick she was.? I told her that I was done using and that I didn’t want to do heroin anymore.?I still couldn’t stand to see her sick, so I found her a pain pill to help with the withdraw side affects. She took the pill, but she insisted that she still wanted to get heroin. She called her ex boyfriend and he brought some over. After I saw her use, I wanted to do it too. So, I asked her to save her rinse for me. Well, she didn’t save it for me and I ended up just shooting up water. This sent me back into withdraws. She called her boyfriend to bring me a pill so I didn’t have to go through full withdraws again. The next day she was no where to be found.May 27, 2010 was the last time I had used. So I used for about a month. On June 5, 2010 I meet a guy and we ended up sleeping with each other. For some reason I knew, deep down in my heart, that I was pregnant. I counted down the days till I could take a test. On July 3, 2010, I found out I was pregnant. On July 7, 2010, I had to go to the hospital for bleeding and the doctors did an ultra sound. They told me that I was pregnant with twins.? My mother started crying.? I started to laugh because I thought this was God’s funny way of punishing me for? trying heroin. Another complicated detail was that my kids dad is a heroin addict and he just so happened to be still married. I didn’t know that when we first got together. The joke was on me!I couldn’t get ahold of my kid’s dad. He didn’t speak to me through the entire pregnancy. On November 26, 2010, I went into labor at 24 weeks. My daughter weighed 1lb 13oz and my son weighed 1lb 10.5 oz. They were so tiny! At first, my daughter was doing great and my son wasn’t doing well. However, that all drastically changed.? I ended up getting an infection in my stomach. I had to be reopened and placed back in the hospital. They couldn’t stich my stomach back up, so they left me open and placed a womb vac on my stomach. For 3 days, they wouldn’t let me see my kids. Within this time my daughter got RSV and was placed back on a ventilator. My son still wasn’t breathing on his own at all. My daughter also ended up getting, what the doctors called, neck. She had to be transferred to another hospital. This was the point that everything took a turn for the worse.On December 20, 2010, I had to remove my daughter from life support. That’s also the day that I died inside. I came home that day and took 10 pain pills. I’m not sure if I was trying to kill myself, or just forget. Either way, it didn’t work. I started falling apart. I felt like the only thing I had left to be hopeful for was my son. He had started getting stronger. Some of my friends came to see me at the hospital. They were in the city getting drugs. I started to hang out with them more often. One day, I made the choice that I wanted to get high and told my friends I would pay for it. So, we called to set up the deal and It was taking to long for the dealer to arrive and I started to feel guilty for being away from my son. I ended up leaving money to pay for it, but I left to go see my son without using. ?A few weeks later, one of those friends came back to get some tickets from me for the Aquarium. He asked to go to my room in the Ronald McDonald House and he pulled out some heroin. He told me that he was not supposed to show me or to give me any of it, but he thought that I “deserved it”.? ?I sat down on the bed and a lot of thoughts ran through my head. I convinced myself that I did deserve the heroin. I thought it would help me cope with losing my daughter. I ended up getting high. It felt like a friend giving me a warm hug, telling me everything would be ok.For weeks after that, I would go on binges where I would use for a week and then stop for a week.? I continued this pattern until March of 2011.? That was when I got to bring my son home. After I brought my son home, I started noticing something just wasn’t right with me. I began to have thoughts and feelings that no mother should! I wondered if I gave my son medicine would he wake up afterward and I often wondered how I would feel if he didn’t. Would I even care?? I called everyone I could think of to try and get help because I knew that I shouldn’t have those thoughts. I couldn’t seem to find help anywhere due to my insurance.I started to use heroin once or twice a week to cover up those psychotic thoughts that I was having. When I used heroin, I felt like super mom! I thought the heroin was helping me cope with things. I ended up meeting, yet another guy, who I started to get high with. He brought me drugs everyday and before I knew it I was hooked once again. As a result, using once or twice a week just wasn’t enough.? I couldn’t seem to shake my addiction this time, nor did I want to. It wasn’t long after I started to use everyday that our money ran out and I had to find another means to support my habit.To my surprise, I started to rob my parents to help pay for my drugs. I never thought my addiction would lead me to that. People started noticing that something just wasn’t right with me. They could tell that something was going on. When I would come down from the drugs and go into withdraw, I would literally have psychotic fits and high anxiety!? My mother asked me one day what was going on with me and I told her that I was on heroin.? I tried to explain that I hadn’t used and I was really sick from not using. She tried to take my keys and cell phone away. She forced me to get clean, but that only worked for about two weeks. Those two weeks were really rough! I couldn’t get off of the couch.? I had erratic behavior, I threw up often, had cold sweats and I wasn’t able to manage to take care of my son at all.Once I got my car and cell phone back I went right back to using because I felt like I couldn’t handle life without it. In January of 2012, I caught 3 theft charges and robbed my parents for about everything they had of value. My parents told me I had to make a choice.? I either had to go to rehab or they were going to have custody of my son removed from me. I chose to go to rehab. Even though I was really sick and knew I shouldn’t be taking care of my son, it wasn’t an option that I could even consider to walk away and let someone else take care of him. That just wasn’t the motherly like thing to do.I spent 67 days in rehab. When I got out of rehab, I had court 5 days later for the theft charges.? I was placed on probation with an ankle monitor placed on my leg. Despite all of that, A few days after, I was back to getting high again!? I knew that I had probation?on Tuesday?and Thursdays. I knew they would only drug test me on Tuesdays.? This led me to thinking that I ?could get high?on Thursday?and be clean byTuesday.? However, that only lasted a little while. It wasn’t long before I was getting high everyday again.? I started to fail my drug test for my probation officer. I also caught another theft charge and my probation officer had to give me a probation violation.In the mean time, I started outpatient rehab and I would pass one drug test, and then fail another. I just couldn’t stay clean for anything!? I ended up having to go to court for my most recent theft charge. I told my mom I was going for a review of my case and she didn’t believe me so she insisted on going to court with me. Her wanting to go to court set me off!? I ended up telling her the truth, but she still insisted on going with me. When I got to court I was so angry that my mom was there I could of screamed!? I went in front of the judge and asked for a continuous on my case. He said that’s fine, but I just want to let you know your on the line. One more failed drug test, and your going to jail.Well, I had to go into probation right after I left the court room and my mom followed me. I got even madder! I could not understand why she had to be there!? I was sitting in the office waiting to be seen and to take my drug test and the more my mom spoke to me the more upset I was getting. By the time I walked to the office I had a nervous breakdown. I fell to the floor holding the cup I needed to pee in and begged to be put in jail! The probation officer took the cup and took me back in her office. She asked me what was going on I told her I just can’t do it anymore! I told her that I knew I was going to fail that drug test, that I couldn’t handle my life and I talked about how mad my family was making me. I told her it was either me or them! I was just done and couldn’t deal with all of this anymore!Instead of going to jail, they put me on a 72 hour hold and sent me too the Physc Ward. When I was in there, I spoke to some doctors about what was going on with me. I told them that I had been having thoughts of what life would be like without my son.? I shared a lot of my “what if” thoughts with them and how I constantly wondered how I would feel if bad things happened to me or my son. I told the doctors that I thought I was just feeling this way because of the environment that I was in at my parent’s house. I really thought that once I got out I would be fine. ?I told the doctors that my goal was for my son and I to move out of my parent’s house.I came to find out later that I had postpartum psychosis.? The doctors feared for my son’s well being and reported me to Children’s Services. I had to report to Children’s Services the day I was released from the hospital.? Children’s service advised me according to the report. They told me that I was being placed on a safety plan and that I would need to complete certain tasks in order to keep custody of my son. I passed my first drug test for them, then I failed the second one. I begged them for another chance and they gave it to me. I passed the next drug test and the safety plan was lifted. This meant that I was allowed to leave my house with my son and weeks went by without children service showing up. I went right back to getting high.I would try to leave my house super early in the morning, so Children’s Services would miss me. 3 weeks after the safety plan was lifted Children’s Services caught me at the house and gave me a drug test on the spot.? I failed the drug test, so they put the safety plan back in place. This meant that I was not aloud to leave the house with my son. I kept going out and getting high, regardless of the plan.? However, I did leave my son at home with my parents. Eventually, Children’s Services had enough with me failing drug tests for them, that in October of 2012 they mandated that I had to leave the house. I wasn’t allowed to remain under the same roof as my son.As bad as it might sound, I walked outside and I took a deep breath. I was relived. A huge? weight was lifted off ?of me. I couldn’t help but think “Someone was removing my son from my care, thank God”!? I told Children’s Services that I knew that was the best thing for him and me. I knew that something was just not right with me. I hoped that maybe this would give me time to find out what’s going on and I would be able to get clean.Just as I was told to do, I left the house that day. Of course I was upset that I lost custody of my son. Sadly, I used it as an excuse to get high.? I called one of my friends and I was in tears. After I explained what happened, he told me that I should come get him and we could go get high.? I did just that!? When we drove to downtown Cincinnati to get heroin, it felt like the longest ride in the world to me.? After we got the Heroin, we tried to find a needle and couldn’t seem to find one any where. We drove to Tractor Supply and I got a box of 22 gage needles that they use on livestock. ?After we left Tractor Supply, we drove to Eastgate Woods parking lot to shoot up. I can remember stabbing myself so many times with that needle to get high because I couldn’t seem to get a vain.? I burst out in tears! I was so desperate to get high, I couldn’t stand it. I asked my friend to choke me to see if he could get a vein in my neck. He tried and that didn’t work. I just kept trying and trying I was covered in blood all over! My friend eventually tried my hand and eventually was able to inject the heroin into the vein in my hand. As he was finishing the shot, my vain collapsed. The pain shot all the way up my arm, but still felt emotional relief. Since we used a 22 gage needle, I had no idea how much heroin I had used. Typically, we use a diabetic needle. ?Shortly after we got high, I walked into a restaurant covered in blood and I was almost falling over.? I couldn’t even hold my head up to chew my food. I was on the line of over-dosing and I really couldn’t care less. I can’t tell you anything that happened after we left the restaurant. In the days to follow, I started jumping from place to place trying to just find somewhere to sleep since I had been removed from my parent’s house. I was homeless.The only people I felt like I could depend on were the people I used with. I ran off everyone else in my life.? A few days after I lost my son, I went to stay with another friend. He went to the city and got some Heroin. His needle was broken, so he used one of the 22 gage needles that I had. He didn’t know how much he was pulling up in the needle, since it was a different size than he was used to. He ended up overdosing on me. I can remember screaming and telling him not to do this to me! Someone heard my scream and called 911. I jumped out of my car screamed at the guy and asked him if he called for help. He told me he was on the phone with 911.? I said “he isn’t breathing; he’s not moving OH MY GOD HELP ME!!!I pulled my friend out of the car and started CPR. I remember how people started to surround me. Someone started to help me with chest compressions while I was giving him air. I’ll never forget the guy, who stopped to help, looking up at me and saying “I’m sorry honey he’s dead”.? I screamed, “NO, NO, THIS IS NOT HAPPENING”!? ?I kept on doing CPR until the ambulance showed up. They immediately started to work on him, so I started to move the drugs around in my car while they watched me.? They gave my friend a shot of Narcan to help reverse the affects of the heroin. He sat up! He had come out of it.? The paramedics pulled me off to the side and told me that his pulse was barely there. They said that if I would have stopped CPR at anytime that he would not be here today. They asked for the drugs I had moved around in the car.? I gave them the needle he had used along with a tester someone had given me. They did not search my car. I had kept the stuff he had just overdosed on. I had convinced myself that he had just used too much because of the size of the needle, but that must have been really good heroin. The EMT asked me if I was going to go to the hospital to be with him and I told them that I was planning on it. They advised me to wait a few hours before showing up. I took it as a sign to get out of there because the cops had not shown up to the scene, so there was a good chance they might show up at the hospital.When I left I went to Milford to get “my” needle and used the drugs that my friend had just overdosed on. Three days later, I had to go to court for my probation violation. I remember going into court withdrawing from drugs. I was just a mess. I sat in the court room for three hours and I honestly thought I was going to walk out of there. I planned on leaving court that day and getting high. Needless to say, things didn’t go as I planned. I will never forget the words that came out of my probation officer’s mouth when we went in front of the judge that day. Russ told the judge that he knew I had failed multiple drug tests and within this week I had lost custody of my son and that I was homeless. He said that the only reason he hadn’t put me in jail yet was because I had been honest with him. He told that a few weeks ago I did try to lie to him. I tried to fake a drug test. He stated that he had planed on arresting me the other day, but he had someone else that he needed to deal with. He knew I wasn’t a runner. Regardless of all that I had done he still didn’t think that I was a lost cause. He told the judge, ?“Ashley has never been to jail and I believe Ashley needs 30 days to clean up and see what jails really about. I have faith that she can do this”. I burst out in tears. I was going to jail and had been placed in handcuffs for the very first time in my life.? I was in jail from 0ctober 10, 2012 to November 8, 2012.While I was in jail I received a check for $3,400 dollars due to a settlement. The day I got out of jail, I went and cashed it. I had no plans on getting high, but my plans never work out the way I want them to. The day I got out of jail, I found out that there was a no contact order placed on me. This meant I wasn’t allowed to see my son until January of 2013. Since I wasn’t going to be able to see my son for over 2 months, I used that as yet another Accuse to party. I rented a hotel with a girl who I had been in jail with. We got drunk. Later that night we got high. She ended up robbing me later that night. She stole $2,000 dollars from me! This left me with no money and no way to support myself. I couldn’t go home to my parents, so I went crawling to my brother. I begged him to let me stay with him. He told me I could, but he had specific rules. I was only to leave the house to look for a job?Monday?through?Friday. He also told me that I wasn’t allowed to hang out with anyone other than him.? I told him that I agreed to his terms. However, I didn’t follow them at all. During the week when I should have been looking for a job, I spent my time getting high and on the weekends I would detox.Nothing about my life was fun. My life revolved around finding ways to get high and not get caught in the process.? I can remember peeing in a cup after not using for 3 days and saving it just in case my brother surprised me with a drug test. He did make me take a drug test once and I passed his test with the urine I had saved. Later that week, when children service showed up, I used the same urine I had saved earlier in the week and I failed the drug test. Children’s Services informed me that if I ever wanted to get my son back, I needed to check myself into a long-term treatment facility.? When my brother found out I didn’t pass my drug test he gave me a choice: I could either hand him over the keys to my car, and my cell phone, and promise to ?not leave the house until I went to treatment, or I had to leave his house immediately.? I looked at him and said, “I’m sorry. I love you, but I really don’t think it’s gonna work”.? I left. ?I chose drugs over my whole family.? Once I left my brother’s I had no body.?I was back to being homeless. I was jumping from one place to another. It wasn’t long after I left my brother’s that my car blew up.? I hitched a ride from a stranger to get to another person’s place who happened to live in sober living. I was far from being clean. I had no intention of staying in a place like that. I begged the guy to help me find a way to get high. I called someone to help junk my car. I had the guy’s dad (who was also a heroin addict) take me so I could sign the title over. I talked him into taking me because I promised him that I would buy him drugs with the money too. I got 125 dollars for my car and I spent every cent of it on heroin. It didn’t take long until my money, and the drugs ran out. Once that happened, all of the friends who I used to take places, use with, and counted on, no longer had any reason to answer my calls. I no longer had any benefits to offer them.The person I was staying with at the sober living house had to ask me to leave because I was only allowed staying for three days due to the rules of the housing. I called someone I met back when I had attended Narcotics Anonymous (NA) thinking he could help me. I was wrong. The guy I tried to call had relapsed, which means he was no longer clean. The first thing he did, once he picked me up, was headed to the liquor store. After the liquor store then he was off to get some crack.? I found out that he had some Klonopin, so I asked him for some to help the withdraws.? I ended up taking more Klonopin than I should have and I passed out. The guy woke me up to smoke some crack with him. I can’t even remember what it felt like.??I just know that I ended up going back to sleep. I remember waking up to the guy freaking out! It was the strangest thing; he was talking to himself about how he just chocked his roommate for more money! I just went back to sleep. The next time I woke up, he was talking to a lady about how he had killed people and had put them in the trunk of his car to get rid of them! Once again, I went back to sleep.? I was in and out a lot. Eventually, he woke me up again and put the crack pipe in my mouth. I thought it was all a bad dream. The next day, when I woke up, he started to tell me he couldn’t believe he chocked his roommate for 40 dollars!? When I asked him why he did it, he told me he thought that I wanted more crack. I looked at him and said I really need to get into treatment.I called St. Lucy’s and told them that I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed to get in as soon as I could. I called on December 13, 2012 and that was the last time I picked up. On December 18, 2012, I checked into treatment on my own. I spent 6 months there. While I was there, I was able to deal with some issues that I had never dealt with. I learned new ways to cope.? I was able to move back home with my son and my parents on June 10, 2013.? It was hard moving back home and facing everything and everyone. At the same time, I was just so grateful for the second chance I was given. I was also placed on non-reporting probation. In October of 2013, ?I earned custody back of my son. In January of 2014 my children services case was closed.Since I have been clean, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on all of the events that took place.? I have tried to make a conscious effort to remind myself of how crazy things were and to not glorify the experience. Since the first time I used back in 2010, I had overdosed twice, I had watched friends overdose, I stole from my family and stores, I served time in jail, lost custody of my son and I turned my back on everyone who truly cared about me.?A memory that sticks out in my mind is from one of the times I overdosed. The person who was with me got mad because I made them miss there shot. I couldn’t believe how heartless some people could be. I remember thinking that I would never be like that. However, I ?ended up becoming that same type of person. I became the heartless Heroin addict! While someone was overdosing beside me, I finished getting high before I would help them! That’s when I truly knew I had a problem. I had gotten to a point where I didn’t care about anyone but myself.I never would have been able to get clean on my own. I’m grateful for everyone who was placed in my life. It really was a blessing in disguise to have been put on probation. I was assigned a probation officer who never gave up on me.? Everyone around me had thrown in the towel. However, he still believed in me and I needed that more than I knew.? I’m also grateful for Children’s Services for pushing me and not being too easy on me. They really opened my eyes, regardless of what I was going through, they still treated me with respect and looked out for my son. Today my life is great! I’m in college and I have custody of my son. Everyday gets a little better and people who once didn’t trust me are starting to trust me again. My relationship with my family is better then it has ever been! ................
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