With the help of The Brighton Recovery Center for Women and a special woman named, Mel, FortThomasMatters has been quietly rolling out The Heroin(e) Diaries over the last month and a half. You wouldn’t find these stories touted on our Facebook or Twitter pages for the simple fact that I didn’t know how these stories would be received. I know Mel and work with The Brighton Center and I know the miracles they perform on a daily basis, but for someone unfamiliar with the addiction disease, they may not have understood why I was talking about heroine and addiction. I wanted to protect them.
These stories are different from what you are used to on FTM, but judging from the amount of clicks these stories get, you think they are important.
So do I.
Good and important content always find a way. Perhaps with the death of 30-year old Fort Thomas native, Nicholas Specht, on August 12th, this story needs to be screamed from the hilltops of Fort Thomas. You can read about Nicholas’ fight with heroine here (72 Hours of Heroine), via one of our readers’ blogs.
I actually remember Nicholas from kindergarten. We completely lost touch early on in grade school, but deaths like that always seem to affect you more than you think they would.
Stories like Nicholas’ make Mel’s all the more important. She is one of the lucky ones that was able to live to tell about her addiction story. You can read the first 3 parts of her story below:
Melissa is a 37 year old woman struggling with addiction. She is fighting her way through addiction with the help of the Brighton Recovery Center for Women.
In an effort to put a face on addiction, FortThomasMatters.com is documenting her journey. It’s real and raw and relevant. She is our Northern Kentucky neighbor. She is our heroine. Her story is important.
Here’s Mel:
________
As my story continues I want to thank everyone for the
support you have shown.
I have never dealt with anything as painful as losing a
parent and when pain comes I am a runner. Morgan and I moved back to West
Chester with “him” I began doing oxycotin every day, it made the pain go
away. I felt nothing and now and knew I
didn’t know how to deal with the hurt in anyway other than from drugs and
alcohol. The withdrawal from narcotics is like no other and being that I didn’t
know any other way to detox or stop, I began a daily run to the methadone
clinic in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
Methadone was my crutch, an alternative with
no solution; it was the easier, softer way than getting down to the root of my
problems. No one ever tells you that methadone is harder to get off of than the
actual addiction I went in with.
I was a repeat client at the clinic for a few
years. I’d go for some time then return to heroin or oxycotin. The oxycotin
addiction stopped when I realized heroin was cheaper and more accessible.
I
began multiple trips downtown or to whatever side street in whatever
neighborhood that the dope boy told me to go to. I relied on heroin to fix
everything; if you know of heroin or know of someone who has been addicted to
heroin you should know it is an absolute “bitch” to withdrawal from.
I have
tried many times to detox off of it and would only make it to day 3, the
phenomenon of craving would kick in and the vicious cycle would begin again. At
this point in my life I didn’t care who I stole from, what I had to do or
whatever length I had to go to to get my fix, all I know is I had to have it.
Thus began my dance with the devil, he had plans, many many plans for me.
To be continued.
