Love, Addiction, and Death.

Addiction Stories from Safe Haven Recovery

*Names are changed for privacy and protection.

I was speaking to a recovery patient the other day, and she shared with me her story. It was about how she fell into addiction through love and death. I really felt that this would be something great to share because it can inspire and spark something in others. For privacy reasons in this article we are changing her name to "Lin".

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"that's the love of my life, I will never take off his ring... "

Lin begins to share her story on how her and Duane became a couple:

"It's actually a funny story. I was with someone else at the time. I was best friends with this girl name "Paige", we started hanging out a lot and Duane was her brother. One thing led to another and we got together... Two years into our relationship we got engaged. The best day of my life. To top it off it was on my Birthday! It was amazing.

Lin goes on about where the drugs came into play during the relationship:

"When I started dating him he was already on probation for 5 years... I was best friends with his Uncle's Girlfriend and one day she told me "Look, I'm not suppose to tell you this but He relapsed yesterday." when she told me that I felt spiteful. He always told me if I ever did that he would leave me. It was stupid on my part but I was spiteful and thought If he's going to do it than, I'm going to do it too! So, that same day she went out and got two bags of Heroin. I didn't know what to do with them. I never seen them before... I only messed with pills before that. She put it in front of me and I did both of them.

It was the worst experience of my life. I was throwing up all day and it was just bad! After that, I would tell Duane let's go get some perks and he would tell me let's go get dope instead. It started off once every two weeks than, once every week, three times a week. Pretty soon, it was a everyday thing. We did together as a couple.

Towards the end of our relationship I got cleaned. I was already 5 months cleaned with him. I still stuck with him even though he was still using. That's when I noticed his attitude started changing towards me. His verbal abuse was horrendous... he would snap out over every little thing and it was always my fault!

"You're never going to amount to nothing"

"You're a Fuck Up!"

"I don't even know why you try sometimes."

I just had enough! So I gave him a ultimatum. I told him he can either get cleaned and stay with me or keep using and lose me. So Duane told me "Okay, leave me at the house to detox." We had our own trailer at the time. So I left him for 5 days to detox at home. I went to my parents house for a long weekend. On the 5th day I called him and no answer.

I called and called. So I decided to go to the House. He had the keys so I had to break in. I broke in and found him dead on our bed. He was dead for 2 or 3 days already. It was the worst experience of my life.

Witnessing the love of your life dead in front of you.

He was Diabetic. When you're Diabetic you have low blood sugar and you have to keep your sugar intake up. So when your detoxing you really don't feel like eating anything. So he wasn't eating or drinking and not taking his insulin properly. So during his detox he went into a diabetic shocked, no one was there to help him. I felt so guilty and I felt like it was my fault because I wasn't there.

I relapsed because of his death. The day I found him dead, was the day I relapsed. November 3rd, 2015.

Lin explains the love they had:

In the beginning of our relationship we we're alive! We were In love! By the end we were fighting a lot because we got worse in our addiction since the drugs were more important

than us being together. So that's why I got cleaned. We were awesome the first year together... than it just started disintegrating because of the drugs, which eventually led to death.

Lin is a Fighter, She's a Strong and Surviving through the pain and recovery. We at safe haven are so proud of how far she has came and her strength to to keep on moving.

"Yesterday is history,

tomorrow is a mystery,

today is a gift of God,

which is why we call it the present."

-Bill Keane

#Addiction #AddictionStories