My name is Amber and I have been dealing with addiction for twenty-nine years. The problem lies in the fact that I am only twenty-eight. Addiction for me started at conception. My parents were practicing addicts and left no room in their lives for the children they brought into this world. It’s a cold, dark and desperate world to be born into, and one that leaves no room for kindness, generosity or love. It’s a hopeless flood of despair and destruction and the only guarantee is certain death. I never even realized that I was living a life headed straight for hell until it was too late. At twenty-three, life gave me some time to think about the last twenty some odd years. Four months to think about it to be exact. Four months in county was enough time to realize that I had a problem. However, it wasn’t long enough for me to find a solution. I was busted for manufacturing methamphetamine and I thought that my life was certainly over. I had no clue how to live a normal life. I didn't even know what a normal life looked like. I sat behind bars wondering how my life came to be what its is.
My father was in prison, my mom is a needle junkie and I had just lost two of the most important family members to drugs and alcohol. The only consistencies that I had in my life were jails, drugs and death. I learned how to make weed pipes when I was five. I grew up in bars so alcohol was constantly available at an early age. I had no past experience of life being great. No knowledge of marriage lasting a lifetime. Yet, I had a ton of proof showing me that life was full of pain and agony. Proof that no one cares about you and life is nothing but a cruel joke. Something inside of me was broken and since I had no clue what normal was; I didn’t know exactly what was broken. I started to write down the things I thought about. My long lost dreams I had as a child came back to me so I put those on paper also. I started to write about the horrible things that I had been thru and even worse, the things that I had done. I reached a point in those four months that started me on my journey towards recovery.
They released me from jail with a lighter sentence then I deserved, which boosted my new found belief in God. I moved to a small town where no one knew my name. I joined a meeting with people who understood where I came from and who knew what it felt like to be dead inside. I continued to work on me as the child inside me grew. By the time my daughter was born I had a pretty decent grip on me. I found out, thru the help of other people with similar afflictions, that my problem wasn’t drugs. It was me. As a child, I learned the skills to survive a life of torment. As an adult, I am learning the skills to thrive as a productive member of society.
Struggling with life is given; learning to succeed thru those struggles is a choice. I have found hope and happiness, kindness and love, friendship and family. I have figured out that life doesn’t have to be what you were given at birth. Its what you do with the life that was given that matters.