Jessica Dueñas – Page 10 – Bottomless to Sober

How Narcan Saved My Life

Posted on June 14, 2022June 14, 2022 by Jessica Dueñas in Guest Submissions, Recovery Stories

Guest Submission by Bethany Baumann

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Learn about Narcan here.

My name is Bethany. I am a heroin addict. I have been clean for almost four years now. I can’t say that I will ever not be an addict because when it comes to opiates, I cannot stop. Before I found opiates, I was an angsty teen who loved trouble. As a kid, I moved around, so I never went to a school for two years in a row. My mom and dad were poor and had no idea what they were doing. My stepdad adopted me because my biological father was an alcoholic and addicted to cocaine. My birth father was abusive, and my mom did everything she could to get me away from him. So I had this new family and moved to Oregon. It was good for a little while. Mom and dad were always fighting, so my home was like a war zone. So many of these things shaped me into the woman I am today.

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You can recover. Here’s how I know you can #abuseawaerness #recoveroutloud #fouryears #youcantoo
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Bethany shares about her four year anniversary on TikTok.

I started using drugs when I was 14. I had been smoking weed and drinking with my friends, went to juvenile hall twice before the age of 16, and started running away from home. I never fit in, and I was always different. I had always had a fascination with drugs since I was a kid. I didn’t like how I felt and wanted to change it. I didn’t do much before I found heroin. I never did pills. I did ecstasy a couple of times. Mushrooms were horrific for me, and I dropped acid once. Then one night, I was in Portland, Oregon. I was hanging out with men in their thirties, and I was seventeen. They asked if I wanted to get high; I thought they meant weed. I followed them, and suddenly they had needles and cookers out. They were putting belts on their arms, and I asked, “what are you doing?” They said, “heroin.” I shook and said, “I had never done it before.” They said they would show me. So, I let some guy inject me with heroin with a dirty needle at seventeen. I didn’t even know that you could do heroin any other way. They teach you in drug prevention classes in school that you use needles to do heroin. I remember I kept asking him if it was going to kill me over and over. He finally looked at me and said in a very gnarly voice, “Do you want to do it, or do you want to be a pussy?” So I let him do it.

I had never felt a feeling like it in my life. It’s what I had been searching for all these years. It was my one true love. From that moment forward, all I ever wanted to do was heroin. For the next nine years, I went to treatment fourteen times. I knew how to be sober, and I also knew how to stay clean; I just chose not to. I went to my first AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting at seventeen. My biological dad took me. He told me it would save my life someday, and he was right. It eventually did.

I’ll save time by saying I moved around a lot. The faces were different, and the places were different. But the situation was always the same, I was the same, and the drugs were the same. The turning point was a whole year later. I found out I was pregnant in July or August of 2017. I was living in a recovery house, and I was working. I was honestly doing the damn thing and was getting my life together. Still, I made the dumb decision to hang out with that guy at the meetings people warned me about, and I ended up pregnant.

At first, I took Plan B and prayed, but I saw God had other plans when the test was positive. My soon-to-be daughter was my miracle. I had lost a previous pregnancy to my drug use, and I used again while pregnant this time. I was scared, and I wished I wouldn’t have the baby. I never wanted kids, to be honest. I called my mom, told her the situation, and she told me to live with her in Kentucky. I was in Oregon, struggling to get off heroin, ten weeks pregnant, and homeless with no one to help me. So I came back to Kentucky and got clean. I stayed clean the rest of my pregnancy and gave birth to a beautiful, HEALTHY, perfect little girl. Despite my turnaround, I decided to get high again when I was nine weeks postpartum.

Narcan. *Naloxone* is a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose. Photo by NEXT Distro on Unsplash

I used a $20 bag of what I thought was heroin. It turned out to be fentanyl. I overdosed in my car with my then-boyfriend, and my 9-week-old daughter was in the back seat. The first people to get to me used Narcan, which saved my life. Eventually, I came to with an air mask on my face and the cops holding my baby. Terror doesn’t begin to explain how I felt. I remember the cops asking me questions and believing that for sure I was going to jail. They kept telling me they weren’t arresting me; instead, I would get a fine and a court date. I asked the EMT who helped get ready to go in the back of the ambulance, “Could I kiss my baby goodbye?” He said, “If she mattered to you, you wouldn’t have done this.” My heart shattered, partially because he was right.

From the hospital, I went straight to The Healing Place, a long-term recovery facility in Louisville. While there, I found out some guy recorded my entire overdose, and it was a Facebook live post. It went viral. My whole family in Oregon saw it. The local news did a story on me, and I was disgusted with myself. I used that as motivation to stay in treatment and made it through the entire program. After all was said and done, I went to court and wasn’t a felon—no jail time. I gave custody of my daughter to my aunt while I worked on myself. I completed the program at The Healing Place in nine months, got a job, and moved into a halfway house. I met my husband and continued to work my ass off. I got an apartment and a newer car. At two years sober, I got custody of my daughter back. It was a long road, but it was so worth it though.

The reason why Narcan is so important because I am someone to someone. My mother would have buried her daughter. My dad would have buried his daughter. Most importantly, my daughter would have never known the wonderful person I am. She only would have known that I was a heroin addict and died a heroin addict. Today she knows me as a human being who is deserving of life an love just like anyone else. Had I died that day, the world would have lost a beautiful and talented soul.

My overdose was on June 13th, 2018, and my first day of sobriety was on June 14th, 2018. I have four years of sobriety.

My children have never seen me high or drunk. My kids have a good and loving mother. I have a job that values me. Now I’m back in college, chasing a degree in social work. I help others as much as possible and have a beautiful life today. I thank all those people who were there the day I almost died. I even thank that man who took that video because I couldn’t be at the top without hitting my rock bottom. If you think you can’t do it, you can. If you think you can figure out a different way to stop doing drugs or drinking, keep trying. I did, and eventually, I ended up in meetings with like-minded people, and it saved my life—one day at a time.

I’m so grateful I didn’t die an alcoholic death as my biological grandpa and dad did. That I didn’t die alone, it doesn’t have to be your story or mine. Narcan saved my life. Narcan saved my daughter’s mommy. Narcan saved my mom and dad’s daughter. Narcan saved my husband’s wife. Narcan saved my friend’s friend. Carry it. Use it. Who cares if they’ve been Narcanned a million times. One of those times could be the last, and they could stay sober. A life is always worth fighting for, no matter how horrifying it looks. My daughter’s guardian al litem, an attorney assigned to children, told me I was a monster. She hoped I never got custody of my daughter. Today I have had my daughter back for two years, and I have a baby, and neither of them knows me as a monster and never will.

Drowning In Shallow Water

Posted on June 12, 2022June 26, 2022 by Jessica Dueñas in Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Chapter 2: Surrounded and Alone

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“Well, the funny thing is I didn’t tell him that I have the Holy Trinity.” Natalie cackled while talking to some of the twenty-somethings in the courtyard.

Off to the side of everyone chatting, I was sitting in a beat-up camping chair trying to mind my business and enjoy the sun and its warmth on my skin. Natalie’s voice carried over to my ears and I could feel them perk up. Holy Trinity? I wondered. Even though I initially wasn’t listening, her gleeful energy in between cigarette pulls caught everyone’s attention, including mine.

“You know,” she said as the smoke slowly floated up from the side of her mouth, “Hep A, B, and C!”

Immediately my jaw dropped with a slight gasp and laugh. What? Then I had a flashback to the night before when I saw some of the “young ones,” as I like to call them, scurrying around the facility. They were trying to distract the techs from supervising so Natalie and some other kid could run off to have sex. What was another conquest for Natalie to brag about was about to become a really uncomfortable situation for that kid. Days later, he came back to us saying that he tested “positive.” Originally I thought it would be for hepatitis given Mother Teresa and her “Holy Trinity,” but it turned out to be some other STI. So maybe the joke was on Natalie? I don’t know. There were no condoms around because, of course, no one was supposed to have sex. Except they did, and clearly it was not safe.

I remember one morning coming back to my room after brushing my teeth. As I approached, I noticed that the lights were off. Hmm, did I do that? Our doors didn’t lock, so as I leaned on the door with my arms full of toiletries, I heard heavy breathing from the other side of the room and saw shuffling under the covers. It was my roommate with a particularly creepy man who made my skin crawl. I cringed when I heard him moan then loudly whisper in her ear. He definitely was not a twenty-something.

Do I interrupt? Do I tell a tech what’s happening? I knew the rules, but I didn’t know what was considered right and what was wrong. I was quickly learning during my stay that it wasn’t about the rules, it was about what I needed to get through those 35 days in peace. It hit me that my five weeks would quickly feel like ten if I had a conflict with anyone, so in that moment, I decided that I hadn’t seen or heard anything.

Before they noticed that I had walked in, I stepped out and took a seat in the common area. I exhaled, putting my face in the palm of my hand to wait. It only took a few minutes for him to come out of the room. I was not surprised.

While the techs occasionally played Whack-A-Mole trying to control the twenty-somethings, I found myself entertained in my own way thanks to another patient. No, I did not have sex with this man. I didn’t even touch him. But I still found myself distracted in his company. Our connection brought me comfort at a moment in my life when I was grieving the man I knew was permanently gone. He was no replacement, but he took me away from my pain. If I couldn’t have alcohol while in treatment, at least I could have some male attention. He was exactly what I needed for those five weeks.

I always looked forward to early evening when we could work on crossword puzzles by the tech desk. We chatted with each other and the techs, who, like Danielle, were all in recovery and helped remind us that getting better was possible.

As it got close to 9 PM, I began to dread my nightly trip to the nurse’s station. As soon as I took my night meds, the clock started counting down. Slowly my eyelids got heavier and my head started to nod off, which annoyed me. It was a nice change, for once, to actually want to be awake, but those meds sapped my energy. I was finally laughing with others after not having done so in over a month, and even more surprising, I was smiling again. I didn’t want the meds to take that little bit of joy away from me early every evening.

As we worked on the crossword one time, I looked at him and wondered, why isn’t HE sleepy? It was then that I learned from the others how to “cheek” my meds. So that night I went into the nurse’s station, took the little paper cup with my medications, emptied it into my mouth and said “ahhh” like a little kid as I stuck my tongue out so the nurse could take a look. All the while, I tasted the bitterness of the pills hidden between my gums and cheek as they started to break down. I rushed to the bathroom to spit them out before they disintegrated, wrapped them up in tissue, stuffed them into my bra, and saved them for when I wanted to go to bed. Back to the crosswords!

I rapidly fell into the daily routine. I was so wrapped up with therapy, groups, and classes that I started to forget about the world outside, the world that treatment was shielding me from.

I was vaguely aware that it was a world that seemed to have fallen apart. Every now and then, someone would flip past a news channel while looking for another episode of Botched. I remember hearing snippets of COVID’s numbers going up as the TV abruptly switched to Naked and Afraid or some other reality show. I remember being allowed to watch TV briefly while the protests broke out around the country and just miles away from where we were. Then, as soon as gunshots rang out live on TV, it suddenly became silent. TV off. A part of me was relieved to be away from it all. Away from one unprecedented event after the other as well as the alcohol that waited patiently for me.

Every week I got thirty minutes to speak to someone from the outside on video chat. I always chose my sister, Sophie. It had hurt her so much to see me struggling that I wanted to show her how good I looked the longer I was in treatment.

“You have no idea how much at peace I feel knowing you’re safe. I’ve been taking the family support classes, and I’m learning a lot,” she’d say. The facility provided classes for both families and patients on addiction and how it is a disease and not a failure of character.

I still felt like a failure, but I didn’t have to think about that in treatment. Instead, I could just relax, like I was at a summer camp for dysfunctional adults. I knew what was waiting for me on the other side of the fence. It was the people outside, those people and their opinions, that ran chills down my spine.

“Mami doesn’t know where I am, right?” I asked.

Each time I spoke to my sister, I asked if people had figured out where I was, fearful that my secret would be revealed. I just wanted people to think I was taking time for myself and “unplugging” after the loss. I didn’t want a soul to know that I was locked away in a treatment facility, that I was institutionalized.

The very idea of anyone knowing where I was made my heart race and my stomach sink fast, like a free fall with no end. I’d seen people get ripped apart publicly because of their secrets and I didn’t want that to be me. As I watched my sister chat on the screen about her days and what things have been like for her, my mind wandered to thoughts of how I would rather die than have others know where I was. I mean, how could I, this teacher loved by the community, be an alcoholic? How could I be such an extreme case that I couldn’t be trusted with my own life and had to be locked away? How could I be a good person but be hooked so badly?

It. Just. Didn’t. Make. Sense.

I didn’t tell my sister that those thoughts raced through my mind while we spoke. I didn’t tell my therapist when I looked her in her eyes across her desk. I didn’t tell anyone in my group sessions during those heavy pauses when I could have said something. I did not tell a single soul how torn I felt inside.

Even in those moments, surrounded by people just like me, I was alone.

Originally written by Jessica for Love & Literature Magazine.

Read the previous chapter, chapter 1 here.

Read the next chapter, chapter 3 here.

Shattering the Lock: A Reflection on 365 Days of Continuous Sobriety

Posted on November 27, 2021November 27, 2021 by Jessica Dueñas in Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

“We’re miracles. I mean, we’re the walking dead. None of us in this room should be alive, but here we are. So we’ve gotta show some gratitude,” Jennifer laughed. My eyebrows went up as I nodded slowly, side to side, in careful consideration of what I had just heard.

Jennifer is this woman in New York who gets on some Zoom meetings. I admire her. She’s blunt and always adds a perspective that I hadn’t considered before. She has this gift of sharing her gratitude in what some may consider a rough manner, but she always delivers her message with a smile. Grim as it sounds, she’s right. For people in recovery, just one day away from their poison of choice is a miracle.

So, all things considered, after 365 days of abstaining from MY vice, I definitely am a miracle.

Different photos from active drinking compared to me sober for a year.

Also, I am among the walking dead.

I am a year away from eight hospitalizations in treatment facilities after blurry ambulance rides or drop-offs I don’t remember. From having flipped my car over in a violent wreck. From lethal levels of poison that coursed through my veins (I blew nearly a .5 blood alcohol level a few times.) From almost having bought a gun to end what felt like a never-ending downward spiral of relapses. From living in shame, thinking I was an awful person because I was an alcoholic. From working SO hard to hide that all these frightening things were happening.

What can I say? I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I could not juggle my perfectionism, my career, and the secret of my addiction. I got tired of waiting to die and not dying. I was tired of holding everything in.

My sobriety date is November 28, 2020. My Op-Ed was released on December 3, 2020.

Something had to change, and I had a moment of inspired action. I thought, “F*ck it, I’m going to write an article, publish it somewhere and tell everybody. I don’t care anymore.”

So with only a few days sober, I published an Op-Ed in Louisville’s Courier-Journal and told everyone that I was an alcoholic. It was as if out from deep within, I summoned the courage to shatter the padlock that my alcoholism was to my recovery toolbox. Once I pulled that toolbox open, everything else came forth that I needed.

Was I nervous?

I was terrified.

That decision to step off a ledge of familiarity and dive into a world where I had to trust that I would not drown filled my stomach with knots even the deepest of breathing exercises was not loosening up. But I was determined to be done.

I can’t tell you how many times in the last twelve months I have stopped and thought, “oh, I was at a rehab facility this time last year.” Or, “I was laying in a puddle of my blood this time last year.” When I say that I never believed I could stop drinking, I mean it. I was waiting to die from alcohol poisoning or some other tragedy. Never did I envision myself being a sober woman writing this today.

This past year has been like walking on a tightrope coming out of a dark cave towards light. I’ve used faith and trust in my higher power and others to help me balance along the way. So far, so good. Sometimes hesitantly, sometimes excitedly, I’ve put one foot ahead of the other a day at a time for 365 days. I know there is no getting off this tightrope without severe consequences, so I’m grateful that I get to walk the line for another day.

She Never Thought of Herself as an Alcoholic, and Then She Was Placed on the Liver Transplant List as a 33-Year-Old Woman: Jacqueline’s Story

Posted on July 8, 2021July 8, 2021 by Jessica Dueñas in Current Recovery Challenges, Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Jacqueline’s first words that I ever read were, “I never thought of myself as an alcoholic. I never lost a job because of it, had no DUIs, my relationships were alright. I always had other excuses for why I would end up in the emergency department. It wasn’t until last year, when I spent 46 days in the hospital and almost died, that I was diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease. A few months later, I ended up on the liver transplant list. I am now sober, but I’m living my life waiting for a miracle recovery or for my MELD score to skyrocket and get a liver transplant.” Jacqueline wrote to me when she read the NPR article about the increase of alcoholic liver disease in women. Immediately, I had to connect with her. When we chatted, Jacqueline had recently had surgery, so she wasn’t ready at the moment to share, but it was enough to make an impact on me. I made sure to save her number.

Today, a text notification went off, and when I went to swipe up on my screen, the miracle had happened, Jacqueline reached out. She is feeling better and is off the transplant list! Now that we finally had the opportunity to talk, the question was, how did she get here?

Jacqueline was born in a suburb of Boulder, Colorado, and spent her childhood between Colorado and a college town in Minnesota. We didn’t chat too much about her early childhood. Still, like many other people with alcohol abuse disorder, Jacqueline started drinking and smoking cigarettes in middle school. Early on, Jacqueline was successful at managing both drinking and life’s responsibilities. Through middle school and high school, she went to school, worked as a nanny and part-time in restaurants, and practiced all kinds of dance at an art academy, and of course, partied.

Like many of the women I get the honor of speaking to, Jacqueline is a trauma survivor. Her voice shook as she recalled the experience of getting raped when she was 16. Her parents were out of town, and there were friends over for a party. The guy she had a crush on ripped peace from her that night.

In her own home.

In her own bed.

Her friends turned their backs on her, victim-blaming her because she happened to have a crush on him. So, what about her family? Jacqueline wanted to clarify that her mother always has had the best of intentions for her. Still, Jacqueline mentioned that her mother struggled to get Jacqueline the support for her mental health needs at that turning point in her life. Trapped by the stigma of mental health problems, Jacqueline’s mother allowed her to get therapy. However, a thorough diagnosis of the effects of the trauma on Jacqueline and difficulties she had with learning were never fully addressed at that time. In turn, Jacqueline’s coping mechanisms while becoming a young woman were anything but healthy.

After high school, Jacqueline’s parents sent her to Colorado on her own to escape an abusive boyfriend in Minnesota. He constantly tried to control her, kept her in spaces against her will, and threatened to injure her. Jacqueline suffered this ordeal in secret until she confided in her sister-in-law, who alerted her parents. It was a significant change to be in a different state suddenly, but it was incredibly liberating to be on her own. She had a car, followed her own schedule, and did what she wanted. She was independent. “I finally wasn’t grounded anymore!” She exclaimed. Jacqueline provided for herself, working multiple jobs, including medical secretary, emergency room registration, teaching dance, and bartending. Despite her many positions, she managed to party, drink, and do well.

Relationships typically didn’t help make Jacqueline’s life better. She was drawn to unavailable individuals who already in relationships, married, or simply emotionally unavailable. She was a hopeless romantic that never wanted to fall in love. Once, there was a doctor she was seeing who had seen her wit and intelligence. He encouraged her to enroll in college. She did well in her first year, but suddenly things “hit a wall” for her that summer and her drinking started to take a turn for the worse. Though Jacqueline did well in school, she accepted a job she was passionate about starting. Suddenly, the position was dissolved, and she felt lost. Lost, with student debt, and alone again.

Eventually, circumstances led Jacqueline to the live music scene. She met her current partner of five and a half years when she saw him at a concert. Ever since they connected, they’ve been inseparable. They have supported each other through all of life’s challenges, including Jacqueline needing to turn her life around.

The couple drank together, being often around musicians. They had a lot of fun, and though they sometimes had drunken arguments, they enjoyed each other, too. Despite their heavy drinking, the two were able to buy a home, keep employment. They functioned successfully, so though Jacqueline deep down inside she knew something was probably wrong, it was easy to ignore. “I wasn’t what you consider a typical alcoholic.”

Another incident struck Jacqueline’s life that brought her drinking to another level of escalation. She was injured at work and had to take time off. She also had to fight her then employer in court to get compensated. Suddenly being trapped at home, being in pain, and being stressed about her finances, Jacqueline needed to numb herself to escape the pain of everyday living in these circumstances. Alcohol relieved her stress and her anxiety. Between her and her partner, they drank about two-thirds to three-fourths of a handle of liquor a night. They drank like this from 2018 onward.

Jacqueline eventually started noticing that she was eating less. She wasn’t thirsty anymore, either. It would be like this for days. She was getting dizzy more regularly. She was run down and just felt sick. Her dizzy spells were so powerful that she went to the emergency room repeatedly in 2019 to address “low potassium levels” or “dehydration.” I asked, “Did your family notice?” She responded, “They were in Minnesota, so they had no clue. If they ever did discover she was in urgent care or the emergency department it was just ‘dehydration,’ or a ‘migraine.’ The only one who knew was my partner (because he drank, too),” she replied. “He admits now, that he was lying to himself, but he didn’t know the full truth. A lot of the times I ended up in the ED (emergency department) and told the medical staff how much I was struggling, and he would be frustrated because I had never voiced those complaints to him.”

Meanwhile, I thought the doctors MUST have noticed something was going on with her. I asked, “I mean, didn’t they run labs on you? You had to have liver disease already, and they didn’t check your liver enzymes? They never diagnosed you with ALD?” I was shocked at the fact that no one had pointed out the simple fact to Jacqueline that alcohol was killing her. Jacqueline, I could almost envision her shaking her head, stated, “No, just nausea, dehydration, and tell me to follow up with my doctor. So I’d quit for a few weeks to seem better, but then I would start to drink again. I avoided doing blood work. I was still functioning, so I didn’t think I needed to stop. I acted like I was fine. My bills were paid, no DUI, no trouble with the law, no relationship problems at the time, my relationship with my family was fine, my relationships with friends were good, too.” “So you never thought there was something wrong?” I asked. She replied, “Well, I always knew something was wrong with me, I knew it the whole time.” I understood exactly what she meant.

Finally, Jacqueline had her life-changing hospital visit. First, she had had an emergency room visit, and though she still felt sick after getting fluids, they released her to go home. She and her partner stopped to get groceries when suddenly everything started going black for Jacqueline. “I saw a tunnel closing in around me, I was going to faint. He grabbed me and took me right back to the hospital.”

At the hospital, things took a turn for the worse.

“I became yellow, my MELD score was 29, my bilirubin level was 30 (normal is under 1.2). I looked like I was eight months pregnant from ascites. I was dying. I had to stay in for 46 days.” For reference, a MELD (Model for End Stage Liver Disease) score is a number that qualifies a person for a liver transplant, so the higher the number, the worse shape the person’s liver is in. The highest MELD number is 40, so Jacqueline’s liver was in bad shape. Jacqueline needed to get on the liver transplant list, but she would not qualify without abstinence given her alcohol consumption history.

So what did that look like? Jacqueline had to take a PETH test every two weeks for six months to prove she could stay away from alcohol. Unlike a breathalyzer that only checks for a present blood-alcohol level, a PETH test can detect any alcohol consumption from up to two weeks before the exam. Jacqueline was able to stay sober and get on the list, and once she got on the list, she just had to take the PETH test once a month.

But Jacqueline’s NOT on the transplant list now, right? She’s not.

During our conversation, Jacqueline informed me that her numbers, though not ideal, have stabilized. Her bilirubin levels dropped from 30 to a 4, and her MELD has consistently been a 12, down from 29. Today, Jacqueline is healthy enough not to require a liver transplant. She’s back to looking normal; she happily said, “I’m not yellow anymore!”

“So you’re safe to live a full adult life now, right?” I asked. Jacqueline is only 33 years old, just three years younger than me. Jacqueline paused, “Well, because I’m so young, the chances of me still needing a transplant when I’m older is doubled because I’m so young. So I’m really not off the hook yet.”

Though she has stabilized, Jacqueline does have mild cirrhosis of the liver. The liver can sustain damage up until the point of cirrhosis. At that point, the scar tissue doesn’t go away, it’s irreversible. That means Jacqueline has to do a lot of work to protect her liver from any further damage. Work that she will have to do until the day she draws her last breath.

This new life with permanent alcoholic liver disease is not an easy one for Jacqueline. For the rest of her life, Jacqueline has to be on a low sodium diet, consuming fewer than 2000 mg a day. Her liver doesn’t filter her blood properly, so fluids that a healthier person may be able to pass through urine will accumulate in her body. These fluids could press on her abdomen and potentially fill her lungs with fluid, so Jacqueline has to monitor her fluid intake and take diuretics.

She has a stomach ulcer and varices on her esophagus. According to Mayo Clinic, “Esophageal varices are abnormal, enlarged veins in the tube that connects the throat and stomach (esophagus). This condition occurs most often in people with serious liver diseases.

The vessels can leak blood or even rupture, causing life-threatening bleeding.”

I had to ask, “ And most importantly, you can’t drink. How do you stay away from alcohol?” Jacqueline explained that she uses cannabis for physical and emotional ailments. She takes microdoses of cannabis in candy form in the morning. It helps to keep her anxiety down and bring her appetite up. She has tried psych meds but didn’t respond well to them. “I don’t smoke the actual cannabis flowers, just the oil concentrate or eat the candies. It helps me get through. My biggest thing to not drink is focusing on how much it would hurt my partner, family, and team of doctors. They worked so hard to help get me here. It’d be a kick in the face for me just to go back out and drink. I had a relapse a year ago, and it landed me in the hospital. It was stupid, I thought I would have one, but course it wasn’t just one. It almost killed me.”

“Do you participate in any support groups?” Jacqueline’s support is her partner, her therapist, and her garden. She explained her coping by saying, “I believe in Mother Nature. Gardening really helps me. My plants really help me. For me, drinking wasn’t so much about the physical addiction, and it was always emotional. I coped every day. It was for my anxiety, for social anxiety. Today, my garden helps me.”

“Every day is excruciatingly grueling, especially those days when nothing goes right and you just want to shut out the world. That is why I continue to surround myself with plants and my garden. They remind me that they work so hard to become their most wonderful selves. Most people only appreciate them when they bloom, but I love them from the second I plant them until I mourn them dying and use them as compost to grow the next generation.”

(Just for some added detail, medical problems Jacqueline was treated for in during her 46 day stay because of her alcohol consumption was severe sepsis, acute respiratory failure with hypoxia, ascites, alcoholic hepatitis, liver failure, multiple hernias due to the ascites, IBS, severe diarrhea, C Diff Infection, anemia, jaundice, potassium deficiency, vitamin D deficiency. Jacqueline had a paracentesis to remove fluid from the abdominal cavity and had to have a PICC line placed to receive medications and have labs drawn as all of her IV’s started to blow out and the lab couldn’t get a proper stick.)

The Greatest Gift a Mother Can Have, The Return of Her Son: Gary and Cathy’s Story

Posted on July 5, 2021July 5, 2021 by Jessica Dueñas in About a Loved One, Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Gary’s mother, Cathy, reflects on her journey supporting Gary through his active alcoholism and addiction. She shares what it’s like seeing him in recovery today. Gary’s story is below.

“This is the longest I’ve been sober since when I was a baby until I was 12.” Gary laughed back in early March, chatting with me about his sobriety date in July.

“I get to share my life today in treatment facilities that I used to do everything to avoid, I love to share the solution. Life today is pretty amazing, I have a great job that I’m sure grateful for. I know I’m growing because if I miss a day of work, I actually feel bad about it. I used to love being off. The first 6 months of my recovery felt like a pink cloud, but depression has definitely been creeping up in the past two months. It’s crazy, people actually ask me for advice now because they see me doing well. It’s humbling. Of course, I do the work for myself but I love the motivation of others. Today is great. I have a safe living environment, I live with my former sponsor. It’s amazing that you don’t worry about anything when you try to do the next right thing. Sure I wish I could make a little more money, but there is a lot of peace at the end of the day. The best part is that my mom doesn’t worry, I actually answer the phone when she calls, and we have a great relationship today because I don’t terrorize her.”

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Gary had a great upbringing because of his mother, Cathy. When he was eight months old, Cathy divorced Gary’s father. He struggled with his own demons, and Gary’s mom didn’t want Gary in a toxic environment.As a single mother, Cathy worked hard to provide him opportunities to go to good schools, and any time he had a problem, Cathy was always there for him, without a doubt. Eventually, she married his stepfather, who was another positive addition to Gary’s life as a child. His stepfather supported Cathy in raising him as a single mother. “I’m really grateful for my step-dad. He did a lot in helping my mom with me. I know I was spoiled but he helped make sure I wasn’t too spoiled. My mom and I, we’ve always been so close.

Gary as a child with Cathy. Provided by Gary.

As a kid, Gary remembers having had all the “isms,” what some people in recovery groups refer to as childhood signs of future addiction. He felt he never had enough. There wasn’t anything that Gary was satisfied with where he didn’t want more. Though he did well in school, Gary was rebellious outside of it. He recalled being a young teen trying beer for the first time, “I didn’t even like the taste of it, it was more the excitement that I was doing something wrong. I should have noticed I had a problem from way early on, but it didn’t seem weird because everyone else was doing it, too. It wasn’t til I was alone years later shooting up heroin and I looked around and realized that I’m alone, then it hit me.”

When he was 18, Gary was hit head-on in a car wreck, and despite having severe injuries that required intense recovery, Gary still was able to start college with a roaring start to his academic career. With days consisting of cocaine and alcohol, he remembered one of his most embarrassing moments when his grandmother visited his dorm. She opened his closet door only to have bottles of Southern Comfort crash down on her. Did he acknowledge that he maybe had a problem then? No.

“I mean,” Gary reflected, “I should have realized when I was kicked out of school and had to go back to Louisville that I had fucked up. But alcoholic, addict that I was, I didn’t.” At the time Gary’s behaviors blended in well among his college peers. It wasn’t until after graduation that everything started to escalate in all areas of his life.

For example, Gary had a beautiful girlfriend who later turned into his wife. Though they were happy for a while, it wasn’t your traditional love story either.

“What was getting married like?” I asked. “ Well, when I got engaged, it was thrown together. I hadn’t gotten her a ring, I was jacked off coke, and I went down into the basement. So when she came down and turned the lights on, I was there on my knee. I originally imagined asking her to marry me on Mt. Fuji, but no. I did it in the basement. But she was happy. She had always wanted a wedding, and I adored her. She used (drugs) with me, and in the beginning, we were both functional, but eventually, things got bad with us.”

“So earlier you said you said alcohol, coke, and pills were your thing. How did you get into heroin?”

Gary responded, “I used to be the type who said, I’ll never do meth, I’ll never do heroin. If you say that today, just give it time.” He went on to explain his first exposure to heroin at his dealer’s house. “I got to his house and I walked in. There’s kids running around, drugs everywhere. I’m not even phased by seeing kids around drugs at that point. It’s kind of embarrassing. Anyway, I’ll never forget, I saw a brown line of stuff on his dresser. It caught my eye. ‘What’s that?’ ‘That’s H, that’s boy.’ Ya know, heroin. Then of course, my dealer joked and said, ‘Bet you can’t take that line and make it home.’’ So Gary did, he continued, “I hate romanticizing drugs and I try not to, but I’m not gonna lie, I never felt better. I spent the rest of my active addiction chasing that feeling,” he concluded.

So if you do the math, that means that for the next 6 years of his life, Gary had heroin almost every day. He estimates that he spent over $200,000 over the years.

Though his drug use escalated, Gary was functional. He did well at a successful company. Gary shook his head, reflecting on how he would crush pills in the middle of the workday. He would use, then suddenly his productivity would shoot up. His boss would always remark, “damn Gary how did you get all of that done?” Gary smiled at me mischievously through the Facetime screen and shrugged his shoulders.

Between him and his then-wife’s combined work income, they bought a lake house near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Things were okay for a while. They worked, used, worked, a pattern that is familiar for many functioning alcoholics and addicts.

At one point Gary was moved to finally meet his father. I asked, “So you randomly wanted to meet your dad?” Gary confirmed, “Yep, it was a genius idea I had while high on coke.”

All these years later, Gary’s dad was still in active addiction, while on the other hand, Cathy, Gary’s mom, feared for Gary’s life as she heard about his drug use from others who witnessed it. At the lakehouse, Gary started to lose control. He would drink over a handle of liquor in a day. His tolerance had gotten so high he was using fentanyl, too. Everything seemed manageable to him until it suddenly wasn’t. One of the most giant red flags Gary experienced was when he and his then-wife hosted a dinner party for some childhood friends. Though he didn’t overdose, Gary snuck out mid-meal to get high and nodded out at the dinner table upon his return. His friends, sure, they drank, but seeing Gary’s chin drop down to his chest and his eyelids droop was enough to confirm to his friends what they had been suspecting, Gary was definitely an alcoholic and addicted to drugs. He was in danger. Upon returning to Louisville, those same friends made sure to let Cathy know, who felt on a heart wrenching level how close she was to losing her son.

Gary in active addiction. Provided by Gary.

“It was out there. I had a problem. I lost my job because of a slip-up. I would ask drug dealers to ‘hold the heroin’ and just give me fentanyl, so I went to rehab in 2019.” Gary, however, explained that he really hadn’t suffered enough to want to truly get sober. He only went because he wanted people to get off his back, especially his mom at the time who was worried sick about him. So when Gary left the facility this first time, he got high in the parking lot on the way out, got drunk, and ended up back at that isolated lake house south of Louisville. Now he started using drugs intravenously. His mother, if she was lucky, maybe heard from him once a week, even when she tried calling him every day. “I just wanted to disappear,” Gary explained, “I wanted to be able to hide, get high and not have anyone who cared, know.”

When Gary did choose to reach out to his mom, it was usually in a drunken stupor after drinking 1-2 handles of liquor. “I’d call my mom bawling my eyes out, then I’d end up in rehab, and suddenly I’d be like, ‘How did I end up here?’ I was in a really dark place. I was trying to get sober and I was failing.”

As Gary continued to struggle, his mother Cathy also needed to find guidance of her own. After leaving rehab, Gary’s tolerance dropped significantly, so what he used to use and drink without a problem was now enough to kill him. He overdosed well over 10 times until he got sober, the number may have been as high as 15 times or more. His mother herself had found him blue and possibly dead a few times.

How were you supposed to love your only son who could at any moment kill himself? Cathy found a support group for herself and resolved to love and support Gary, but not financially. Gary laughed as he shared how he was resentful when his mom was encouraged to not enable him with money. “I mean, I get it now, I didn’t then,” he chuckled.

As Gary’s life got more complex, his hopes vanished, too. He and his wife’s relationship had gotten so toxic that they separated. He had limited access to money. He was losing his house. He couldn’t stop drinking, and his thinking was incredibly distorted. He believed he had no way out, and knowing that his body could no longer handle drugs how it used to, he resolved within himself to get high one final time. He knew it would kill him and he was ready. “I had had enough. The fun was gone. The partying was over. I was killing my mom. In my mind I was like, ‘I’m doing this to make sure I NEVER ever wake up.’ So I took it. Then, I started to feel a warm, weighted blanket coming over me instantly. I knew then that I would die, and something in me panicked, ‘Oh my God I’m killing myself!’ So the last thing I remember is texting my friends and my mom. I sent my location from my phone. Later, I woke up in an ambulance.”

I asked, “So, who got you?” He responded, “My mom. Usually, if she had been at home or at work, she would have been 30 minutes away from where I was, but she was eating lunch two minutes away. She knew what was up, called an ambulance, and she came and found me. I was in the car. I was blue.”

Gary said a friend of his in recovery often says, “I hope you reach a level of desperation you never want to go back to.” After Cathy saved him from his suicide attempt, something changed in Gary. He can’t quite explain it, but the change led him to completely let go. He was ready for his stay in a psychiatric hospital after he was revived. He was ready to engage in rehab and take all the suggestions. He was prepared to participate in his twelve-step program and become a contributing member of his recovery community.

Today, Gary’s relationship is restored with Cathy. The greatest gift a son could give his mother is the gift of peace of mind. Today, Cathy has that.

Gary has been sober since July 16, 2020.

If interested in contacting Gary or Cathy, please send a contact request to Jessica.

Whatever It Takes To Save My Daughter: Alissa’s Story

Posted on June 5, 2021June 5, 2021 by Jessica Dueñas in Current Recovery Challenges, Recovery Stories, Written by Jessica

Alissa is a mother, a professional, a practicing attorney, and a wife. Alissa is also a recovering alcoholic who was in and out of facilities throughout New Jersey. Alissa could tell you anything about any facility in Jersey, “I could’ve written a ton of Yelp reviews,” she laughed.

Alissa, the oldest of four children, moved to New Jersey when she was six. She was raised in a middle-income home by parents who made sure to keep up appearances. Alissa attended a Catholic grade school, a Catholic High School, had good grades, volunteered, church, sports, and even got a college scholarship. Law school. Like many, Alissa’s successful outward appearance did not reflect how Alissa spent her life feeling unaccepted, stifled, and controlled by her parents.

“My parents had an innate need to control me and everything that was going on. Especially through money. In college, I saw that the less they provided for me financially, the more control I had over my life.” For Alissa, attending school was a typical experience. Parties from Thursday through Sunday, then recovering during the week to get work done. Then, come Thursday, it was time to fade to black again. After graduating, Alissa’s peers were able to stop, and that’s where Alissa’s relationship with drinking began to spiral.

Rather than moving back in with her parents, she got an apartment. Although it wasn’t easy, she worked three jobs to make ends meet. “I knew that if I could be financially independent, I wouldn’t have to listen to what they say. So even to attend law school, I took out loans, and I didn’t accept their help.”

I’ve come to learn that the more I speak with women with addictions, no matter how different our lives can be, the more our stories remain the same. I had to stop and ask, “Did you ever have anything traumatic happen while in school?” Unfortunately, the answer was yes.

Alissa went on to describe a common nightmare that sadly comes true for many women. “Yea, so I once went out with my professor and some classmates to see a show. Afterward, I went back with one of the guys in my class to have a drink and decide what we would do for the rest of the night. We were having drinks…and he put something in mine. He sexually assaulted me…I woke up at his house the next morning. Rule follower that I am, I reported the incident. I thought that I would get justice and went through this entire legal process, even had a jury trial over it. And he was found not guilty. I had to wait three years for the jury trial to happen just for him to walk free.” The lack of justice, the isolation, and the lack of support all left Alissa diving, turning more to alcohol to provide comfort.

“So, how did your drinking change once you were practicing law full time?” I asked. “Oh, that was an every night situation, but EVERYBODY did it. Everybody drank, and that’s just how it was. If I had a jury trial, that was the only time I tried to take a break. But we all showed up to district court hungover. If you saw a lawyer with a blue Gatorade, you knew someone was having a rough morning.” “So, did you know you had a problem yet?” I asked her. “I mean, sure, there were consequences I was experiencing with my friends. But if something embarrassing happened one weekend, by the next one, someone else had already done something worse that took the attention away from me,” she responded.

What about getting married? Alissa vaguely remembered her boyfriend proposing to her. In describing her wedding, Alissa smirked as she shared, “Oh, I barely remember my wedding; it was nice, it was pretty, but I was so wasted,” she retorted. “I mean, in hindsight, we got married, but we had nothing in common.” Completely relatable. When I married my ex, I tried hard to drink just enough to get drunk but not blackout. I really wanted to remember my wedding. I remember some of it.

It didn’t take long for Alissa to find what she didn’t see in her husband with someone else. The summer following her wedding, Alissa’s boss sent her along with her colleagues to a week-long conference for attorneys. She recalled the team working diligently throughout the days and drinking copious amounts of liquor every night, the daily venture to the store. The sharpest memory in her mind from that week, however, was Peter.

Peter was another lawyer on staff, and though she never thought twice about him at work, they connected romantically on this trip. Their affair was quiet, exciting, and a secret to start, but it grew into more than just an affair; they fell in love. Yes, she was married, and yes, he was engaged. Eventually, time and emotions forced them out of the dark, and they decided to each leave their respective partners in pursuit of a life together.

At this point, I was predicting this as the classic affair gone wrong—the type where the woman leaves her husband for another, only to be abandoned by both. Nevertheless, Alissa interrupted my wandering thoughts and exclaimed, “I mean, I never would have done this crazy shit had I been sober! And guess what, Peter is my actual husband now, and we had a child.” She continued, “What is difficult for me is the fact that I do love Peter very much, and I am so happy for my daughter. So when I romanticize alcohol, it’s easy for me to want to credit my relationship with it for giving me the love of my life and my family,” Alissa continued.

Alissa’s train of thought reminded me of someone who recently emphasized that it is okay to have conflicting emotions. Both can exist simultaneously. In Alissa’s case, yes, alcohol did nearly ruin her life, AND alcohol also gave her the things in her life that she loves. Both are her realities.

“And don’t get me wrong, getting with Peter was so hard, especially on my career. We worked together, and though he never experienced consequences, the other women at work hated me. I mean, I represented a woman’s worst nightmare…Imagine being engaged. Your fiance comes home and is like, ‘I’m leaving you. There is someone else, so we’re not getting married.’ That’s devastating, and not to mention women are already terrible to each other. I had to find somewhere else to work. My job was becoming a dead end. And by then, I was drinking so much on the weekends that my body wasn’t back to normal til mid-week. I needed a change. I was pacing, shaking, anxious. I was telling people that I was ‘just’ suffering from ‘anxiety.’ Peter drank a lot, too.”

“So Alissa, being an attorney, how were you able to balance your drinking with all your responsibilities, like your paperwork?” Her answer was simple and a common one for many women. Alissa was a performer. She was incredibly talented at getting people out of jail. She had strong relationships with prosecutors, was highly respected, and had what she called “jail cred.” If someone was in police custody, Alissa was THE lawyer to represent them. While everything inside was disintegrating, and Alissa often slapped her paperwork together, she always hit the mark in court.

“I would get my hand slapped about not having someone’s documents done completely, and I’d respond, ‘Well, tell that to Joe, who I just got off of a 35-year sentence, and you let me know if he gives two shits about his paperwork being right.’ That was enough to keep everyone’s mouth shut.” And so she carried on, arranging her drinking around her work.

Eventually, Alissa’s body started to show signs of alcohol abuse. An emergency room doctor noticed during an urgent visit visible damage to her esophagus. In her mind, Alissa knew that it was due to her drinking and was expecting to be chastised by the doctor only to hear, “well, you have a stressful job. Make sure to take care of yourself.” How many doctors notice a patient is drinking too much and avoid confronting them? I wondered.

Though the ER doctor didn’t mention Alissa’s drinking, as soon as she described her visit to the hospital to her parents, her mother cautioned her of her grandfather’s drinking and how it led to esophageal problems. “I felt caught! But still, I told her she was out of line,” Alissa laughed. But, all jokes aside, the emergency room visit was enough to get her to stop drinking, for two months.

Alissa picked up a drink once again, and things quickly spiraled. She hit a low she thought she couldn’t escape from and tried to find a solution in a bottle of Klonopin. Hoping to not wake up, she found herself in a haze in a psychiatric ward to discover she was on a 72-hour hold for her suicide attempt. Alissa smirked as she looked back on that incident, describing how she thought she could “lawyer” her way out of it. She felt confident she would leave until the physician on call informed her that the courts would be involved if she tried to go home. Immediately Alissa knew that meant one of her judge friends would see the case. She paused, “Nevermind, I’m good!” She sulked back to her room and stayed quiet for the remainder of the psychiatric hold. At this time, though her parents pretended to ignore the fact that she had a failed suicide attempt,they insisted that she needed to stop drinking. Peter was also concerned, so Alissa joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

“I was working the steps, and things were going well, getting sober was great. Peter proposed. But then, I started doing Step 9. I went to make amends to my mom, and when I asked her what I could do to make things right, she said to me, ‘Now that you’re sober, what you can do for me is promise me that you won’t have kids.’”

My mouth dropped open, and I muttered, “wait, what?” Alissa responded, “Right, so as I’m sitting there devastated looking at my mother wide-eyed, I’m doing what my sponsor said to do and take notes of all the shit she said. So when I left her house, crushed, I called my sponsor. Her response was, ‘pray about it.’

“What the fuck was I supposed to pray about? ‘This is bullshit,’ I said, ‘this program sucks.’ So I quit AA. I used it as an excuse and went back and forth drinking. Then I got pregnant so I stopped for my pregnancy.” The birth of her daughter brought the family together for a brief time to celebrate this new life.

But by her first Mother’s Day, Alissa relapsed.

Her relationship with AA was on and off for a while. She would go back and attend meetings regularly for a time, baby in tow. Still, having a child and drinking that was not yet under control also gave Alissa’s parents the ammo to exert the power they lost when Alissa gained financial independence. Her fight against her parents’ control and the program’s suggestions for managing that conflict both motivated Alissa to drink and to stop drinking. She drank to escape and didn’t drink to outwardly prove she was acceptable in her parents’ eyes. Alissa did have a short span of sobriety, and as things started to calm down, she was up for a significant promotion at work. But then she drank, along with Peter, complicating her life once again.

During this binge, they drank for about four days. Alissa threatened to leave during a drunken argument, and when Peter took her phone to prevent her from going out, she, in her words, “hurt him badly.” I didn’t ask what that meant. Nonetheless, it was enough for her parents to come and take their daughter away. Alissa was immediately hospitalized for 28 days.

Alissa’s parents’ involvement became overwhelming, and this time because of her daughter, she felt pressured to yield to every request. Everything they asked for, she did in fear of them calling child protective services. She tried everything, but she still couldn’t stay consistently sober. When her parents caught Alissa drinking, they would take her daughter for a few days until she appeared steady. “I mean, I wasn’t really sober, but I didn’t want to lose my daughter. At this time, she was showing some delays with speaking and walking, and my parents proceeded to blame me for her developmental concerns,” Alissa said. “How is she now?” I asked. She responded, “Oh, she runs around and talks a ton now.” So glad to hear that.

Subsequently, Alissa relapsed for the last time. Her and her husband’s arguing escalated to the point that she ran to the neighbors’ house. Alissa claimed that Peter was abusing her, so the police came and arrested Peter. They sent Alissa to a nearby hospital for alcohol intoxication, where she blew almost a .4. After which, the hospital transferred her to a residential facility for 35 days. She barely spoke to her husband then. From jail, Peter also went to a different treatment center. The little communication time she had was for FaceTime with her daughter.

“I mean, I didn’t love rehab, but I was starting to feel better and looked forward to getting out. Then one day, one of the therapists took me to her office. She opens the door, and there is a representative from child protection services there. I couldn’t’ believe it! My parents actually decided to try to take my daughter from me, and on top of that, my court date was the day I left treatment.” At the hearing, Alissa did agree to give her parents temporary custody. However, since then, her parents have fought with her regarding visitations and intentionally planning events to create scheduling conflicts. They purposely organized social activities with her siblings and daughter when Alissa couldn’t attend. As a result, Alissa’s parents alienated her from the family.

Despite this ongoing battle for her daughter and freedom from her parents that Alissa is in, she has stayed sober. She’s back in AA, and she’s accepted working with a sponsor. She doesn’t love the program, but it’s helping to keep her sober.

Alissa’s been sober since November of 2020, and her sobriety since has been anything but easy. “A lot is riding on me staying sober,” Alissa reflected. Peter got sober, too. Today, Alissa works her recovery program and works with a therapist. She exercises and stays busy.

Alissa remarked as we wrapped up, “I feel like I was always trying so hard to get the approval and praise of my family. I got it from everywhere else but them. Now, look where we’re at. Now I realize and understand where my parents’ behaviors came from. It doesn’t make it easy, but it helps to understand.” It’s an uncomfortable truth to accept, but Alissa knows that moving forward, it’s going to take a lot of work, including staying sober.

“I’m doing whatever it takes. I can’t lose my daughter.”