Shame and Secrets
Growing up, when I would hear that someone had a drug problem, I would think “That could never happen to me!” The most concealed chapters of my story are from my drug addiction. I worked my ass off to stop using drugs, and be able to start a life, a career and rebuild trust and relationships with my family. As a need to separate from this, I have treated this time in my life as someone else completely. I could no longer relate to that person, nor did I want to. Wrong place, wrong people, wrong time.
Am I proud of myself for recovering from my drug addiction? Hell yes! At the time, the opioid epidemic was skyrocketing. Heroin use was up significantly because it was cheaper and more available on the streets. Unfortunately, overdoses were also skyrocketing. This was before Narcan was well known by the everyday person and so widely used. On one hand, a heroin addiction doesn’t just happen. On the other hand, it does.
When I was in high school, there started to be parties with drinking, and I would drink because everyone else was drinking. The start of peer pressure, which never, ever goes away — but that’s for another post! I didn’t know how to drink or how much to drink, and mostly I drank too much. This was before I felt like I needed to drink in order to fit in or be comfortable with myself in social settings. Drinking evolved to experimenting with drugs like marijuana, which evolved to trying other drugs, and then heroin. So in this regard, my heroin addiction didn’t just start out of nowhere. I was using other substances to fit in with friends and then eventually to avoid feeling like myself.
However, I only tried heroin one time, and then I did it every single day, more and more, until the day I stopped for good. I remember the night I tried heroin for the first time. A friend had been asking us (my then boyfriend and I) for a while if we wanted to try it. At first, it was a strong “Hell NO!”. Then we started to get curious. That night, we decided to try it, but only a very small amount. We snorted it. It was the best I’d ever felt in my entire life. A completely different feeling within myself of being so happy, comfortable with myself and finally content.
So while it wasn’t my first substance experience, it did capture me the first time I did it. It was no doubt the scariest reality of my life then. A beyond powerful substance.
When I look back on these two-ish years, it’s riddled with behaviors and actions that didn’t represent me then and do not represent me now. I think this is why I have forced this time of my life out of me for so long. The shame I have felt has been paralyzing. It’s something that I’m constantly doing the work on in therapy and coaching. In deciding to come out with my story, this part of my life was what made me second guess myself several times a day. I know in my heart that keeping this in is not helpful to myself. My big beautiful brain is still trying hard to understand!
The shame, the secrets, the hiding a part of me, all of this has fueled different aspects and beliefs in my life. To name a few …
Justifying my drinking. My internal chatter was “I’m not using heroin, and I’m a high-functioning adult in life, relationships and career. Plus, I deserve to unwind.” But this functioning was only outward, to others, functioning. As you’ve read, my internal / self-functioning was really struggling, and I felt like I needed to silence this struggle for a bit every day.
Not being good enough. This belief didn’t stem from just my drug addiction, but my drug addiction had helped to power it for a long time. “What an incredible fuck-up, and I thought it could never happen to me.” Battling this belief is something I still work on today.
Huge impostor syndrome in my professional career. Not only was I, like many others, worrying that someone would tune into the fact that I was figuring this all out as I went, but can you imagine if anyone I worked with knew about my drug addiction?! I’d lose respect, trust and everything I worked so hard for in my career.
Panic disorder. Over the last 10+ years, panic attacks have come and gone in my professional career. They mostly only exist in my work day-to-day and likely are driven by certain beliefs about myself.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and it can be overwhelming for me at times. That said, I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to be alive to work on myself for the rest of my life. In creating this, my hope is that I’m also giving myself the freedom to be myself fully during this lifetime. In turn, if this allows others to do the same, it will be one more step in creating empathy and compassion for each of us to truly find joy in our lives.