Just a Little More History

I find myself raiding medicine cabinets and realize rather quickly where this is going to lead me. I wean myself off after several weeks of using pain medicine. I feel confident with my ability to do that and for several months everything is fine. When my son was about 4 months old, I was asked to help an elderly woman who was blind and hard of hearing with her letter/card writing. I agreed. The elderly woman was the mother-in-law of the daughter of our landlords at the llama farm. She lived right next door. The older woman lived in an apt. in the basement of the daughter's house. I went over to help out like I had agreed. I was writing out cards for the woman and we needed an address book that was in a drawer in her kitchen. She directed me to the drawer and I opened it. To my surprise, not only was the address book there, but a rather large bottle of Oxycontin. 350 pills a month. Evidently the woman had severe pain due to her Osteoporosis. She was blind for God's sake. I took a few for fun and thought how great this would be that I could occasionally take a few pills and with such a large prescription no one would notice. Well, before long I was taking her pain pills every day. She had Methadone as well, and I was taking these, too. I was strung out on someone else's pain medicine for about 5 months. My son was 9 months old when I got sober. I finally broke down after months of trying to wean myself off of her medications. I had stolen a fentanyl patch and was using a heating pad to try and get "well." I had my 9 month old with me and freaked out, called my best friend and told her that I needed help. I couldn't stop and wanted to. I went to her house for a few days and started the withdrawal process. She has a young family of her own and I couldn't stay for very long. I returned home and couldn't keep myself away from the drugs next door. This time I knew it was going to be noticed. It was a miracle it hadn't been noticed up to this point. The packaging on the pills was different, it was in sheets, much easier to see how many were there at a glance. I knew my employers/landlords noticed something was fishy. They actually thought it was one of the old lady's nurses. I went over to my landlord's house and told them everything. I told them that I wanted to stop and that I needed help. They wanted me to go to AA. At first, I pretended to go. I felt so much guilt and remorse for lying about going but, it was the pattern I was accustomed to. Finally, one day when I was at my best friend's house, the one I had called originally, she suggested that I go to AA so that I wouldn't have to lie. What a concept! So, I went and felt relief for the first time in years. What I heard in the rooms spoke to me in such a deep way. I had been so lost. So broken. So desperate. This was the answer I had been searching for all of my life....or was it?