Addiction Interview #2

Description

KP: This morning I’m with my friend’s sister, speaking a bit with her about her heroin addiction. I’d actually like to ask you about what you think the hardest thing about addiction is?
NA: Well, when I relapsed after getting off the methadone, my second son was three and my first son was eight. I used again, obviously. I drove with them high. I drove with them drunk. I used drugs while they slept about twenty feet away, and someone called me a terrible mother because I was choosing drugs instead of my own kids and that’s when I knew that I needed to stop. It was too much. Being a mom and being an addict is the hardest thing.
KP: Do you believe in the whole “once an addict, always an addict”?
NA: Yes. Of course. Just like with any sort of addiction, you’re always going to have cravings and I think in some way, you just shift addictions. Instead of heroin, I smoke cigarettes and I’m addicted to sex. Some people move to alcohol or other drugs.
KP: Have you ever had to try and revive one of your friends?
NA: Oh, plenty of times, yeah. My boyfriend died on me three times within a matter of a weekend. Most of the time, I could bring him back on my own. Beating on his chest, splashing water on him, doing CPR..doing whatever I could because obviously when you call 911, there’s drugs involved and he was on parole and you don’t want them to get in trouble, of course, so..having to revive your essentially dead boyfriend is just something that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
KP: I know that you were pregnant with you first son while you were in prison, what was that like for you?
NA: It obviously wasn’t an ideal situation, but I think at the time, it was good for me. I was in a semi-stable environment, I was able to get visits from my family, and I was able to be away from drugs completely, you know, without there even being a chance that I’d run into them, or at least a very slim chance and I was clean for almost seven or eight years after that which is my longest stretch since I started using.

Participants

• KierPawlowski
  

Interview By

• KierPawlowski