"Drugs can affect anyone, you may not see it but its there."

Description

Hi my name is Nikolle Vollmer and im interviewing subject b who decided to be anonymous for the storycorps project, now just remember that any time during this interview you have the right to stop, not answer anything you don't want to this is your interview. So if you ever feel uncomfortable, please let me know okay? Yes thank you. Your welcome. Okay so we are going to start um, now this is for a family member of yours that was affected by drugs correct? Correct. Alright. So who was the person misusing drugs in your family? It was my cousin on my moms side of the family. Okay, and did they ever lie about their addiction to any of your family members? No they didn't lie but they hid it from us for a long time. Oh okay, did you or anyone else in your family see them misusing drugs? My aunt did, but not me personally. Um did they ever steal from your family to get money for their addiction? Yes, unfortunately they took money from my grandmother and my aunt. Um how did this addiction affect your family? Um well the rest of my family doesn't really talk to that part of the family anymore so it kind of brought us farther apart from each other. How did the um addiction affect your relationship with that, with your cousin? I thought that my cousin and I were close but they never told me about her addiction so it kind of made me move further apart from them and I don't speak much with them anymore. Aw i'm sorry to hear that, um how do you cope with this situation? I run a lot to get my mind off of it and I kind of just keep to myself. Fair enough, did they ever get into any fights or arguments with family members? Yeah, uh very often they did. Um did anyone try to help them with their addiction? Yea we all kind of did, but it was a lot of talking to a brick wall because they just didn't want to hear it and they were very against it. I get that, was there anything or anyone who helped you deal with this situation? No I kind of just kept to myself and tried to cope with it on my own. Would you or your family ever want to help them again? I don't think so whenever we try to they just didn't want to hear from us. Is there anything you wish you could go back and change? Them using drugs in the first place, because it obviously really affected my whole family. Yea haha, Is there anything you wish you would have said to them? Um, no I don't think there is any more that I could say to them other than what has already been said by everyone, Well that's fair enough, um have they regained you or your family's trust at all? No they haven't, it's kind of like whenever we would try and help them they would just go back to doing what they already have so its not showing us that they want to change. It's going to take a while than? Yeah. Yeah, and was there anything that stuck with you throughout this experience? Yeah, just like drugs can affect anyone and you may not see it but it's there and its hidden and you just don't know about it, so just like you have to kind of keep an eye on people and yeah, it can affect anyone. Absolutely, I absolutely agree. Well thank you so much for your time and for helping me with this project. Yeah, of course.

Participants

• anonymous anonymous
  
• nikolle Vollmer
  

Interview By

• nikolle Vollmer