Jasmine’s story of drug addiction parallels many others’ in that there isn’t necessarily one rock bottom—there are many. She lost friends. She went to jail. She almost died before she was 23. She had all the makings of someone that would never quit. When rock bottom doesn’t provide the wake-up call for someone, death lurks on the other line. Fortunately, someone came to her aid.
From Dealing Drugs to Drug Addiction
Jasmine raced through high school, graduating at 16. She figured that she was so far ahead, she could party a little while everyone else caught up. A little partying quickly turned into a full-time affair.
Like many people who suffer from an addiction to drugs, Jasmine had no control over her drinking. She couldn’t just casually drink Alcohol, and she was always the last one standing at a party.
Jasmine then started smoking weed, in fact, she was selling weed at work. So now, Jasmine is a drug dealer.
With her drug dealing, Jasmine found she was making a lot of cash, so she decided to try Cocaine, which got out of hand very quickly. In fact, she did Cocaine for 45 days straight after the first time she tried it.
Eventually, Jasmine’s parents found out about her drug abuse and they made her go to a drug treatment facility. Unfortunately, going thru the drug addiction rehab process, she sensed that everyone in the treatment center was worse off than she was and it, in fact, perked her interest in drugs even more.
Jasmine met a guy in treatment and he ended up introducing her to abusing drugs like mushrooms and ecstasy. Her parents were enraged, so they sent her away to upstate New York, in hopes that the distance from her boyfriend and circle of friends would be enough to stop her from partying and abusing drugs, however, this only perpetuated Jasmine further into the abyss of drug abuse. She was in a small town, isolated with nothing to do: so she kept doing drugs.
The Evolution of Drug Addiction
One day, Jasmine got run over by an SUV and broke several ribs. Up to this point, she had been smoking weed every day in addition to using many other drugs partying all the time with her boyfriend. When her doctor prescribed painkillers, she didn’t take very many at first, but her boyfriend was taking several of them.
She decided to use her mom’s credit card without permission for a Vegas trip, which she was ultimately charged with fraud for. She ended up bailing herself out of jail, but it got her into a lot of debt which happened to be a tipping point for Jasmine. In order to get herself out of debt, Jasmine decided to start stripping. At this point, she was being prescribed painkillers, but she was selling them. She had no idea just how addictive prescription painkillers are.
Soon, Jasmine wound up taking copious amounts of painkillers to dance without any pain. The habit escalated, going from a pill a day to fifteen pills a day. It wasn’t long before Jasmine realized she had an addiction to painkillers that would require rehab to get clean.
Eventually, Jasmine ran out of the painkillers and her boyfriend suggested that she take Opium instead. She didn’t really know what she was taking, but the feeling it gave her was amazing. If she had known she was taking Heroin, she wouldn’t have taken it. However, she enjoyed it so much and wanted to do what her boyfriend was doing. They were addicted to Heroin together and if they were going down, it would be together.
Drug Addiction’s Rock Bottom
Jasmine was paying all of her and her boyfriend’s bills, feeding their Heroin drug addiction and trying to make the relationship work when she got evicted from where she was living. The eviction marked the end of the relationship, but she immediately found another guy and continued her drug addiction with him.
At one point, their house was raided by the DEA and she swallowed a bag of Heroin so that she could throw it up later and use it when she was released—which she did. After that incident, Jasmine moved in with a wealthy, older guy who totally enabled her drug addiction. At that point, she had a $300 a day habit and easily maintained it for about four years.
Jasmine’s boyfriend suddenly died causing her to spiral downward into a dark place, shooting up Heroin twenty times a day, in and out of the hospital because her body was failing her. She partied every night, staying at hotels making life a complete blur.
Later on, one of her good friends told Jasmine that he owed a drug dealer approximately $4,000, which he couldn’t pay. It wasn’t long after that admission that Jasmine found out that the drug dealer sent her good friend to the desert to be burned alive.
In response, Jasmine overdosed on drugs and was taken to the hospital. She also had developed a life-threatening infection of the blood, which nearly killed her. She was so sick that she had to go to a nursing home to recover, but that didn’t stop her from using. She had people send her Heroin to the hospital and she smoked through an apple at the nursing home. No matter what happened, she couldn’t quit her drug addiction.
Intervention for a Drug Addiction
Eventually, a guy Jasmine was dating set up a last-ditch intervention to get her help for her drug addiction.
Moved by their care, Jasmine decided to go into a drug addiction treatment program again. She realized in her addiction treatment program just how bad her life in addiction was. She couldn’t believe how much her drug addiction affected her family.
For the first time in years, Jasmine remembered what it was like to feel okay. She didn’t have to wake up feeling terrible and sick, she didn’t have to dig with a needle in her arm for hours just to find a vein that wasn’t blown yet. Jasmine spent countless hours in therapy, a key part of drug rehab working through the issues that were driving her to abuse drugs.
Jasmine admits, she still has cravings, but she knows now that using drugs isn’t an option for her. She has the ability to notice and acknowledge that craving, and move on from it.
In her recovery from drug addiction, Jasmine has come to depend on things like yoga, music and art to fill the void left by Heroin. Things outside of herself that make her feel connected to something bigger.
Today, seven of the people she used to do drugs with are dead, while three are locked up and two are clean.
Recovering from a Heroin Drug Addiction is Possible
Even if you have had many rock bottoms, you can overcome a drug addiction just like Jasmine did. If you think this is just how your life is going to go, you need to know that it doesn’t have to. Drug addiction is out of your hands, but you can still find recovery. If you seek help and take suggestions from others who have been through it along with experts in the field, you can succeed.
Call (866) 578-7471 to speak with someone who knows what you are going through because they have been there before. They will listen to your story and guide you through the many drug addiction treatment programs and support options that are available to you. Don’t give up on your life.
