“Hi, my name is Tobi and I am a grateful recovering addict. Don’t let the name fool you because I am in fact, a girl. My story goes something like this;”
I grew up in an alcoholic home with a mother that was never home and a father that, even though he was never mean to me, still had all of the problems that went along with being an alcoholic. I loved my daddy, he was the most important thing in my life and I went everywhere with him.
When I was ten years old I started occasionally drinking with neighbor kids or whoever had the guts to steal the liquor from their parents, which wasn’t hard to find. Even from a very young age I always drank to get drunk and if there wasn’t enough to get me drunk, I didn’t see a point in drinking.
Then, I fell into the world of drugs. I started off like most people, smoking a joint or two whenever I was with someone who had it. Marijuana became my life. I lived for it. I thought that was the only “cool” thing to do in my town and I of course, being the free-spirited, wild kind of person that I am, had to have as much fun as possible. Soon after, I had my first encounter with cocaine and I was off to a crazy start then because I loved it. It made me feel better that I had ever felt in my life. The next day, I was introduced to crystal methadrine, and that was even better.
Well, a lot of things happened that week, including being raped by the cocaine dealer that had introduced me to my new world. I became pregnant but due to my drug use, my baby, whom I named Angel, never came to term. I don’t remember a whole lot more about life after that except for a lot of hard-core partying, drug-dealing, lying, stealing, cheating, humiliation, sickness, and confusion. I started losing all of my friends because nobody wanted to hang out with a Junkie that was in the back room shootin’ up whatever anybody handed her, while everyone else was in the front room drinking and having fun.
I finally got so sick that I started flippin’ out and I got sent 2,000 miles away from home, to Illinois, for inpatient rehabilitation. When I went into treatment I weighed 90 pounds and I was dying. I stayed in rehab for 7 months and when I got out I came to live with my sister. I am doing really good now and my life is headed in a positive direction. I have goals, hopes, and dreams now that I would never even think of giving up. I made a decision almost a year ago to fight for my life and to never let my addiction win and so far, I have succeeded.