“Where I’m at in my life — it’s a miracle” — Jane’s Story of Hope

This Story of Hope features Jane, now 4 years in recovery, who fell victim to opioid addiction after receiving a prescription for back pain.

For Jane and her husband, the family trip to Mexico was supposed to represent a new chapter.

“I’d had an affair, and in Mexico, we were going to start again,” remembers Jane, a mom of four. “We’d saved up money for the trip, and it was supposed to be a spectacular time.”

At first, it was. The whole family swam and explored volcanoes and caves. But four days into the trip, Jane abruptly flew home. She concocted a story for the kids — “some lie about how I had to get back for work” — but told her husband the truth: She was about to run out of opioid pills and didn’t want her kids to see her in the throes of withdrawal.

Three days later, Jane’s family returned home from Mexico to find her desperately ill. Her husband left with the kids and filed for divorce.

“He couldn’t trust me anymore,” recalls Jane, now 51 and an Ideal Option patient with four years in recovery. “He was done.”

But Jane’s downward spiral was just beginning.

Jane moved into an apartment and briefly attempted to get help for her addiction, receiving Suboxone through a doctor. But she remained in denial about the extent of her opioid dependence and mental health issues. Before long, Jane lost her health insurance and her access to medication.

That’s when an acquaintance introduced her to heroin.

“It seemed so innocent, so easy,” Jane recalls. “Like, you smoked, and immediately you felt better. It was clean, no needles. It was nothing like I had imagined.”

Within a few months, heroin had consumed Jane’s life. To save money, she switched from smoking to shooting up but became so addicted that she was spending even more.

“I lost all ability and desire to do anything but heroin,” Jane remembers.

Depressed and broke, she turned her apartment into a refuge for younger folks who were addicted to drugs and had nowhere to go.

“It was a place where they could take a bath and get shelter,” she says. “I thought I was busy. I spent a lot of time washing their clothes and filling the void. Mostly I was consumed with how to get the next fix.”

One day, police found Jane asleep at the wheel of her car, which was stopped in the middle of the street. A drug test detected five substances in her system. Jane was arrested and put on probation.

Her family cut ties. Two of her brothers changed their phone numbers. Then she lost her apartment, and her drug use escalated.

“I was angry and playing the victim, blaming my mother for everything,” Jane says.

Jane’s mom had struggled with addiction and depression, too. When Jane was 12, her mom began giving her opioid pills as a mood booster.

“I was kind of a sad child, with a lot of responsibility for my four brothers,” Jane says. “The pills made me feel normal, happier.”

At 19, Jane had her wisdom teeth pulled and liked how the pain pills made her feel. Still, she didn’t use opioids regularly until age 30, when she received a prescription for back pain.

“I was misusing the pills within a week,” Jane recalls. Soon, she was doctor-shopping and manipulating her husband, a healthcare provider, to prescribe her pills.

Gradually, Jane’s life fell apart. “I was trying to be everything my mom wasn’t,” she says. “I was stretching myself way too thin, and everything was a facade.”

She’d blow through her pill supply and then plunge into withdrawal, hiding from her family.

“I would still make dinner, but it was crap dinner, like mac and cheese or pizza. I’d tell the kids I was sick with the flu.”

She wasn’t paying the bills and was making bad decisions that had a domino effect on her husband and kids. The family’s financial woes mounted.

“My husband couldn’t think straight. He was going into work late and coming home early to check on me and monitor my health.”

Among Jane’s poor decisions was having an affair. Then came the ill-fated Mexico trip, the divorce, and her first arrest.

After losing her apartment, Jane moved into a hotel and was promptly robbed.

“I surrounded myself with people who took advantage of me,” she says. “A lot of this was self-hatred because of the guilt over what I had done to my husband and children.”

When her money ran out, she’d sleep at bus stops, in the forest, outside a casino, in abandoned cars.

“It was a nomadic existence,” she says. “I was wandering around a lot trying to look busy.”

With nowhere to sleep, she began using meth to stay awake. “Sometimes I’d go five days without really sleeping, just catching 20-minute naps.”

She wrote bad checks until she was caught. Then she stole shampoo and toothbrushes from Wal-Mart, returning the items for cash using receipts she found in the garbage.

“You couldn’t get much, but that’s how I survived,” she says.

It was hardly enough to maintain her $200-per-day addiction, so she would frequently descend into withdrawal — chills, back pain, vomiting, diarrhea, incessant sobbing. Desperate, Jane turned to prostitution.

Over the years, she was arrested on a variety of charges and did 16 stints in jail. A couple times she was offered Suboxone in jail, and she found the medication vanquished her cravings.

But she wasn’t able to stick with the program on the outside. “They’d release you in the middle of the night, and there would be no house to go to, no person to help, no electricity.”

Before long, Jane’s cravings would return, and she’d start shooting heroin again.

Then one day, Jane’s luck turned. While at a food cart, she met a man, Rick, who also was addicted to heroin.

“He was hungry, and I was hungry. When we first saw each other, I said, ‘You use heroin?’ It really surprised me. It didn’t fit. He seemed different.”

Jane and Rick hit it off. He asked her: “What are you doing? How did this happen to you?”

Jane was taken aback. “No one had ever asked me that before.”

The encounter planted the seeds of change. Jane knew she wanted to dig herself out of her hole, though the process would unfold slowly.

The next time Jane landed back in jail, she was offered Suboxone through a program run by Ideal Option. One provider told her, “You can change. You don’t have to settle for this lifestyle.”

“I felt like I wasn’t being judged, like it was really possible for me to change.”

Upon her release, Jane spent six months in a sober-living house, thanks to the generosity of her former church.

“I told them, ‘I need a place to live, but I don’t have the money and don’t want to steal.’ They wrote out a check to the sober house.”

For the first time in ages, Jane was able to focus on recovery. She began counseling and enrolled at Ideal Option.

Rick, her partner, got sober, too, and six months later, they moved in with his parents while they got back on their feet.

Today, Jane and Rick have a place of their own. He works as a sous chef. Jane attends school fulltime and is on track to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She plans to work in the substance abuse field.

Jane is back in touch with two of her children and her ex-husband, who is supportive of her recovery.

She marvels at her dramatic turnaround, how liberated she feels now that her life doesn’t revolve around heroin.

“It’s freeing and empowering,” Jane says. “When I say I’m going to be someplace, I really can be. I can read again; I actually look up at the sky and appreciate the stars. I love the rain, and I love my dog.”

“Where I’m at in my life — it’s a miracle.”

Specializing in addiction medicine since 2012, Ideal Option has helped tens of thousands of people just like Jane get started in recovery. Click here to make an appointment at Ideal Option today!

Next up: “Today, I have a life filled with purpose” — Josh’s recovery Story of Hope.