This Story of Hope features Adriana, now in recovery, who fell victim to addiction when her boyfriend introduced her to pain pills to treat her stress.
A decade ago, Adriana was a new mom, struggling to care for her baby girl and attend college. “I was stressed and out of energy, and my boyfriend’s mom gave me a pill and said, ‘Here, take this. It’ll make you feel better.”
It did.
“I thought, Oh my god, this is amazing,” recalls Adriana, now 31 and an Ideal Option patient. “I had no idea about addiction.”
She learned soon enough, when her boyfriend’s parents lost their pain pill prescriptions. Achy and nauseous from withdrawal, Adriana would call in sick at work or show up late. She lost job after job and stopped trying to work.
By then she and her boyfriend had two daughters and no income. “We couldn’t pay for diapers or formula,” says Adriana. “It was starting to have an effect on me as a mother. I was totally focused on not getting sick.”
For years, Adriana, her boyfriend, and his parents bounced around, living rent-free in friends’ houses or trailers until they’d get kicked out.
“We were all living together and using together,” she says. “We got used to struggling, so we always felt, We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, Adriana kept her distance from her own parents, stopping by on Christmas for a quick visit if she didn’t look or feel too bad.
“We bumped heads a lot,” Adriana recalls. “They’d ask, ‘What’s going on? Why aren’t you guys ever working and doing normal things?’”
Adriana began to ask herself the same questions.
“My boyfriend’s family didn’t have a care in the world, but I felt, This is not how you’re supposed to live. I was tired of being sick and not having things for my kids.”
Adriana’s sister, who lived out of town, offered to take her and the girls in. Adriana started Suboxone treatment, landed a hotel job, and saved enough to rent a house.
“I did really well for about a year,” she remembers.
But then her boyfriend reached out, insisting he was ready to seek treatment. Adriana took him back.
“Right away, he found the only drug dealer in town and brought heroin back into my life. It went downhill from there.”
Before long, Adriana couldn’t get her kids to school on time. She’d fall asleep at the hotel’s front desk and quit the job before she could get fired.
Broke and tired, she walked away from her rental house, too. When her sister cleaned the place up and found Adriana’s needles, “she was devastated,” Adriana says.
But Adriana had spiraled too far down to care. “I thought, She’s just another family member that’s mad at me.”
Adriana, boyfriend and children drifted around, until the night a motel kicked them out, and Adriana called her mom to pick up the girls. Adriana rationalized, The girls are OK with my mom now, so I’m just going to keep going.
She and her boyfriend would spend hours each day scrounging for drugs and scouting out churches that might pay for a motel stay. “We would give some sob story, like, ‘We have two girls and no place to shower.’”
When the COVID pandemic struck, life got easier. Adriana, her boyfriend, and his family pooled their stimulus checks, rented an apartment, and bought a stash of drugs to use and sell. Sometimes, Adriana’s mom would bring the girls over, and Adriana would buy them clothes and electronics.
Adriana couldn’t believe her luck. “I thought, Wow, this is great. We’re not sick, and we can sleep all day and get high all night, and we don’t have to work, and we can buy our kids all this stuff.”
To avoid encounters with police, Adriana rarely left home. Years earlier, she’d been arrested for drug possession and, to avoid failing a drug test, avoided her probation officer.
“I was on the run,” she says.
Eventually, Adriana’s group ran out of money and returned to couch surfing. “I looked all greasy and didn’t have a place to shower,” she remembers. “I’d steal food at the store, and there were days I’d go without eating.”
One day, police caught up with her, and she found herself facing 4 years in prison.
By this time, her girls had been living with their grandparents for 5 years. Adriana’s mom told her, ‘This is your last chance.’ It was my wake-up call: Either I get it together, or I lose the girls forever.”
In jail, Adriana endured the misery of fentanyl withdrawal. “I couldn’t move – I was on the top bunk, and I’d just lean over and throw up. I had diarrhea and was shivering so much, just shaking.”
Her only chance at avoiding prison was securing a spot in a long-term treatment program and persuading the judge to give her a chance. A jail staffer worked hard to help Adriana find a program. “She told me, ‘I can see you have potential,’” Adriana says.
The judge let her enroll in the program, on the condition that she stay for a full year and serve 4 years’ probation.
Adriana followed through and has thrived.
She started on Suboxone and took counseling seriously. “I worked on myself a lot,” she says. “And with Suboxone, I felt normal and stabilized. It gave me the confidence to get a job.”
By the time Adriana graduated from the program, she had saved enough to rent an apartment and buy a car. Today, she works at a UPS store and has the support of her parents and sister.
She has continued with counseling, changed her phone number, and cut ties with everyone from her past life.
“In therapy, I learned a lot about what my triggers are. It sucks to have to let go of the people you knew in your old life, but I know it’s too dangerous. They’ll drag me right back.”
These days, Adriana sleeps well, has a good appetite, and, thanks to Suboxone, has no desire to use drugs.
“I’ve created a whole new life,” she says. “I don’t even know anybody that’s using. I haven’t had a day of drama in ages. Before, every day was drama.”
In a few months, her girls, now ages 11 and 12, will come to live with her permanently and start a new school. “They’ve waited a long time for this,” she says.
So has Adriana.
When her children lived with their grandparents, Adriana’s role was the “fun big sister.” Now, Adriana says, “I get to be their mom.”
“I want to go to parent-teacher conferences, and the girls want to start playing volleyball. I missed so much of that stuff. That’s what I’m most excited for — to be able to do all these mom things.”
Specializing in addiction medicine since 2012, Ideal Option has helped tens of thousands of people just like Adriana get started in recovery. Click here to make an appointment at Ideal Option today!
Next up: “I can make memories that I want to remember” — Hattie’s Story of Hope.