This Story of Hope follows Jaime, an Ideal Option patient now 5 years in recovery, who fell into addiction after undergoing oral surgery.
Back when she was using heroin and pain pills, Jaime steered clear of her children’s schools.
She ducked calls from her son’s guidance counselor, skipped parent-teacher conferences, and ignored notices about school festivals. All the while, she felt guilty “for being a lame parent.”
So, it was a big deal this year when Jaime volunteered to operate a booth at her 9-year-old daughter’s school carnival.
“I signed up to run a game with rubber duckies floating, where everyone gets a prize,” recalls Jaime, now 40 and an Ideal Option patient with 5 years in recovery. “It made my daughter so happy. She said, ‘Really?’ Before, I would have been worried about what the other parents and teachers might think. I kept myself out of the loop.”
Jaime’s addiction began at age 21, after she underwent oral surgery while pregnant with her first child.
“Back then, doctors had no problem prescribing painkillers and more painkillers and more,” says Jaime. “I was naïve. I thought, ‘If a doctor gives it to you, it’s fine.’”
Jaime would feel sick often — “an achy pain, like having the worst flu” — but didn’t connect her misery with opioid withdrawal. After visiting various pain specialists, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and prescribed even more opioids.
Looking back, she suspects that her pain stemmed from withdrawal. “It took me many years to admit it to myself,” she says.
Jaime split up with her husband and barely stayed afloat, supporting herself and her daughter with a data-entry job. To supplement her opioid prescriptions, she’d buy pills off the street.
The bottom fell out when her husband won custody of their daughter, then age 5. “It was devastating,” Jaime remembers. “That broke my entire world.”
Jaime switched from using pain pills to snorting heroin. Then, a friend began injecting her in the arm, since she couldn’t do it herself.
Eventually, she met a guy at work, and they moved in together. He began injecting her with heroin, sometimes in front of her 3-year-old son.
Life spiraled downward from there. Jaime and her boyfriend got evicted from their house, and their car was repossessed. Jaime’s boyfriend sold his possessions — guns, ATVs, everything. Jaime had already pawned all her jewelry, including her favorite necklace and ring.
They briefly moved in with her boyfriend’s parents and then split up. Unable to inject herself with heroin, Jaime went back to drinking. When she became pregnant with her third child, she quit drinking and went back to heroin.
“It was always one or the other,” Jaime says.
At a low point, she stopped caring for herself. Showering, dressing, and applying make-up felt like chores. “I picked my skin,” she says. “I had sores all over my body.”
Sometimes, while high, Jaime would turn into Supermom — ”the picture of perfection” — manically cleaning the house and showering attention on her son and daughter. Other times, she’d feel so ill that she’d tell her kids, “Hey, leave me alone.”
Mostly, Jaime secluded herself in the basement of her sister’s house, where she and her children lived.
She knew she was falling short as a mom. “My self-image was so low. I had a lot of shame.”
Jaime’s life took another turn in 2018. First, her father, who’d meant everything to her, passed away. Two weeks later, she underwent surgery for a severely broken arm she’d sustained after slipping on a floor.
By that point, pain management had changed in the United States, and opioid prescriptions were hard to come by. After her post-surgery prescription expired, Jaime was out of luck.
But this time around, Jaime didn’t seek out pills on the street or turn to alcohol. Exhausted, she told herself: I’m done. I’m not doing this anymore.
Worried she might become addicted to methadone, Jaime didn’t want to enroll in a methadone clinic. She knew about Suboxone but didn’t realize she could easily get an appointment at a clinic such as Ideal Option.
So, she began buying Suboxone off the street. Before long, her connection got arrested, and Jaime found Ideal Option via an internet search.
She has never looked back.
“With Suboxone, I felt like the person I used to be — a productive person. I was never one to lounge around, but I felt like I’d been lying down for 11 years.”
With her energy restored, Jaime had no problem walking 2 miles to the store, and she threw herself into parenthood. “I felt limitless,” she remembers. “I was able to be the mom I wanted to be.”
These days, Jaime and her daughter draw together and make jewelry. Jaime attends her teenage son’s choir performances and feels “so much pride it’s ridiculous.”
She loves doing her hair, make-up, and nails — so much so that she started a successful press-on nail business, specializing in wild and creative designs.
“It’s so freeing not to wake up and think, I feel like death. How am I going to get my ass out of bed?” Jaime says. “I have my life back. But better.”
Specializing in addiction medicine since 2012, Ideal Option has helped tens of thousands of people just like Jaime get started in recovery. Click here to make an appointment at Ideal Option today!
Next up: “My ball and chain is gone. I have no cravings whatsoever.” — Denese’s Story of Hope