CHAPTER NINE

The Medication

For a long time, I didn't understand why I could never seem to keep up with everything.

I felt like I was constantly running on empty.

I had responsibilities everywhere I looked.

I was working.

I was raising my children.

I was dealing with my marriage.

I was dealing with family issues.

I was dealing with my daughter's medical problems.

I was trying to keep our household together.

And somehow, I was expected to continue functioning as though none of it was weighing on me.

At one point, a doctor prescribed me Adderall.

The doctor told me that I must have been misdiagnosed with ADHD my entire life.

I don't necessarily believe that explanation.

But I do know one thing.

The medication worked.

At least at first, it gave me the ability to function at a level I felt like I couldn't reach on my own.

I could get things done.

I could work.

I could keep moving.

I could take care of things.

I could push through exhaustion.

And when you are someone who has convinced yourself that stopping is not an option, anything that makes you capable of continuing can feel like a lifeline.

Then that changed.

After an anniversary trip to Colorado with Jon, where marijuana was legal, I returned home and eventually tested positive for marijuana.

At that time, marijuana was not legal in Missouri.

My doctor stopped prescribing my Adderall.

And it wasn't a gradual transition.

From my perspective, I was suddenly cut off from something I had come to rely on to function.

I felt like someone had taken away the one thing that had been helping me keep all the plates in the air.

I still had the same children.

The same job.

The same marriage.

The same responsibilities.

The same problems.

But suddenly I didn't have the medication that had been helping me push through them.

I couldn't seem to muster the energy I had before.

And then someone asked me if I wanted to try methamphetamine.

I said yes.

That was the wrong direction.

I know that now.

There is no way around that truth.

I made a choice.

I am responsible for that choice.

But I also want my children someday to understand what was happening inside my head at the time.

I wasn't sitting around thinking about becoming addicted to meth.

I wasn't thinking about losing my family.

I wasn't thinking about court cases or warrants or Children's Division.

I was thinking about how exhausted I was.

I was thinking about everything I had to do.

And when I tried meth, it gave me the energy I had been desperately looking for.

For a while, it worked.

That is the dangerous part.

Something can be destroying your life and still make you feel like it is saving you.

Meth gave me the ability to keep moving when I felt like I couldn't move anymore.

I could work.

I could clean.

I could take care of things.

I could stay awake.

I could keep going.

And because I was already used to functioning under enormous pressure, I convinced myself that I was managing it.

Until I wasn't.

Eventually, the thing I believed was helping me hold my life together became one of the things tearing it apart.

I don't tell this part of my story to excuse what I did.

I tell it because I want my children to understand the entire chain of events.

There was a beginning.

There was a reason I was vulnerable to it.

There were choices I made.

And there were consequences.

I went down the wrong road.

But I didn't understand where that road was taking me until I was already far down it.