Welcome to my club. I did not seek induction into this club, it sought me. 

I’m not alone in this club. I share membership with millions of other parents who are helplessly watching their child struggle with an addiction to prescription drugs. I have a Florida membership, but each state has their own chapter of this club.  There are other clubs with memberships available, like the overdose-death-of-a-child club, but thankfully I am not a member. My goal in life is to never be a member of that club, however I continue to receive invitations.

My membership started with my only child becoming addicted to Xanax, then progressing to opiates. How her addiction started is open for debate, was it the car accident, the death of a family member, recreational use gone horribly wrong or all of the above? It matters not at this point. She joined one club and I simultaneously joined another.

My daughter has always been headstrong, never afraid to stand up for herself, sassy and very opinionated. I admired those characteristics, well, except for the sassy thing. My nickname for her was “Miss New York” — she was all about fashion, long perfect nails, tanning bed and boys. She held several jobs throughout school, grocery store, fast food, retail, etc. Only one lasted more than a year. The others were short stints.

She joined the Army in April of 2001, graduated high school in May and immediately left for basic training in June. She began her training as a Combat Medical Specialist. (So much for the long perfect nail thing).

Basic Training was tough, but she had been preparing herself for months, hundreds of situps, pushups and long runs helped her through it. She graduated from Basic in August and was sent to Fort Sam Houston in Texas for her Advanced Individual Training. Unfortunately the advanced training proved to be too much for her left leg, which she broke vertically when she was four. She was constantly in the medical unit with a fracture that would not heal. She received her discharge papers on September 8th, 2001. In May of the following year she married a man she met during Basic Training and moved to Fort Stewart, Georgia, where he was stationed.

This, I believe, was the beginning of her recreational drug use. She had dabbled with marijuana in high school, but to my knowledge that was all.

Her marriage was stormy at best, lasting a little over 2 years. She moved to Mississippi to live in our vacation home after her divorce. Things got better, she enrolled at the local university and started working there too, alas, her courses were free. This was good… for a little while.

She couldn’t get along with her co-worker at the college so she quit. She quickly found another job at a local restaurant. For a while, she was still attending college and working at the restaurant, but she decided that was too stressful, so she dropped to working part time and took out student loans to cover the cost of her courses. She eventually quit working altogether and lived on the student loans. This worked for a while, then she dropped out of college and struggled.

She met a girl who worked “the clubs” in New Orleans and started serving drinks in a skimpy outfit to make money. This was when I really became concerned. She didn’t tell me what she was doing for the longest, in fact, it was my brother who told me what she was doing.  My brother and daughter partied together off and on. He was always there for her, but they didn’t always get along, they were more like brothers and sisters than uncle and niece. She was close to my brother, he was just enough older than her to be her uncle, but close enough to her in age to be a partner in crime! My brother had battled addictions for years, but had turned the corner and was beginning to create a better life for himself after years of job-hopping, living on the streets and being broke.

She continued to work in the clubs until she saved enough money to come down to West Palm Beach for a visit home. While she was here, she mentioned that she might want to look at apartments while she was here. So we went apartment hunting, put a deposit down on a place near us and she moved here in July of 2005. She immediately got a nice job at a local law firm. Things were good… for a while.

She was involved in a car accident when she lived in Georgia and had complained about her back and neck hurting since the accident. She went to the doctor and after tests were run, was diagnosed with scoliosis, and it was aggravated by the accident. That’s when the pain pills started flowing, along with the xanax for stress, anxiety, etc.

I began noticing her ongoing doctor visits coincided with her mood swings and lack of money. Within a few months, she had to give up the apartment and move in with us. She was still working, but constantly complaining about her co-workers. It wasn’t long before she quit that job and found another one. This one lasted only a few months as well, she couldn’t get along with co-workers.

In the coming months, she underwent elective surgery, twice. More pain pills. She began changing doctors and going to “pain management clinics” for her back pain. More pain pills.

This was just the beginning…

(Continued in Part 2)