without having even seen illegal drugs, ever in my life. Actually that is a lie...i smoked marijuana once at a Red Hot Chile Peppers concert, and once with Danny when we lived in Mt Wellington. I did not like it at all. It made me feel sick and drowsy and i had difficulty doing anything at all after smoking that stuff.
By the way this is a confession post. ha I am only happy to make this confession now that i feel like i am over the worst and will never ever look back.
I spent Christmas Day alone last year. Danny and i were supposed to be getting back together however, he did not invite me to his mother's family's lunch on Christmas Day...nor did he invite me up to Manly to his Dad's place for Boxing Day. My children were in Dunedin with Nick and Kristine...spending time with her family. Danny stopped by my place on his way to his mother's out West...he stayed for about ten minutes then he left with Nixon.
I spent the day alone. I ate a Wild Bean Pie for my Christmas dinner. I had armed myself with lots to do for the day so that i didn't have time to think too much or get too sad. I had been terrified since the beginning of November of how the holidays would be spending them alone. I had books and dvds for Africa...to keep me busy.
It was a difficult and sad time. To spend Christmas day and the rest of the holidays alone in that apartment in Mt Eden. I am telling everyone this...not to make excuses but rather, in hope that maybe people will understand the horrible place that i was in. Most people in NZ were celebrating with friends and family and i was alone...with the curtains pulled all day and the only people i saw were Danny briefly...and the attendant at the BP in Khyber Pass.
Long-short...an acquaintance named Brian stopped by to visit me that evening...i guess he was alone for the holidays too. I had met him previously, through other people that i knew. He had visited my apartment before with other people.
Anyway, I knew Brian was a crack head...but i was happy to see anyone that day. Brian was out there though. He used to like to pop in and see me because i always gave him healthy things...he said it was good how normal things were at my place. He was absolutely nuts though. To the point of being comical. Anyone that pissed him off got threatened with a ride in his boot.
I remember Tans and i sitting there listening to him on my phone one day in February. The daughter of the owners of Driving Sound down in New Market had crashed into his car...he had phoned to speak to them about this and when the receptionist said that they were unable to take a call right then...he threatened to put her in his boot. haha...the guy was and still is a lunatic. I remember buying drugs off him one day in Hobson St in town. It is a one way street and i was pulled over outside the Auckland City Mission on the left hand side of the street. Brian pulled up next to me...he was sitting there holding up a half a gram of crack waving it at me in broad daylight. I jumped out of the car and gave him his 300 bucks, grabbed the bag and hopped back in my car. Brian then proceeded to do a U turn and head down Hobson St in the wrong direction.
All of this...practically right outside Auckland Central Police Station. Crazy. Brian is nuts. Everyone knows him. He looks like an ape. Whenever he and i argued i always called him ape boy and he screamed that i better start packing cause he was going to smash my door down. The next day everything would be forgotten.
Anyway so that Christmas Day i was down and i smoked p. I loved it. I had never done anything like that before. I had a voice in my head telling me that i was choosing a very dark road, but i ignored the voice. No road could be any darker than the one that i was on anyway.
My God i was so wrong.
I didn't do it again until towards the end of January. I had all this money saved for nothing...I had purchased a new car and new furnishings and i was just so depressed and sad and felt like nothing was within my control.
Between the end of January and July 12th...i did not go one day without it. I kidded myself that no one could tell from my appearance or behaviour. I was never one of those crackheads that gets all hyper and talks everyone's ears off. I suddenly had lots of so called friends around me...sometimes i would sit there on my couch and have four or five people rabbitting on in crack head language...all directing their words at me because i was the only one not talking...they all expected me to listen to them and answer them while they were all talking about different things to me at the same time.
It was so weird. I had lots of money at this stage because i had saved everything til then...so i in turn had lots of P, which in turn meant i had lots of people-bludgers hanging around.
Anyway...so yeah..i had lots of it and lots of people hanging around. People that were too useless to find money for their own so like leeches came and scabbed off me.
I had always told myself that i would never lose my morals...i would never steal, rip anyone off etc etc like i saw so many addicts doing day in and day out. In my mind...all it was doing to me was making my marriage break up bearable.
So stupid. But anyway...i never stooped low enough to rip people off or steal or become desperate, like everyone else around me. Because i had saved so much...i seemed to manage the whole supply and demand thing pretty well. I remember one guy i knew saying he loved my place because crack just kept getting delivered by friendly people ...usually it was all nasty and suspicious i guess...those kinds of transactions were.
Eventually though...everything caught up to me. A guy named Wayne popped in to see me one evening with this Asian guy. They had apple mac laptops they were trying to sell. Buying stolen property was not something that i did... and i knew these were stolen. They were brand new and they had two of them. They would have been worth like 3 k each...Wayne and his Asian friend said i could have both in exchange for a gram. I have had my house burgled and it was a horrible invasion of privacy and the worst feeling in the world...to know that someone could just go into my home and help themselves to my things. I promised myself to never enable people that did that kind of thing.
I declined to buy their laptop, after having a look at it. I had wanted to get another second hand laptop for when the girls visited at that stage...just not a stolen one.
I said thanks but no thanks, and sent them on their way.
Like a month later, the police banged on my door at about ten am. They had a search warrant to search my apartment for stolen property. I guess they had found this laptop and it had my fingerprints on it. The only reason the police had my fingerprints on file at that stage was because of Nick and our arguments.
Anyway...they found no stolen property...but they did find a small amount of P and utensils (that's what they call pipes)...I had only just arrived back home when the police arrived.
In hindsight i was lucky the police came that day, and not on a day when i had a lot more. There had been times when i had a lot more than what i was eventually caught with.
I used to drive out to Pakuranga and just drive around...hoping to spot Danny heading to work or something. I don't know why i did this. It all seems pretty mental now but it's amazing what a broken heart, and some class A drugs can do to one's mentality i guess.
In rush hour it took me til about 9 am to get back to Mt Eden.
They found it pretty quickly. So i got hauled away to the police station ...but not charged with anything at that stage. That came later and i still have to face that, but i have faith that everything will work out for the best and i will be ok whatever happens. I am not worried about that.
The main thing to me was that the police turning up that day was the best thing that has ever happened to my life. That was June 24th. For 6 months i had not had one day without P. I crammed everything that a crack head does in ten years into 6 months. It's mental...the things that i saw, and experienced.
I watch doco after doco on that drug now and i did not realise 6 weeks ago...what it was that i was going through. P actually kills your brain's ability to produce dopamine. This is the chemical that the brain releases in order for us to feel happy...it is also essential for the normal functioning of the central nervous system.
I now understand why my depression just got worse and worse all year. Since January, nothing has gone right and i have spiralled deeper and deeper into depression and did not know why i could not seem to do anything to help myself. I knew what i had to do. I knew i needed to stop taking drugs and stop working...stop that life. That horrible existance that i had chosen, i knew it, but i was unable to do anything to help myself and just sat on my couch watching my life get worse and worse. I worried about it day in and day out but did nothing to change anything.
That weekend that i could not move and stayed in bed from Friday til Tuesday...i had put that down to side effects of my anti depressants...while they do make me drowsy and that is why i take them at night...that weekend in bed was also the first weekend after my first week of just suddenly quitting that drug. I spent that whole weekend in bed not being able to move...drifting in and out of sleep, crying the whole time and wanting to be dead...and i was so alone. Suffering P withdrawals and crashing, coming down for the first time since January. That is some scary stuff i went through.
How many friends do you think a crack head has, once she has been busted by the police and decided to no longer have the drugs around her? A big FAT NO FRIENDS AT ALL...that's how many friends.
I had no friends...i had a bunch of leaches...crackheads extraordinaires...never seen anyone leech quite as much as those people. Every time i bought some ...it was like they sniffed it out and turned up on my doorstep. That is the only of the kind of friend a crackhead attracts.
I desperately wanted normal friends and normal people around me, but why would any of them want me in their life? They wouldn't. That is why i treasured Dan the cop's friendship so much at the time. I was never honest with him about my drug use.
Anyway...my point is i had no friends. There are no friends and no loyalties in that world. I wanted out. I wanted to be normal again. I had gotten to the point where i rarely went out in public. I had anxiety attacks about 10 times a day. My depression had gotten so much worse, to the point that i was suicidal. I have gotten as close as a person can get to suicide, and live to tell about it.
I had no one. I did not fit in with normal society anymore because i was a crackhead and i did not fit in with crackheads because i refused to compromise my morals any further than I already had. Everyone in that world knew i was honest and would not steal. I was about as trusted as a crack head can be trusted. People knew they could leave an ounce of crack on my coffee table and go outside to do a deal and it would still be there when they came back. That is rare in that world. Not something i am really proud of though. WOW...i never stole off anyone. yiippeee.
I started taking that drug because it made me so happy, made me sociable...stopped me from thinking about Danny and crying all day. It was the closest i had ever felt to happy...when i had that drug in my system. The reason it makes people feel that way is because it creates this huge flood of dopamine...so much more than the brain can ever produce on it's own.
What i did not realise at the time though...and what most people don't realise is that eventually this drug causes permanent brain damage. I completely kills your brains ability to produce dopamine...eventually it does not matter how much of that crap that you smoke...it will not make you happy. It makes you more and more depressed, although it will still keep you awake. The brain's inability to produce dopamine + no sleep + no food = crazy people. A huge percentage of those people will never recover from their addictions. I know so many people that i left behind in that world that will end up in Jail or Dead.
That is the only place that life will ever lead anyone. I have seen it for myself. I had gotten to the stage very quickly where it no longer made me happy..it just made me feel like i might survive another day. Some people take years to get that bad. I took 6 months.
I hated the people i had around me. The dealers and the crackheads...i had nicknames for all of them because they were all nuts. I hated every single one of them. They would have all stolen off their own children to get that drug. People that read this that knew me at the time will now understand why i had names for people such as the snowman, the witch, bog, etc etc. I never used their real names...some of them had even made up a nickname for me. Half the people i knew just called me Normanby...cause i lived in Normanby Rd. I remember having an argument with a guy over drugs once, and he called me Normanby while yelling at me. I yelled back that my name was not Normanby...it was Jen. haha How ridiculous...especially considering i knew him only as "Tosh". This Tosh, he had left his wallet in my car once when i had dropped him and some other people off in Blockhouse Bay. As soon as i pulled in back home my phone rang and it was him desperate to know if he had left his wallet in my car. Most crackheads would have just said nope...it had 800 bucks in it. I looked in my car, found it, then drove it all the way back to Blockhouse Bay for this creep...a few weeks later he stole a laptop and my cell phone off me.
For a few minutes after he did that, i regretted returning his wallet to him...then i stopped regretting because had i kept it, that would have made me just like him.
I had lots of wake up calls. Lots of things made me make up my mind to change my life. The police were a huge one...but i still did it for another week or so after that morning in June.
I have never touched it again. Nor have i taken up alcohol or replaced it with any other addiction. I don't drink and i don't do drugs. I smoke about 10 cigarettes a day and that is it. I plan to give that away soon too.
I didn't realise back in July why everything seemed too hard and so hopeless. After watching so many docos on the subject and really reading about it, i now realise how very very lucky i am. I honestly thought at the time that i was too far gone to ever get back to normal. I would never have a normal life again.
It's been 46 days since i last smoked P and i do not miss it. I know i will never touch it again. I will never let myself be in a situation where it is even around me again. That is why it was so important for me to move. Right up until the week before i left...i still had the odd person turn up out of the blue to see if i had any thing they could have or buy.
I quit that drug that is supposedly the most addictive drug in the world, all by myself with no support from any friends or any family. Tans did not arrive til after i was well on the road to being ok. Other people/friends...did not know what i was going through...and won't until they read this. It's hard for me to talk about ...it's easier to type.
I did not realise until recently how lucky i am that i am so happy right now without anything other than my anti depressant. Most people leave it till they are too far gone and their brain has totally lost the ability to produce any dopamine at all . Those people will never be happy again for as long as they live.
For some reason i have gone in the totally other direction. I appreciate everything so much more now and am happier than i have ever been. I feel as though getting to such a low place in life was just a huge wake up call and now i just appreciate everything so much...especially my children. I have never wanted to just hug them and tell them how much i love them so badly, as i do everyday now.
I am grateful everyday that i wake up, that the world of that drug chewed me up and spat me out...instead of swallowing me.
The police officer that i had a meeting with on Monday morning was a nice man named Ian. He took one look at me and said "well you look a bit better now than you did in the photo i have of you"
He showed me two mugshots of me taken in June. The photos shocked and horrified me. My skin looked grey...my eyes and cheeks were sunken in...i looked almost like a skeleton and 20 years older than i do tonight as i type this. I was so horrified that i cried.
It did not even look like me. I asked for a copy of those photos and he asked if he was allowed to give them to me, but i guess they are police property and i was not allowed a copy. I looked like something out of a Faces of Meth campaign.
Ian also told me that not many people are able to quit the way that i have. I am so proud of myself that i have been strong enough to do this...for me, my children, and to prove that i could pick myself up and fix my life.
My life will keep getting better and better...i will keep watching documentaries on the drug that came so close to killing me...and i will educate my children to make sure that they never ever are even tempted to do what i have done...not even once.
I wanted those photos to show the girls in case i was ever worried about them. Ian at Otara police station assured me that i can take the girls in there to see the photos if i ever want to show them. If i am ever worried.
I will never ever go back and i recovered from this all by myself. I can face anything life throws my way now. Maybe it is knowing that, that makes me so happy these days. I know the worst pain in the world is behind me and i survived it.
I am sorry to anyone that i lied to about doing that drug. I was not ready to admit my involvement until i knew for certain that i would never do it again. I have known that for 46 days but did not know how to tell this story.
I don't blame anyone for the choices that i have made. They were all mine.
This huge ass long post was a confession....one that i am no longer ashamed of though. I am proud of how far i have come. I know that Ian the police officer from Otara...did not know whether he should expect a crackhead or a normal person the other day...i was so proud to walk in there happy and normal and he knew without a doubt that i was not doing that drug anymore. I know he knew. I said and did awful things when i first stopped back in July. I cringed at some of the things he read out to me.
It felt so good to tell Nick all of this a few weeks ago...he didn't judge me. He just wants me to get better and has helped with that in his own little ways. He has let me have the girls as much as i want basically, now that he knows i am not doing drugs and not working. It felt so good to tell my sister everything yesterday...She cried and told me how much she loves me...and now it feels good to finally be completely honest on my blog about my life this past year.
I needed to know i was going to be ok first. I am so proud that i had the strength and determination left in me to never lose sight of my morals when it came to stealing, ripping people off, or taking advantage of anyone else like every single person that i met from that world does...and that i was able to change my life and leave that world behind. It has made me a stronger, happier, honest and better person than i could ever have dreamed of being previously.
The fact that i have opened up about this and told the world just confirms for me that i have won.
Right...on that note i have sore feet from walking 13 ks today. I did my walk twice and i feel superb for doing that...but i am shattered and want to do it again in the morning. I loved stomping along on the footpath in beat to my favourite music...
Some people think i'm bonkersssssss, but i just think i'm free
Man, i'm just living my life, there's nothing crazy about meeeeee
...haha
Night you lot. xoxox
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