Award Program

Hello,
My name is Jana....I have recently lost my beautifull sister to a heroin over dose. It is heartbreaking to say the very least. She was my only sister. My brother was lost as well to alcohol addiction. He had been drinking heavily and had a motorcycle accident. It was so odd that they both had severe head injury. My sister's due to heroin over dose. My brother due to the accident. I have a poem about addiction that I would like to submit if you do not mind putting it on your site.  If it can say it to just one lost and lonely addict then I will feel I may have done something worth while.  Here is the poem:

"powder"
I long for sleep,
but can it bring me rest,
or peace for a time at best,
I think not,
for theres no rest for the weary,
and its hard to see through eyes filled with teary,
salty liquid that falls on my page,
and I am so very aware of my age.
And I long to go back
to start the journey again,
to never have found
such a dark dark friend,
who torments the soul,
where the drug addicts go,
when they travel the road of snow white.

I should also tell you that I myself am an addict also, one who lived in denial for many years. Now there is no denial...only regret and new beginnings and hope. I have gone to the father and asked him for help and forgiveness. There's no way I will win this battle without the Lord. No one or thing can do it for me. I do not inject drugs. But had an illness and was given pain pills and valium and am still taking it and trying to keep it under control as I do need the pain pills and probably always will be a person who needs them from time to time. Its so scary for me. I wish I never even saw one little white pill. I'd rather have just tried to live with the pain now that I look back. But isn't hind sight 20/20?

I am a recovering addict.  I have been out of prison for 9 days now. I found out that my husband commited suicide in February, and no one told me until I came home.  He was also an addict.  He had been in active addiction for 24 years, and was supposed to be getting treatment while I was there.  He had been addicted to crack cocaine, and anyone that has used it knows that it is the devils drug. The depression, the guilt, the shame, the insanity. This has made me even stronger in my recovery.  I lost the man of my dreams to this disease, not to mention my freedom, and my children. I now have to rebuild everything, and that's ok, because I know that as long as I don't use, and go to meetings, and work my program one day at a time, I don't have to be in active addiction.  I have learned to grieve without drugs.  I miss him very much.  I didn't get to say goodbye, however this loss in my life has made me more determined to stay in recovery. He was a good man when he wasn't on drugs, but we are all good people when we're not using. Thank you for listening.

The following two letters are from a female addict named Mel.  She wrote the first letter upon finding my site, and the second after she realized that my own daughter, Kathy, had passed away.   - Vicki

I would just like to encourage someone and let them know that I was on drugs for 21 years. It was not until I gave my life to Jesus and obeyed his word, that he delivered me from drugs. I have now been clean for 8 years and am a Deacon in my church. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

I wrote those words over a year ago, and am no closer to understanding the "why" now, than I was then. I do know that it's pointless to wonder why, for I myself am a recovering alcoholic with 14 years sober last January, and still don't know why I did that to myself and to all who loved me. Oh ... I know the chemical and psychological reasoning behind it all; but what makes some of us head that way while others with the same genes and same proclivities ... do not?

My brother, John Digges, III, certainly never intended to grow up and be a junkie. He had loftly ambitions, and few were beyond his reach. He was a most wanted son and a delight as a child. He had a thirst for knowledge and he absorbed and retained the strangest assortment of facts with relative ease. He was tall, dark and handsome and attracted women -- lovely women, classy women -- with ease. He was at home in any surroundings, from a campfire meeting to a diplomatic dinner. But that deep, dark hungry hole that lives inside every addict ... always screamed for "MORE!" Johnny was a heroin addict for over 30 years. That is an incredibly long life-span for those with his addiction.

Johnny wasn't a wasted addict for all that time. He had many clean and sober periods, most of them though, while he was incarcerated. Although, he also did some of his best dealing and acquiring while behind bars! I am not taking his inventory here, nor telling his story behind his back. He has shared it openly at AA and NA meetings. He was involved in a horrible accident while under the influence. The other driver was killed. It was late at night, there were no witnesses, so none could say for sure which of them had run the redlight. But Johnny could never be sure that he hadn't, and he carried that uncertainty and guilt with him as long as he lived.

During his clean years, Johnny did drug counseling for the state, and even ran state-funded halfway houses during periods of sobriety. He has helped to turn around countless lives. This only serves to make his death MORE puzzling, because he certainly had all the tools! He seemed to be able to help everybody except himself.

Paramedics had resuscitated him countless times. One of the last times, he was found unconscious in his car. They did the CPR bit and had him relatively stable, when they got a call to rush to a robbery scene where a police officer had been shot. They told Johnny not to leave, they would be back quickly. Right! Give an addict a "thou shalt not" and he immediately MUST. But ... not Johnny. He drove immediately to a rehab, rather than to his connection. He would do anything to stay clean and sober ... everything except ... not use again. We all know we have "one more high" left in us. What we don't know is .... whether we have one more recovery.

The next time Johnny was found unconscious, we don't know how long he had been out. He was taken to the hospital and there he lingered for three days on full life support. This beautiful, caring, compassionate man that was my baby brother, was no longer in the bed! What he never would have wanted to see happen, did happen. His overdose nearly killed his Mother, too! She was his biggest fan, his most ardent supporter, and (of course) his most faithful enabler! Knowing that you have financed your child's last "trip" has to be the most heartbreaking feeling any parent can deal with. It matters not that if you had not given them the money, they would have found it somewhere. It matters only that the flickering flame deep within your darling child has been extinguished forevermore.

There is absolutely no loyalty on the streets. You find a dealer and stick with him so he'll look after you, for a VERY small time, while you're down.  The girls NEVER stick together. And almost every "trick" is dangerous in one form or the other. Beaten, raped, robbed, deserted far away, any or all of the above. One could only be so lucky to find their way out ... like my friend Lisa did. She died from an overdose .... her suffering is over.

It hurts to think the streets want us more than our families do. We do what we do to numb the pain, as a result, we feel such shame, and there goes the vicious cycle, never ending, unless an "angel" steps in. Mine must be very angry at me. He probably doesn't have a single feather left. There are no concrete walls, steel bars, or magnetic locks that are worse than having one's hope taken away.

Most of all, I wanted to share with you from the deepest part of my being what helped me the most and what I hold dear to me to this day. My mother never gave up on me. Yes, she stopped enabling me, but unlike everyone else who looked at me with nothing but disgust, she always let me know she still loved me and that she would never stop caring, no matter what. So if I were to say one prayer for all the still suffering addicts in the world, it would be that they have someone in their lives like my mom.

I received this letter from
the same female addict, that I 
mentioned above, my own daughter.  This letter was written from her prison cell one year before she died. - Vicki

However, late at night, behind the dryers of the laundromat, I have allowed myself to leak water from my eyes. I don't cry for me, I cry for my child and for my family, and all the zombies.

The dryers are warm, but a female can't stay there long; the woodsmen come out, and do the unimaginable. It's safer in the book store, if you have $5.00.

The crack house won't let you in without money, and won't let you out if you still have some. I just wish the ground would open up and swallow all the dope houses into the guts of hell.

I don't know what day it is, but I never knew "out there" either. Do you understand? With no car, and no phone, it was like I was in a cage, locked. The silence was deafening.

I am a recovering addict. Actually, Vicki is my sister and I am the brother she mentions on her opening page. I've suffered through 26 years as a drug addict, the last 17 years on heroin. I've lost everything I ever had due to my drug use but mostly I lost myself and my self-respect. I've been in prison 4 times as a result of my addiction and it wasn't until I gave my life to Jesus Christ that I finally found some hope. I've only been clean for a little over a year now and I know there are no guarantees, but I know that as long as I remain close to God and keep Him first, I will never have to return to the HORROR I once lived.   I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. - Phil. 4:13