Episode 82: Reddit's Darkest Confessions
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How did a prescription for kidney stones spiral into addiction while breastfeeding?
I became a mom pretty young. It wasn't exactly how I pictured my life going when I was a teenager, but by the time I found out I was pregnant, I was determined to get things together. I loved my son before he was even born, and I wanted to be the kind of mother that he deserved. Unfortunately, life had other plans. During my pregnancy, I developed kidney stones, and anyone who's had them knows just how painful they can be. And being pregnant at the same time made everything just a bit more complicated. There wasn't really much that doctors could do for me besides prescribe pain pills and try to keep me comfortable until I delivered. The problem was that I was on those medications for months. When my son was finally born, no doctor really sat me down and talked about getting off of them.
There wasn't any tapering plan or weaning. I don't really remember getting a warning about dependency either, although I learned because one day I was taking them due to a doctor telling me to. The next, I realized I needed them even though the kidney stones were no longer the problem. That's what addiction is. And I was embarrassed to admit it, especially as a new mom. I felt like I was already being judged for having a baby just on this side of being 20 years old. Admitting that I had a pill problem felt like I was admitting that, I don't know, I was some kind of failure. Well, around that time, my best friend in life was someone who also struggled with drugs. We'd known each other since we were kids.
We grew up a few blocks apart in a town small enough where we went to the same schools, had the same friends, and spent most of our teenage years together. Looking back on it now, we were probably bad influences on each other. I wouldn't say we were terrible kids, but we made plenty of bad decisions and got into things that we should have stayed far away from. When my addiction started, she became the person who could always find pills. If I needed something, she knew somebody who knew somebody. At first, I convinced myself that I wasn't really like the other addicts out there because my problem had started with a prescription. I think that's a lie that a lot of people tell themselves, and addiction doesn't care how it starts.
Eventually, I got sick of the person that I'd become. I hated waking up every morning worrying about pills. I hated looking at my newborn son and wondering what kind of example I was setting for him, as well as what I was doing to his little body because I was breastfeeding. When I finally decided to get clean, my best friend was right there with me, and she said that she wanted the same thing. We talked about turning our lives around, about growing up, and becoming people we could actually be proud of. For the first time in a while, I felt hopeful. My husband was incredibly supportive through all of this. He had never been involved with drugs. It was clear that he didn't fully understand addiction, but he understood that I was trying.
He helped me through my withdrawals. He encouraged me when I just wanted to give up. And he never threw my mistakes back in my face. The one thing we occasionally disagreed on, though, was my friend. Now, he tolerated her because he knew that she was important to me, but I know that he never completely trusted her. He believed that she was a much heavier user than I had ever been, and he thought she'd contributed to a lot of my bad decisions. Still though, he knew the connection that I had with my friend, and I think he believed that she was trying to get clean the same way I was. For months, that's exactly what it looked like, and it felt good to have someone along for the journey with me. Well, when my son was about eight months old, my friend offered to babysit while my husband and I handled a few things.
This wasn't exactly unusual. She'd been around my son before, adored him, and as far as I knew, loved him like family. So we didn't hesitate to invite her to the house, let her know where we'd be, leave her with a few bottles, and push off.
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