Why I Am Not An Addict

I’ve come to expect the looks of shock and disbelief when I tell people that for five years I was addicted to drugs.

Heroin and crack specifically, although not for the entire time. Heroin for the last four years, crack for the last two. Injected, never smoked, to protect my bell-like operatic voice while I earned my bachelor’s degree in voice performance and graduated with honors from the University of Michigan School of Music.

I’ve been drug-free for 15+ years now, and that dark time in my life seems like a movie I saw ages ago and barely remember; a book I read in high school, or some terribly disturbing story told to me once by someone somewhere; it feels like just about anything other than my actual life. I have no attachment to these stories. They do not cause my heart to race nor my palms to sweat. Had I not meticulously documented years of my life in nightly journal entries, and put my family through an unforgettable hell, I might wonder if I’d made the whole thing up.

My lack of emotion when sharing the horrific details of my drug addiction confuses most people. Even more confusing is the fact that this conversation often occurs at a restaurant or bar, while drinking an alcoholic beverage, instantly alarming whichever friend I’m with, as he or she contemplates the possible repercussions of this “simple glass of wine.” I assure my friend that I’m a social drinker and I don’t consider myself to be an addict or an alcoholic.

And that is when the real confusion sets in.

How can a former heroin addict ever drink moderately? Aren’t addicts always addicts? Aren’t you afraid alcohol will lead you back to drug use? To that question my answer is usually something along the lines of “Are you afraid you’ll start using heroin after a couple glasses of wine?” (Thankfully, I’ve yet to hear a “yes!”) The idea of sticking a needle full of poison into my veins is as appealing to me as sticking a needle into my eyeball. I imagine this is how I would have felt as a teenager, had I been the healthy, relatively well-adjusted person I am today.

In the past, I’ve held back my story and my opinions about addiction out of some sense of responsibility; to protect the vulnerable addict who might use my experience with moderate drinking as the ammunition he or she needs to leave the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, plummeting back into the treacherous throes of addiction.

But after watching an important person in my life battle for his life over the better part of the last two years, in and out of rehabs and hospitals, struggling with his addiction for the last thirty years during which time he was an active member of several twelve-step programs, I have decided that my story is not a liability. I see in my friend’s experience — the chronic relapsing, the shame of failing again and again, the inability to escape the power of drugs — the exact reasons why I made my carefully thought out decision not to participate in a twelve-step program, and not to define myself for the rest of my life as an addict.

When I first set out to battle my powerfully manipulative addiction, I knew there was absolutely no room for anything that could even remotely be perceived as or contorted into a loophole. One of the first things I noticed about the twelve-step recovery program was that people routinely came in and out of the rooms with stories of their latest fall. The rate of relapse was high; a man, clean for over five years, holed up in a flophouse motel with four hookers and a month’s worth of cocaine; a mother of three falling back into her methamphetamine addiction after six years of hard-won sobriety; the doors seemed to be constantly revolving.

I had experienced relapse many times during the last two years of my addiction. I’d try to stop using drugs, attend AA and NA meetings, get some time under my belt, a keychain or a coin for 3 months clean and sober, 6 months, etc, and then I’d inevitably run into an old friend or my ex-boyfriend or I’d hear a song or see a street sign or smell a burger from the last place I ate after the last time I got high; some random, seemingly benign occurrence would trigger an uncontrollable, insatiable craving, sending me back to drugs. For weeks or months I’d manage to abstain, talking daily about my addiction, often in twelve-step meetings. I analyzed the reasons why I felt compelled to harm myself; I accepted that as an addict I was powerless over my addiction, powerless over drugs; I shared stories, talked about how the disease of addiction affected every aspect of the choices I made in my sober life; I focused on the very thing I was trying to escape, and it should come as no surprise that I eventually crawled right back to it, more broken with each failed attempt to stay sober.

I realized early on that if I were going to change my addictive tendencies, I would need to change every single aspect of my life. This might seem extreme, but I was dealing with a life or death situation. I’d nearly died several times, people around me had died, gone to jail, become homeless (and worse); no change could possibly be as drastic as the potential consequences of not making those changes.

The biggest change was my decision to leave the past in the past. I refused to define myself by the terrible decisions made by my teenage self. I would not allow drugs to rule me for the rest of my life. The daily labeling of myself as an alcoholic and an addict, powerless over drugs and alcohol, listening to and sharing my own war stories from the trenches of substance abuse, felt almost as shackling as the drugs themselves.

For the last fifteen years I have lived as a (mostly) moderate drinker. I did not drink for the first two years after I stopped using drugs, and when I did start drinking again there were times I overdid it a bit; nothing all that unusual for a girl in her early twenties. I’ve definitely made a few questionable decisions when drinking, usually in the company of a man, but again, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t.

In the last several years I’ve lived through some of the most intense highs and lows imaginable, from the intoxicating rush of playing at Wembley Stadium in front of 80,000 people to the debilitating depression following my family’s financial devastation in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and I never once felt the urge to return to drugs. My desire to live and prosper far outweighs any self-destructive urges. I love feeling strong and healthy, and I also love sharing a glass of wine with friends.

For years, I felt a responsibility not to share my story because I didn’t want to jeopardize the recovery of another person struggling with substance abuse. Now I feel a responsibility to share my story because I know there are other people like me, who often feel isolated and shamed into silence for the path we’ve chosen; a path that works for us. My story is not about anyone else — it’s about me. And I am convinced that had I made traditional “recovery” a part of my life — constantly reminding myself of my potential to spiral out into the dark nightmare of addiction at any moment, accepting relapse as part of the process, surrounding myself with addicts in all stages of recovery including active addiction — I would still struggle with drug addiction today.

As it stands, I feel no connection to drugs or drug addicts. For the most part, the people in my life are healthy, happy, loving, productive members of society. Some of those people are also in AA, experiencing great success and happiness with the program, and I will always be supportive of whatever works for them. For me, is almost impossible to imagine returning to a past to which I feel absolutely no connection. I made a conscious decision fifteen years ago to refuse to allow drug addiction to lie dormant in my life. I excised that part of myself. I chose to live and pursue health and happiness above all else; to love myself and others; and to never again give myself any reason to speak the words “I am an addict.”