From heroine to heroin

(This article originally appeared in the March 2007 edition of Finesse magazine).

Alana's story

When the phone rang, I had just walked into our house after a busy day at work. A strange, anxious voice was on the other end of the line.

   The girl told me that Carla had been lying about where she was and what she was doing.

The denial

I should have been more alert. I was fast asleep, secure in the fact that I had raised Carla well. Immediately I went into denial. She had never given me reason to mistrust her. Sure, she was an arty teenager, extremely creative at times, but I would never have guessed that her first love had changed overnight from art to heroin.

 I had been noticing that she was tired and that she had lost weight, but I never thought or imagined that it might be drugs - although later I wished that I had seen the warning lights. Carla came home and slept for most of the day. She wasn't interested in food, and looked almost too relaxed. It was only later that I would learn that heroin is a 'downer' that leaves the user in a state of relaxation.

There were warning signs, but at the same time Carla still kept up her previous act of being the perfect child. She went to church (or so I thought), prayed with me every night and kept on inviting her old friends around. To a mother, the possibility of her being on drugs seemed like a joke.

The test

A friend of mine who hadn't seen Carla for a while convinced me to buy a home test kit for drugs. I was horrified that she, a nurse, would suggest such a thing. I bought the kit more to appease her than my own suspicions.

   I'll never forget the day I used it on her. I was so apologetic, so sorry that I was making her feel distrusted. I was still making excuses for doing it when the test in my hand came up as positive. I was shocked.

   Carla began to cry, admitting that she had experimented only twice with the substance, saying that she didn't like the effect heroin had on her and that she would never, ever use any form of drugs again. Foolishly, I believed her.

The lies

This was the start of an infinite number of lies, and the most destructive journey that a mother can ever watch her daughter take. There were times when I would pray that she would just die so that I could know where she was. I was tired of searching the mortuaries for her body.

Carla agreed to go to her first rehab in grade eleven. She looked like she was doing well when I fetched her, like she had beaten the drug.

But I know now that one never beats it. You remain an addict, and simply manage the decision to stay clean, daily. Carla's self-destructive path led her to relapse three times before she reached rock-bottom.

I felt like a co-dependent. I was an addict; I just didn't use the drug. All of my attention was focused on pleasing Carla, protecting her, pleading with her. I lost my own sense of identity, hobbies and interests.

The quality of our family life depended on how Carla was doing, yet it was probably the biggest mistake we made.

Tough Love

I had to realise that parents are sometimes just not enough to prevent a tragedy. Carla had left home, and we had no finances for yet another rehab. Her lifestyle had left our family worn-out and financially drained. Not knowing where to turn, my husband was introduced to a member of the Tough Love foundation.

My tolerance for yet another session of advice was almost nonexistent. I felt alone and as if I was the only parent facing such sorrow. However, within moments of listening to one of the leaders tell of their own struggles with their children, I felt as if they were telling my story. The pain, the uncertainty and the anger – it was all the same. This led me to join the group and attend the weekly meetings for relatives and people affected by addicts.

One of the main things that Tough Love helped me to realise is that one cannot compete with the drug or the immense craving for it. No amount of comfort at home or money will satisfy this craving. I was taught to be prepared to walk a difficult road and to make tough choices!

Cold Turkey

I learnt to separate my child from the drug problem that she had, and to fight the problem without seeing myself as fighting her. After almost three years of addiction I realised that at this stage, Heroin was the most important person in her life.

    Before yet another rehab experience, I remember locking her and I in a friend's house while she went through the pains of withdrawal. To hold your own child while they sob, foam at the mouth and beg for the drug while their body contorts is an indescribable experience. 'Cold Turkey' (coming off of heroin is horrific beyond what anyone can understand unless they've been there and watched their own flesh and blood go through it. I had nothing to hold onto, no hope except to pray for her comfort and release.

Sometimes, I felt as if I could see the devil laughing at me and screaming, 'She's mine!'

Cold hearted

Carla had told me, before leaving for her fourth rehab, that she knew that she loved me - she just didn't feel it. Carla felt nothing then, absolutely nothing. She was seriously emotionless, a very painful side effect for those who know and love the addict.

   I remember Carla coming home one night to fetch the rest of her things after being given the ultimatum 'home, or drugs'. She looked so sick and skeletal that I was certain she would die soon. My vitamin lectures, health talks and exercising together hadn't helped a bit. She had chosen to do the opposite of everything I had taught her.

Carla was admitted to Noupoort at a time when Noupoort was cast in a negative light by the media. Some asked me how I could do that when I knew what went on there. It took me three years to realise that I couldn't save Carla. I had to choose between a mortuary slab or Noupoort for my daughter. I chose Noupoort.

Carla's story

The most difficult thing about going through addiction was having to convince my mom that it was nothing she did that made me accept the drugs. It was a choice that I had made, alone.

The choices

I didn't have to try the first cigarette offered to me at Mugg & Bean in Cape Town (I was 16), or accept the line of cocaine given to me a moment later. I wanted to try things for myself. I have always had an adventurous personality. I was always searching for a thrill. The irony of heroin (the next drug I sampled, just once, and couldn't run from) is that you search and you search, and end up realising that all you want is what you had to begin with - a normal life.

Rock-bottom

Looking back, I hadn't reached rock-bottom yet when I entered the many rehabs before Noupoort. I would even have to enter Noupoort, the so-called hell of rehabs, twice before I realised I needed every bit of help they offered. I thought I could beat the drug through will-power and strength alone. I thought that I was still in control. It was only after running away to the streets of Sunnyside that I came to a no-hope place of desperation.

My photo was on the internet and TV as a missing person at that time. No-one knew where I had run to. I lived in a prostitute's flat and life consisted of walking to the brothel where she worked, getting money from her to buy the heroin I craved, and mainlining (injecting it straight into my veins).

Sometimes it took hours before I could manage to find a vein which hadn't collapsed.

Often, my veins would burst and blood would squirt everywhere. It wasn't a life. I wanted normality back. I had even tried prostitution, twice, just to get the money for a 'hit'. People think that heroin is expensive - but it's not. You can get a 'hit' for R50! The thing that I thought I'd find at the end of the heroin road was just a big emptiness. I was tired of living, tired of being an addict.

The realisation

I couldn't shake the emptiness. I lived with a prostitute who got pleasure out of 'spiking' (injecting) me. I realised that I was going to die within days.

"I'm going to die, I can't do this anymore. You are not taking it away anymore!" I screamed silently at my drug of choice.

That was when I decided to SMS my parents. "I had to go through what I'm going through now, to hate the drug. Is it too late? May I come home?"

A few days later I was sitting in a restaurant, wasted beyond cause. It was my last chance, my last 'hit' before going home. I didn't know that I wasn't going home, but back to Noupoort. I was forced into the car, hysterical and already having withdrawals.

That day I was taken to hospital. My brother felt my heart as he held me on the back-seat. "She's slipping away," were the last words that I heard. I died, clinically, and had to receive CPR and be put on life-support machines. I had overdosed on heroin and Valiums. This was truly the end of the line.

The light

After hospitalization, I was so weak that I couldn't light a cigarette. I arrived back at Noupoort looking like the walking dead. A few of the girls that had talked about getting out and 'using' again, began to cry. "Let me be your reality," was all that I could manage to say.

Yes, it was hell in there. It was so terrible that we begged to rather go to jail. We worked for our food, and privacy was non-existent. Some people say that what happens in there is unnecessary, but I know that that is what saved me. It taught me the harsh realities of having to stand up for myself against the drug. I spent yet another birthday, Christmas and New Year's in rehab. Nine months later, I would walk out and for the first time in years, not experience relapse. Noupoort, for all of its brutality and harshness, had woken me up to the fact that I needed to change.

"It's been almost two years since my four-year affair with a drug that changed me forever. This time, I'm determined to save just one more addict with my story. If I can tell just one more person that it's not worth it ... then this experience will have counted for something. I'm prepared to spend hours on end just so that one addict can realise what I wish I knew to begin with ... that it's just not worth it. When you cross that line into the drug-world, you spend an eternity wishing you were still on the other side."

Article Jody Badenhorst, photo Marita Keet

 

 

 

Carla Opperman today … two years’ clean

Date: posted July 17 2007

 

 

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