Confessions of a privileged drug addict

Mom, did you ever do drugs?” My son, Atticus, 12 years old at the time, had casually lobbed the question at me from across the room. I eluded him but I knew I’d have to answer it one day and I had no idea how I was going to do it.

My short answer, the one I didn’t give that day, is yes. Yes, I did do drugs, a lot of drugs. I dropped acid and took ecstasy and mushrooms, I smoked crack, shot ketamine and snorted crystal meth. But the drug I always came back to, the drug I struggled with from the age of 13 until I got pregnant with Atticus at 28, was heroin.

The first time I took an opiate, I was eight. My parents had separated and I’d started having panic attacks. I was already no stranger to depression and anxiety. It was a Saturday afternoon. I sat on my bed, my mother’s voice muffled and far away as she talked on the phone. A panic spread across my chest. I wanted to jump out the window. Instead, I ran to the bathroom and locked the door. Something drew me to the medicine cabinet and a pill bottle labelled Darvocet. On the label was a drawing of a man with droopy eyes and bubbles around his head. A voice inside me said, “Yes.” I took one