The Beginning: “Friends” as written by a Youth at Home Base
Hey Dawn! What are you doing after school? My mom’s at work tonight and my older brother’s having a party. Come on over! I wonder who’s going to be there. Will I know anyone? Will there be drugs or alcohol? Will they like me?
Dawn didn’t have a lot of friends. She had to spend most of her free time babysitting her little brothers because her mom had health problems. After her mom died it became her job; she had no choice. On top of all that, her stepfather physically abused her.
Dawn! How’s it going? What took you so long? Come meet my brother and his friends. Hey Dawn, Nice to meet you. Here have a toke!
Enter Drugs and the start of the downward spiral:
Dawn was 12 when she had her first drink and 14 when she first smoked pot. She wanted to fit in. Everyone else was doing it so she did it too. Some youth fit in by playing sports, or being in a church youth group or even being on a school committee. But some fit in by doing drugs.
A lot people say that smoking a joint or having a drink isn’t a problem. “We’re just having a good time. What’s the big deal? I’m not hurting anyone”. But it’s only the beginning. Just ask Dawn.
She started with pot but after a while that wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t getting high enough anymore. So she needed to try something else. Next came mushrooms, then acid and prescription painkillers from her friends mother’s medicine cabinet. She was 15.
She wasn’t being cool anymore. She needed the drugs to cope with life. Her mother died when she was 14 years old. She started skipping school, coming home at lunchtime to drink and steal money from her stepfather so that she could buy drugs. Now she had friends that were happy to smoke pot and drink with her. Dawn couldn’t take it anymore. She ran away. She left her 2 little brothers behind. She was 16.
She slept in the forest that first night wrapped in her brothers blanket. After that she had to find safer places to sleep night after night. She had to steal food to survive. She never finished grade 10. Dawn moved onto heavier drugs like Cocaine, Ecstasy and Oxycontin, moving around from place to place, never having a stable home. Sometimes she worked to pay for her habit and sometimes she stole Then came Crack. She could no longer work to support her habit. She had to go on Social Assistance. She was 19.
Things turned around for her though. She met a young man and fell in love. She was clean for a year and a half. She had a beautiful baby boy. Everything was wonderful. Then tragedy struck. The baby died. He was 4 months old. She was 21. Dawn fell apart. She went back to using drugs to cope with her pain. Crack, Ecstasy, Cocaine, Pills, Alcohol; anything she could get her hands on. Dawn lost EVERYTHING. Friends, family and all her possessions including her home. She turned to the streets. She sold herself to get the drugs. Then came a whole new way of doing them. Needles. Now she was shooting the Cocaine, Oxycontin, K and Morphine. She was 23.
Dawn wasn’t the only one who lost though. Her family lost her along the way. The more drugs she did, the more her family turned away. They had to. She was hurting them as much as she was hurting herself.
The Moral of the Dawn’s Story: So when you think it’s just a joint, think again. Everything you do affects not only you but everyone around you. If you use drugs to solve small problems what
happens when the big problems come along? Dawn has been clean for seven months now. Everyday she makes a choice to stay clean and talk to someone to help her cope with her problems. She’s lucky to be alive and I’m glad she is because…Dawn is my cousin.
