Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

Note: This is part two of a three-part series. Tala Tootoosis, 22, hopes by sharing a painful part of her life she can help other young people who have fallen prey to drugs and alcohol.

Crystal Meth Became More Important Than Anything In My Life - Including My Life by Tala Tootoosis
Read Part One

By this time I had lost everything including, my daughter, my home, my car and my job. My will to live gained a new meaning - getting, finding and using crystal meth at all costs. This was all in a matter of a few months. I ran into many other drugs when I was a teenager such as ecstasy (at rave parties), mushrooms and acid (in high school) and weed of course but nothing compared to crystal meth. It was my new best friend and my worst enemy.

I also started smoking crack and snorting cocaine. I blamed everything that happened to me in my life to this addiction and didn't even see a way out of this dark black hole of loneliness and depression. The late hours into the night seemed to be like one whole night when it had actually been a week. I grew weak inside and out. I had dark circles under my eyes. My heartbeat was weirdly irregular and the sun was the worst thing ever. My tongue was always raw and my jaw hurt because I would clench it all night when I got high. I hardly showered or brushed my teeth so my whole body smelt horribly.

Every person who I loved in my life became someone who was trying to hurt me in some way. I cringed if someone tried to hug or kiss me or get close to me. Every shadow was an evil demon that was all a part of my new reality - I like to call Hell. The paranoia was horrible and I was losing touch with life and finding nothing but a consistency of drug runs, getting high, crashing then doing it all over again.

We used to call ourselves basement monkey because we acted retarded and sat in basements most of the time when I was with my friends or Jib heads as we were called.

I had no sleep, nowhere to eat, no home, no family, no friends, no love, no reality, no life. I started to think oh my god, how in the world am I ever going to do anything if I constantly eat, drank and slept crystal meth? All these wonderful things I had gained in my life, what was the point of it all? If I died, which felt like I was dying every night from overdose, what would have been my purpose? I would have gained nothing but an emptiness that never went away and lost everything that ever meant anything to me - myself, my life and everything that was real and beautiful.

I started to think, oh my god, if I died, everyone would be like, Tala was nothing but a lost soul who started off good and ended her life doing drugs and leaving a beautiful little girl and a awesome family behind.  She had great potential but lost it all to drugs. It was that day that I went home after sleeping on numerous couches and not having anything to live for. I was ready to fight to get it back!

I was hoping that getting better would happen quickly and my life would come back to me and my reality would be restored. I was so wrong. It didn't happen overnight that's for sure. I had to detox for 2 1/2 months in my mom's house. This was worse than being high because the drugs were still in my system and I didn't knew what was going on with my mind or my body. I was more insane coming off the drug then when I was actually on it. The depression seeped in like a universal tsunami inside my body. I had to learn how to sleep, eat, and do everything that a normal person does again. I had constant shakes; I hallucinated and heard things all the time. Coffee stimulated these feelings as well as sweet stuff or headache medicine.

The effects of the drugs were coming down hard on me and there was nothing I could do about it. I had let a floodgate open and had to wait till it ran its course in order to regain my soul. I could never sit still, my body ached and I was sweating all the time. The aggression came and then left and the depression would set in. Sometimes the laughter would come too but it wasn't real laughter, these were all my feelings coming out all at once and I was just like a crazy person. I would laugh for nothing then cry at a simple comment about the rain. During this time I relapsed and went out looking for meth and ended up breaking my ankle while I was drunk and still went looking for it with a broken ankle. I went to the bar and to parties hoping to find it but to no avail. My mission was aborted. I even went with the ankle cast to the bar to look for some but still once again I could not find anything.

After I got a room at the treatment center in town I went in for 28 days. I went in with a cast on. I had a fighting urge to quit everything. You know like when you wake up so sick and tired you're just sick and tired of being sick and tired. You say you will never drink or do drugs again? Well that was my pattern too. I put my all into trying to get better. After the 28 days I thought I had a good start and went to meetings everyday, I went to 90 meetings in 90 days and also attended church, sweats, and went to the Sundance for one day. I tried everything. My parent's were constantly praying for me and I was praying for my dear life everyday because I just didn't want to go back to that lifestyle. It was like thinking that if I relapse on this stuff and go back I may never live to see the next day or my family for that matter. I worked hard and tried to figure out what was so wrong with me and still I was blaming everyone for my faults.

To be continued..