I Was a Drug-Addicted Teacher
Eight years ago, I reached a bottom that I have been too ashamed to talk about — until now.
This is one of many stories that I am ready to share with the world, in order to heal and in an effort to reduce the stigma of addiction, especially in professions like teaching, where the general consensus is that we are somehow superhuman and in which discussions of mental health and substance use are still considered taboo.
My drug use started off innocently enough, with that innocuous substance that is a rite of passage for anyone interested in experimentation: cannabis. I was 19, in college, the typical scenario. But I was not typical. That first session with my cousins in the woods triggered a reaction in my brain that soon led me to the compulsion to use marijuana every day, multiple times a day.
I lost control of my impulses with remarkable ease. I began making riskier decisions, choices that eventually stopped feeling like choices. My brain had to have weed. I went into a panic without it. I spent so much money on it. Years later, I would connect the dots between my childhood environment, the depression and anxiety that I lived with since I was a little girl, and substance use, but when I was in the thick of it, nothing really made sense. I generally lived from one high to the next, without much concern for myself, my future, or anyone else. My addiction had control.
Through all of this, I somehow managed to graduate from the University of Georgia with a B.A. in Anthropology. I even made the Dean’s List in my last two semesters. Two years later, I was ready to pursue an advanced degree and teaching seemed like a good fit. There were educators in my family, I loved school and learning, and I had a genuine compassion for people that led me to want to be of service to others. I decided to become a teacher.
Unfortunately, I was still addicted to drugs. I thought that once I got my degree and became a certified teacher, all the stars would align and I would somehow be cured of the urge to use substances. I really was earnest in my belief that I could beat addiction with hard work and a professional title. After all, teachers don’t do drugs, right?
My using had progressed beyond cannabis over the years. I tried anything and everything that would alter my state of mind and get me away from myself. I never said no. I hung around some very shady people. And I eventually was introduced to meth. I had taken tons of Adderall in college, so I rationalized the decision which didn’t really feel like a decision by likening meth to its chemically related, prescription cousin amphetamine.
That was a big mistake. Somewhere around this time, I thought I might teach myself how to shoot up heroin, because why not? I was in a strange state of both loss of control, and cold calculation when it came to my drug use. I told no one. It was my secret. One day, my then-boyfriend found used needles in the trash, though I had tried to hide them. “How are you going to be a teacher?” He demanded to know. I shrugged, because at this point A.J. the person and A.J. the drug addict were fighting for space in my brain, and I didn’t have any answers.
I was a chemically induced human being, incapable of fully rational thought. I had no business getting a Master of Arts in Teaching. However, no one in my graduate program, my student teaching position, or my family noticed anything out of the ordinary, or at least they didn’t say anything, which gave me permission to continue on my path toward self-destruction. I was an expert at concealing the truth.
I graduated from my M.A.T. program with a 4.0 GPA and got my first teaching job as a 7th-grade social studies teacher at an urban middle school in Georgia. The curriculum was interesting to me and I was excited to teach it. Geography, history, political science, cultural studies, and economics of Africa and Asia. This vast expanse of information, was condensed and made palatable to 12-year-olds, most of whom had never left the state of Georgia.
The state-issued textbook was so pedantic and disengaging that I felt sorry for having to distribute it to my classes. I supplemented the meager curriculum with materials from Teachers Pay Teachers paid for out of pocket. I decorated my classroom, made seating charts, and organized my binders. I went to the bathroom during summer pre-planning and smoked meth off of tin foil. I stayed late at the school, making sure everything was ready. I was really proud of the artificial thing that I was.
When school started, I went about the daily routine of waking up, making myself look presentable, driving to the school, and mentally armoring myself for the often chaotic environment of a city middle school, all while in a slight daze from whatever drugs I had been taking the night before. I often stayed up until two or three o’clock in the morning, alternating between smoking meth and marijuana. The meth made me feel alive, interested and interesting to everything around me. It was such a hit of pleasure to my needy brain that I usually overdid it, and took too much.
I then had to balance out the frenzy that too much meth can bring with something that could help sedate me. Marijuana was good for this. I would need to smoke a lot of it to counteract the stimulation of the meth, and in this way I finally got myself to sleep, body and mind still buzzing but quietly enough that I could rest. I did not bring drugs into the building with students present. That was my only rule.
Things started to fall apart over Christmas break, and by January I had lost 20 pounds and wasn’t functioning anymore. My mind went to a dark, frightening place where strange things live and light is blocked. When I could no longer go to work, I Googled “treatment centers near me” and, with the help of my parents, checked myself into a 60-day program a few hours from my home.
I got clean and sober. I refused to tell anyone in my school where I was or what had been going on. The shame was too great, the consequences too severe. I went back to my classroom and finished the school year, the children and faculty having been told I was away for medical reasons. I didn’t tell anyone outside of my family what had happened or where I’d been. How could I? Who could conceive of a teacher like me? As it turns out, we exist, in the shadowy realm of human experience that no one really wants to know or talk about.
At the very first treatment center I called, the phone was answered by a gentle man who listened well. When I finished describing my predicament, he was quiet for a moment and then said, “I was a school principal. I was addicted to meth. Here’s my name. You can look up the story on the internet.”
To that man, whose name I can no longer recall, I want to say thank you. I didn’t go to your treatment center because it was too far away, but you planted a seed that has given me the courage to share my experience, eight years later.
