An Anonymous Story: Pills & Pain

Anonymous is a 33-year-old married mother of one beautiful 16-month-old girl. She has several degrees, is a stay-at-home-mother, has three dogs, two sugar gliders, and a fish.

I grew up with an alcoholic, abusive father. Not only was I abused physically, but emotionally and eventually sexually, as well. I grew up as a typical teenager, trying to not let my past get the best of me, but as I got older it became harder.

My mother couldn’t take the abuse from my father so when I was 8 years old, she left. She had been with another man for a long time before leaving. What I didn’t realize as a child was that in my mom’s eyes, leaving my father meant leaving me, too. When I was 10, she got pregnant with my brother. I sat many of hours waiting for her to pick me up on the weekends when she would then not show up. When she did show up, we usually fought so bad that she would kick me out and there I was, a 15 year old girl taking the bus to find my way home.

Middle school was difficult for me; being made fun of for being overweight, not knowing how to do my hair since my mom wasn’t around. Fast forward to when I turned 18. I started going out to clubs, not coming home until the morning, doing whatever I wanted. At 19 I met who is now my husband. I always knew that my mental health had affected my life had affected me but I was trying to be strong and not seek help.

Back then it was a stigma and I didn’t want that for myself. I decided when I turned 24 to see a therapist and just talk about my problems. That helped me tremendously for years until my father retired and moved back to his home country, Portugal. I had to quit my job, and move to where my husband was, which was an hour and half north of where I lived. I had no friends, no job, no family. At the age of 29 I knew I needed more than just therapy.

I sought out a psychiatrist, all he did was give me pills, not really helping me. I was just a paycheck to him, he didn’t care. He stopped accepting my insurance when I was 30 and I found a new one, one that I loved. At 31, I hurt my back. I don’t know how or when but there were days I couldn’t even walk. I had to find a doctor that would help me since all testing came back negative.

I ended up in pain management and taking pain killers, which never really helped me. I ended up having 3 epidurals and the last one the doctor made my back feel worse then when I originally went there, so I stopped going to him. Because of this, he told other doctors to not see me and I had to seek doctors in another state. All the while I’m still under the care of my psychiatrist.

This new doctor decided to give me Opana, a synthetic version of Heroin. Little did I know that my Ambien, Xanax, and anti-depressants all interacted with this drug. For weeks all I did was lay in bed, nothing helped. My psychiatrist didn’t know how to help me and told me I had manic depressive disorder and severe anxiety and would probably benefit from an inpatient facility.

I decided to seek that help but when I got the hospital I just looked around and told me husband, “I can’t do this”. He brought me home and a few weeks later, I passed out at work because the drug interaction finally got the best of me. Ambien made me not remember things I did, and I would wake up at night in pain and take my medication not realizing I had already taken it. My cousin made my husband send me to what he thought was a facility for mental illness, but when I got there, I quickly realized I was in a rehab with hardcore drug addicts. After 3 days I was back on a plane on my way back to my husband.

My psychiatrist all the while kept monitoring me and giving me new medications to take. We finally found a combination that worked when I got pregnant with my daughter. I decided, with the OK of my doctor, that I needed to come off my medication. That I would be okay without them.

Here I am with a beautiful 16 month old daughter, who I couldn’t breastfeed due to flat nipples but have pumped for for the last 16 months (I truly think that is what is keeping me from suffering from my depression). My anxiety is the only thing that at times isn’t under control. There are days when I know my depression is trying to rear its ugly head, but most times I pick myself up for the little girl that calls me “Mommy” and depends on me. I swore I wouldn’t let her go through what I did, and so far I’ve kept that promise