Hello my name is Elka and I am an addict. I am 39 years old and the mother of two beautiful sons. My story begins like most. Being young and wanting to try new things. The most vivid memory I have was when I was very very young girl and my parents would always buy each of us a bottle of choice wine for New Years Eve. My mother and father would go out for the evening and leave me and my sisters home to celebrate. The rule was 1 drink to toast the New Year in. My older sister who is not one of us always managed to drink that one drink. Me and my other sister on the hand could never just stop at one. Being in recovery I now realize I was an addict long before my 10th birthday. I remember at the ripe old age of 7 I stole a pack of my father no filter Pall Malls and smoked one after a another until the pack was gone. Although I got very sick,.. I continued to smoke even until this day. Like the saying say you can't stop at just one.

As time went I was very active in a Drum & Bugle Corp,... but during the winter months,... it was party time. We lived in a neighborhood that predominately all boys. Everyone hung out at my house. Being that everyone knew where their children were, no one ever suspected that we were getting totally inebriated in the basement of my home. We would have the older guys buy us beer, and Alcohol. We would drink until drunk and my parents never had a clue. We did this for years and years. When I was 10 years old I had my first experience with smoking pot. My sister who was three years older than me had gone away to State Police camp and came back smoking weed. I was always the tag along and I told her "If you don't let me try it, I am telling Mom," so she let me try it, I like it and that was the beginning of using drugs. From that point on I began to dabble.

My mother ruled with an Iron Fist so I always maintained decent grades in school. When I was Jr. High School I became friends with a girl, and her mother was one of the biggest drug dealers in our community. Some of the best drugs I did were with here given to me by her mother. The first time I ever tripped on acid, I tripped with the mother and her father. At this point I grew to love speed. The mother would give us Benzedrine, the best speed that was what I liked, I loved that fast feeling. At this point at the age of 13 I began to eat speed everyday. I would buy if from people at school or get it given to me by the mother of my friend. For the next five years my life consisted of getting so high on weed, hash, opium before school I could hardly remember the first three periods of class. I also began to frequent Keg parties in the middle of nowhere. The crazy thing about the whole deal was the mother would give her a daughter and bag a weed some pills and the car and tell us to have fun. Total insanity when I looked back on it now. I also remember being turned on to Quaaludes, Man talk about getting screwed up. WOW

Well out my two best friends who partied with through my high school years, I was the only to receive my high school diploma.

For the next few years my life was uneventful. I still partied a lot, but really maintained and never went to the extreme to much. I turned 21 and became a regular with a few of my friends at a local bar. Back in those days I snorted cocaine recreationally (occasional weekends). I did drink on a regular basis though at least 4 times a week. It was nothing for me to spend $100 bucks in one night just drinking shots and mixed drinks. I am surprised that I never got a DUI. But back in those days I was having FUN. We would dance laugh and have a good time.

In December of 1996 I met the person who changes my life forever. This person would later become my husband. I met him at the bar I hung out. He was in town visiting his brother. He was a Jersey boy and thought he was all that. I thought so too.... but over the years that all changed. Well at this time I was still living at home, drove a nice car and had a great job. Well, my life was about to change. Well my now boyfriend Ken told me everything a girl wanted to hear, that he loved me, he wanted to marry me and he would take care of me. Grant you, He didn't have a job and said that he would be able to collect unemployment. 2 weeks after meeting him, I moved out of mothers and moved into an apt with him. Over the next 5 years I probably moved 8 times. If I would have known what was going on, things would have progressed differently. I must first tell you, that I had smoked crack cocaine on a few occasions but hadn't for years. I come to find out on the first date Ken was in the bathroom for a long time, I found out later he was smoking crack in the bathroom. Crack came up in a conversation one day with us and he had asked me if I had ever done it... I told him yes and the party was on for the. From that day forward we would go through spurts of smoking then deciding we need to quit.... smoke some more lose something, stop, start. They cycle was vicious. In the spring of 1997 I lost my first job due to downsizing. I got a good amount of money for severance pay. Well as you all know we smoked up a whole bunch of money. In this year I also went on a run to the city of New York with to get some stuff and we were busted. Here I am a little country girl in the big city getting busted, just like I was the T.V. show cops. I guess it was a case of mistaken identity on his part because he was not who they were looking for, but he got busted because he was loaded with powder and rock. The cop looked at me and saw something in my eye that knew I didn't belong there. They let me go and detained him

Over the next few years things sort began to change. We had been together for a little while and we tried to have a child. We had been clean, or should is say I was clean; In July of 1999 I became pregnancy with my first son. During this pregnancy I didn’t smoke, drink, nor do any kind of drugs. I felt my life was changing…. But little did I know what was going on behind my back. Just about the time I got pregnant, Ken started having back problems. The funny thing is this is just about the time Oxycontin was introduced to the market. His Dr. prescribes them to him before he even knew what really wrong with his back. Well my pregnancy progressed and I delivered a healthy baby boy on March 6, 2000. I thought my life was good. I nursed my son for 8 months. At the end of my maternity leave I hated to leave my new son, but went back anyways and quit two day later because due to downsizing at this job again, they put me in shipping and receiving job. I was like no way and I going to do this kind of work and plus I missed my baby so I quit….. But two weeks later I got another job that I absolutely loved. I began working for a local newspaper, and while I worked Ken stayed home with our son.

In the meantime Ken Awas very controlling, very jealous and very insecure. I am a very attractive woman and I guess he felt threatened. I was born and raised in a very small town and I knew a lot of people. Just because you say Hi to someone doesn’t mean that you went to bed with them. Over time he alienated me from my friends and family, my family just barely tolerated him. I never knew how Co- Dependant I was or what it really even meant until I got into recovery.

Well during this time I had a great job at the paper and he picked up a job doing custodial work. I was making really good money and he was just making average money. Well a position open up at his place of employment and he badgered me and had this control over me that he just about forced me to take on this position. Told me how we could see each other everyday, take vacations together. Anything to keep me in close contact with me. I am people person and I loved the job besides the fact that he was constantly up my ass.

During the next year it was an up and down rollercoaster. We would party here and there but we took care of what needed to be taken care of. Ken was becoming very dependant on the oxy’s and his personality was beginning to change. I could go on and on about him and what he did, but this is about me. If I would have known then what I know, things would be so much different. But anyways in the late summer of 2001 I became pregnant again with my second son. It wasn’t a planned pregnancy like first one,

So all the sudden Ken thinks we should get married. I didn’t want to. He told me if I loved him I would marry him. We had lived together for 6 years and I was perfectly content (kind of) in the situation I was in. I did know that once we married he would have even more control because that was his way of thinking. We went on vacation in August of 2001. When we came back to work, Ken whom I believed staged a fall. He said he hurt his shoulder and his back and he was off work now. The sad thing is that I he decided to sue. The place where I was employed at. I could go on and on, but in the spring of 2002 I had my second son. That should have a been a joyous occasion but by June my mind was telling me I wanted to get high. I nursed my son for three months drug free and by the end of the third month I couldn’t take it anymore so I stopped nursing and started snorting and eventually smoking. At this time my husband had received at settlement from his fall at work and the party was on at this time. I believe he received 26,000 dollars and it was gone in August. We received the settlement in May. We were buying in ounce every other day with the intention of selling it. That was the biggest joke ever,. We snorted and smoke more than we sold. Time went on I worked and my husband was home with out two sons. A newborn and a two year old. While I worked I believed he was taking care of the boys. At first he was doing a good job. By November of 2002 I found out that my husband and had been shooting dope,.. By December I was shooting it too. By Jan I had lost my job. Even though I was shooting dope and smoking crack, I was still maintaining, but what happened is that when I would come home for lunch my husband would be wasted and I could not take care of the children, so I would have to make up some sort of lie as to why I couldn’t come back to work. The lies got old and eventually I lost my job in January of 2003. From January to December my life was a complete mess. Our home became a flop house,

Since I had a probation violation I was told to have a Drug & Alcohol assessment. Also the day I got arrested my sister filed for temporary custody of my children through the court system. My life was fucked up mess. The week of December 22, I was evicted from my house, had a Drug & Alcohol Assessment on the 23rd. Went to see my P.O. on the 23rd with dirty urine. I told him the truth and the truth was I was dirty but I had appointment to get to rehab on the 26th. My P. O. told me wished my well. I had to leave all my personal belongings because I had no where to store them. We stayed at this couples house for a couple days, I have never been so sad in my life. On Christmas my day I went to my sisters to see my boys. I was mess and she asked me to leave. I kept nodding out, HORRIBLE. On the 26th of Dec. 26 2003 that was the first day of my new life. My picked me up and this couples house and I was off to rehab. My husband left for rehab that day too, but he went for all the wrong reasons. I knew deep down in my heart that this marriage was over long ago, but I felt stuck and did not know how to leave him. I guess I was scared to be on my own

I entered rehab on 12/26/2003 and that day changed my life forever. I was beat down, I had enough. I was skinny sick and confused. I grasped everything they told. My sister would talk to me; my mother was hurt and felt like my whole family hated me. But come to find out later once I got some clarity back, that my family loved me very much. I was in rehab for 21 days and the end of my time my counselor started talking to me about an aftercare plan. I was homeless and had no where to go. She suggested a halfway house in Erie, PA that you could have your children. That was my plan, but my husband had decided to go to a halfway in Erie as well. The day that I was suppose to leave, I had a revelation and that was that I could not got to Erie if I wanted to be free from a life of despair and co-dependency. So I spoke with my counselor and she suggested that I move to a halfway in Washington, PA. What was really cool about it is that I met a girl in rehab and we were from opposite ends of the track but we became really good friends so we kind of went to the halfway house on the buddy system. On Jan 21, 2004 I entered a halfway house for women. That is where my life really started to change. Of course my husband was devastated when he found out I was not going to Erie, but I couldn’t go there.

I was a resident at the ½ house for seven months and in those 7 months I attended a lot of meetings sometimes tow or three a day. I was willing, I was opening minded and I WANTED the new way of life everyone in the fellowships talked about. I worked with a therapist twice a week and I began to kind out who I was. I was able to work on myself, because I knew my children were being taken care of. God how I missed them. My sister was angry, I had uprooted her life. I went to my hearings for custody. My husband never went to one. In April My friend who I had went to the halfway house with left to move in with a guy she had met in rehab. She overdosed in Dec. of that year the same day as her clean date. 12/20/ 04. She always told me if she picked up again she would die. And she did. I was able to get into a housing program in July of 04. In Sept of 04 CYS closed my case and was reunited with my children in our very own apartment. In this time my husband was tracking me down, checking in and out of psychiatric wards until they told him if he entered again they would make him a ward of the state. He wanted to move where I was but I told him he couldn’t. He had to prove himself to me. That met finding a job getting his own place and staying clean for at least a year. He entered a three quarter house in August. He saw his sons for the first time in almost a year on October 1, 2004 and on October 9, 2004 he died of a drug overdose. I had 9 months clean, but I had support of the program and they carried me when I couldn’t carry myself. I made it through. On Dec 26, 2004 I celebrated my 1st year clean. What an accomplishment.