October 2018 Newsletter

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Now Responsible For Herself

Cancer was diagnosed in Jennifer when she was just 18-years-old. Radical surgery was recommended, which was eventually done. Pain pills were prescribed to a teenager, who was not ready for the responsibility of monitoring the addictive medication. Jennifer did not graduate from high school, feared a looming surgery, and became hooked on opioids. She said, “They made me feel good. Other family members used pain pills. Now, I had their attention; I was a part of the team. When I got my prescription, I was allowed into their locked rooms. I kept it to myself, because it would cause a fight with certain family members. I abused pills and got more from family. Then there were times when I was out. It was horrible. I didn’t get out of bed. It was the worse feeling. That is why I started using meth, because it got rid of that.”

Jennifer went on to say, “I did meth to get off pills. Meth took me. It was a super drug that was going to save me, cure-all. I didn’t have to eat or sleep, lost weight. But slowly, I lost everything I cared for. Anybody that I loved or cared about walked away from me or was taken away.”

In the course of time, Jennifer had a son. They lived together. The father of the child shared custody in a separate home. In her addiction and confused thinking, she thought she was going to lose her son permanently. So, she took her son without telling the father. When she lost custody of him, her drug habit went from numbing pain to self-destructive behavior. She said at that point, “You lose your inhibitions, and you are unpredictable. My parents didn’t want me around. I became violent. I lost everything. I lived on the riverbank, camped by the railroad tracks. Everything I left there was stolen, so I took all my stuff with me all the time. I couldn’t trust anyone. I felt so lost, because I came from a really good family. All I had to do was put the drugs down, and I could go home. But I chose to keep using, it had a vice on me.” When asked how she supported such lifestyle, she said, “I was a collector,” meaning a strong-arm drug bill collector.

In July of last year, Jennifer was on the riverbank in Roseburg. She was feeling so low, she cried out in prayer, “’God do something different with my life. I’m not going anywhere. I’m on a destructive path.’ I remember just sitting there, and it just came to me. I had this overwhelming feeling, that I needed to go home to see my mom.” She walked to Winston to find her mother critically ill. Jennifer got clean off drugs and promised to become a healthy, productive member of society. A month later, her mom died in the hospital, and Jennifer was triggered into relapse. During that time, she missed a court appointment for illegal camping in an unoccupied house. Coupled with prior arrests, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison, with no release to attend her mother’s funeral. She fell apart, was enraged, filled with uncontrollable panic, and could not get any drugs to fill the void. She said, “I just had to deal with it. God really put His hand on me to get me through that whole situation. I had a calm over my whole body, knowing everything was going to be ok.”

In prison, Jennifer got into a special program, learning to stop being angry and begin trusting others. She was released early, serving just 9 months. They gave her a choice for parole in Douglas County to either go to a self-governed halfway house or to the managed Samaritan Inn. She chose our place for the accountability aspect. She said, “My favorite rule is modest dressing at Samaritan Inn. I love it here. I have the structure I need, support. I like having a pod mom in the worker’s dorm.” A pod mom is a woman in our program in charge of a group of rooms. And Jennifer is in the worker’s dorm (to meet her work schedule) because she got a job after just two weeks of being here. It is her very first job in her 37-year-old life. She is doing well, a natural cashier in a retail store. Now for the first time in her life, she is her own person, responsible for herself. She visits her son regularly, and is getting a driver’s license so she can drive her mother’s car.

Jennifer said she went to church with her family as a child. “Through the whole experience, I knew God was there. When I was high, I stopped praying. When I reached bottom, God was there,” she confessed.