Jacqueline, 37.
Jacqueline recently went through detox at Main Street Project before moving on to a treatment program.
I grew up in Sagkeeng First Nation, until about 10 years ago and then I moved into the city. I moved here for better opportunities.
I’ve been in detox for two days. This is probably my fifth or sixth time since last year. I am here for meth but I have a life-long addiction. First it was alcohol, then opiates and meth.
It was introduced by my ex two years ago. It started as a once a month kind of thing and then after my kids were apprehended, it was just boom, every day. They were apprehended last year. It’s crazy. The drug psychosis is…I honestly felt like the voices were real. The voices in my head were taunting me to kill myself. I thought it was real, that’s how bad it was. That scared me enough to not want to give up on my sobriety. I’ve never been through anything like this before. It was scary.
Right now I am still learning how to deal with my urges. The urges are constant. This last relapse, I felt so sick and I didn’t like the feeling. I just want to work on being sober. I was happy to come here. I was waiting all weekend to come here.
Sobriety isn’t gonna happen overnight. I’m still in the beginning stages of mine but I’ve learned to be honest with myself. I’ve learned to not to beat myself up over it, if I was to relapse. Just learn from your last relapse and move on from there and keep going and don’t give up. I never want to give up on my sobriety because I want it really bad.
I want to go back to the U of W. I want to be an addictions counselor, or go into some form of counselling. I’ve been through a lot and I am able to talk about it today because I’ve been through a lot of counselling to learn to deal with my trauma. I’m definitely comfortable enough to talk about it now. I can relate to a lot of people and know what they are going through. I want to help other people.
