Some of you may be surprised and some may feel it’s a given.

I was addicted to narcotics.  I didn’t know it until I stopped taking them.  My body was addicted eight weeks into my recovery.   That fast.  I was probably addicted sooner than that and had no idea.

Why did I stop taking them? 

I wasn’t feeling the “high” that everyone talks about.  I felt severe vertigo.  The kind where I couldn’t lift my head from my pillow on my hospital bed located in my living room.  I was unable to turn my head left or right without walls spinning. 

  I felt that something was inside of me, shredding the walls of my stomach with sharp claws.  Gnawing, rummaging and finding nothing, gnawing more.   That made me vomit or dry heave as I spoke to loved ones on the phone.   I would swing the phone away from my mouth, so they couldn’t hear my soft gags, but I could still listen without ending our conversation.

These narcotics caused me immense discomfort, but lessened my pain, to an extent. My surgeon told my husband when I was released that I would still be in pain, but all we could do was hope I didn’t remember it. For months I was on the heavy hitters. Oxycontin, Oxycodone, Vistaril, Flexeril, Valim, Neurontin and Norco. AT THE SAME TIME! Plus my husband had to administer Lovenox injections into my mid section nightly.

The bad days, the most difficult days came through.  Those I remember vividly.  Those days keep me humble today.

How did I know I was addicted? 

Irritable, sweating, then the shakes.  Even through my delirium I knew what was happening to me.  I told my husband I was having withdrawals and it would be a few days before I was “normal” again.

In my mind I was being proactive.   Telling myself as soon as I could stand the pain, I was going to stop taking them.  My body made the decision for me.   Calling my surgeon, I explained everything.  Telling him I couldn’t take all this medicine any longer, but I could barely exist without it.   His decision was to let me decide.  Calling me in a less powerful narcotic and allowing me to make decisions on when to use the “hard stuff”.

It was the worst kind of awful there was.  I lived with it.  The pain.  The side effects of the medicines were competing with the pain of my injuries.

  How could it get worse?

 I rode it out in waves, every day.  As months passed, I would look back, just as my surgeon suggested and could see where I was and how far I had come.  That is what kept me pushing forward and the fact that as our four children walked in the door from the bus each afternoon, they would be the highlight of my days. 

Working in the medical field I knew, I saw this happen to others.  Real injuries, real pain that led to addiction.  I knew I would never be that person…………until I was.

I am fortunate that the side effects leave an undesirable hold on me.  Many are not as fortunate.  For a couple of years after I stopped ingesting them routinely, I would take one at bedtime if I couldn’t knock the demon of pain back to where I could handle it.  I allowed myself three nights of this and wouldn’t take a pill on the fourth.  Even after all this time, my body desired this drug.  Stopping on the fourth night caused me to sit in my recliner with jitters, restless leg syndrome, unable to focus and I knew completely if I went to my pill bottle, I could make it stop.

I suffered, prayed my way through it, eventually deciding it wasn’t worth the consequences of taking those bastards.  Now I do everything I possibly can do ease my pain without them.  Sometimes waiting too long and paying the price, but I will not go back there.  I will sit full time in a wheelchair before I shove those down my throat daily.

I can fill a script for sixty pills a month if I want to.  I believe I’ve picked up sixty in the last two years, only by choice. 

I am so real.  I am so humbled.  I know exactly who I am and what I am capable of.  This experience has taught me that.  In my low moments I remind myself of that.  There are times I must be gentle with myself and there are others that I scream and demand more of my courage and commitment. 

It has been quite some time since my husband has created a spread sheet for my medicines, placed cups with filled with pills and times of when they should be administered on our kitchen counter.  Gone are the days of setting alarms for those same pills.  I couldn’t do it on my own in the beginning, but I am a different woman now.  My head is clear, I know my path and I am Stronger than Yesterday.

We met as sixth graders. That was the year when the Gerald and Owensville kids combined at one location. On a warm spring day, nearly every other student in our school was away on a field trip. Apparently Chris and I were not good fundraisers, so we were left at school with a few others to play at the park all day. This was the first time we really had a conversation with each other, partly due to my shyness, the other because he was the most popular boy in school and everyone wanted to talk to him.
We played one on one basketball nearly the entire time and I was seriously competitive, so I was giving him a run for his money, as a girl. That was the beginning of our friendship, whether we spent every weekend together or only caught up occasionally as our lives took different paths.
Regardless of time, Chris was one who never judged nor turned his nose up at you and each time we ran into each other, his arms were spread wide and that goofy smile was on his face and I’d hear, “Carey!”

This is why he was loved by so many. He was always Chris, no matter what crowd he was hanging with, he was always the same person.
When I opened up Face Book that Monday afternoon as I was picking up my child from Middle School, my mind became confused, panicked and started a denial process. Immediately I messaged a long time friend of mine and she gave me the grim rundown of events that I had not yet heard.
I’m sick.
I hurt.
My mind is racing and screaming NO!
How could this be? He’s not waking up? He’s a pro motorcycle rider, it was a county fair, and how could this go wrong? Nothing can happen to Short Blankenship, he IS invincible! Many of our minds were screaming the same sentiment.
I could not call anyone. I did not feel it was my place, this was too real, too sacred, too heart breaking. I waited, along with every other person who Chris had touched with his personality.
A day later, as I rode in my Kubota, clipping our pastures, I knew this would be the deciding day. Such heaviness heaved itself upon me for days and I was just on the outskirts of the tragedy, not in the eye of the storm.
As my music shuffled from my phone to the tractor speakers, I heard the song play and my heart shattered. I knew before I even opened up my phone to look that Chris “Short” Blankenship had passed from this Earth. The very first post I viewed as I swiped my phone was from a moto-cross friend of his that explained, due to the severity of Short’s injuries that he sustained at a race the past weekend, he had indeed passed away.
I sat in my tractor seat and wept as if I were a little girl, with waves of tears, gasps and emotions rolling over me again and again and again, just as every single person who knew Short was doing at that same exact moment.
Our Owensville class of 1994 had lost too many classmates already, but Chris was my first true friend that had left my life, forever.
Each of us ask the question of, “Why did he have to be taken from us so early”? Especially his wife and two children. Fair? Never.

As time has passed and our hearts have had time to accept and heal, we again smile as we think of those many crazy, fun experiences or those late night sentimental, overly philosophical conversations we all have had with that man.
God does not bring us home until we have fulfilled our purpose. We’ve heard that our entire lives.
Look at how many lives Chris Blankenship has touched. How many memories he has given us to reminisce about.
How many of us can leave a legacy like he has by just being ourselves? By being true to whom we are, one hundred percent of the time? THAT is pretty freakin’ awesome.

That song, that was playing, that told me the truth that I did not want to believe, was Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue. As I took control of my tears that day, I couldn’t help but to smirk at him and think, “Well………..how fitting”. Because there was no way that Chris “Short” Blankenship was going to make a quiet, mundane entrance into the gates of Heaven, he was going to be playing that electric guitar at the highest decibel possible, letting every angel know he was arriving , singing to them,

“I’m coming home. Home Sweet Home.”