Australian mother reveals 16-year-long painful battle with addiction
An Australian mother of two has revealed her 16-year-long battle with drug addiction and her difficult road to recovery.
Nicole now aged 36, had her first taste of alcohol at the tender age of 12. By the age of 13 she was using marijuana, and finally at 19 she experimented with speed.
At the time she started taking drugs it “was just for fun” as part of her weekend recreation however shortly after the addiction took hold and Nicole was hopelessly hooked.
“I really didn’t accept it, because obviously you’re in denial,” she told The Daily Mail.
“I always played sports and I was always at school,” she said.
“But of a weekend and socially that’s what we were doing in our teenage years,” she admitted to The Daily Mail.
“By the age of probably 16 I was drinking every weekend you think at that age that’s normal.”
The mother admitted that the only time she stopped drinking and taking drugs was when she was pregnant and breastfeeding her two children.
"Most people crave ice cream, or gherkins or crave food, I craved wine and amphetamines," she said of her pregnancy cravings.
“I would look in the mirror and see my eyes wide open and think, oh my God, it’s 11 in the morning,” she said.
While the drug usage took a huge emotional toll on the mother of two, it also had negative physical affects too.
“I had aged a lot,” she lamented.
“I ended up in hospital the year I decided to go to DARA (rehab), I was having heart spasms.”
‘I was severely, incredibly depressed,’ she said.
Nicole came to the realisation that she couldn’t continue the cycle of drinking and drugs anymore.
“The kids were better off without me being their mother, I wasn’t teaching them anything but being aggressive and angry and frustrated and disconnected.”
It was during this time Nicole became suicidal.
She reached out to her brother and asked for the help she so desperately needed.
He brother and his wife immediately came to her aid and Nicole checked herself into a rehabilitation in Thailand.
“I knew I was safe as soon as I got on that plane,” Nicole told The Daily Mail.
Her initial withdrawal symptoms from drug abuse left her physically and mentally exhausted.
The mother spent the first night in Thailand in a Bangkok hospital.
Once she checked into the rehabilitation facility the next day she learned that people who struggle with addictions have distorted thought patterns, and she was taught how to identity these distortions and turn them around in to rational thoughts.
Today Nicole has been sober for just over one year following a stint in the rehab clinic in Thailand.
She credits the facility with saving her life.
News break – February 8
