Member-only story
I’m watching drugs and alcohol destroy a middle-class housewife’s entire life
Addiction isn’t just something that impacts wayward teens
As the girl who doesn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or even get tattoos in my social circles, I’m often a target for soft humour and light jabs. I don’t mind this at all: it is funny how square and squeaky-clean I am alongside my flamboyant, eccentric personality. The honest answer to ‘why’ isn’t any strong religious conviction or wild trauma: I just don’t like it. I never have. It isn’t something I’ve ever enjoyed or thought I would enjoy. I don’t judge anyone who enjoys a drink now and then, or even the occasional high. Whatever, right: your body, your choice.
But now I’ve got a front row seat to where addiction can take you, in the form of an old former friend. Not a teenager who is smoking too much after college, oh no. This is a middle-aged housewife with three children. And it is the most haunting, tragic, and pathetic situation I’ve ever witnessed. I wanted to share her story, anonymised, so maybe more people can be aware that drug addiction and alcohol abuse can happen later in life, and to mothers, housewives, and ‘respectable’ people. Ladies and gentlemen: Melanie.
That’s not her real name, because I’m not a monster, but Melanie is in the final years of her…
