Drug Abuse and Teen Sex: Interview with a Teenage Victim
Q: Where do you think you first went wrong? What was the most significant event that led to everything that followed?
A: Well… I was a really good little girl before I started middle school… I got all A’s, I was one of the best players on my softball team, I never got in any fights with anyone and my parents were always happy with me. Then I met this guy and a few of his friends… they weren’t from my normal circle of friends and they were the “bad kids…” They liked to smoke pot and drink and that sort of thing. I really liked one of the guys, and we started going out, and I kind of adapted his lifestyle.
Q: How?
A: We’d drink and smoke pot together, and he also gave me my first cigarette. Sometimes I’d sneak out in the middle of the night to see him… we’d hang out at his house a few blocks away and sometimes have sex. I came home one day from school and my parents saw a hickey on my shoulder, and I wasn’t supposed to see him anymore, but I did anyways.
Q: I see. So what happened after that?
A: One night I was really mad at him so I had another guy over… I ended up having sex with him, too. My boyfriend found out and we broke up. Then I got really depressed, so I started doing more drugs, like speed and mushrooms, because they made me feel better, but they usually led to sex with more guys.
Q: Did your friends know?
A: No, not really. They knew I had sex with my boyfriend, but that was it. They weren’t really my friends anymore, though.
Q: What do you mean?
A: I’d drifted away from my previous group of friends to some other girls that liked doing drugs and all that other stuff.
Q: I understand you previously used self-mutilation for stress relief… Can you tell me about that?
A: I started cutting on my thighs when my boyfriend broke up with me… My right thigh is covered in scars. It was an easy place to hide it and no one ever knew until one day in gym class… We had to wear shorts and a girl in my class noticed. I guess she told the teacher or something, because the principal called my parents and I had to go to therapy, but it didn’t help at all. I never even bothered to talk to the therapist. Cutting made me feel better, and I wasn’t going to stop because of some asshole with a license. I was diagnosed with depression and bipolar syndrome, and put on various medications that only made me sick, so I quit taking them.
Q: How did cutting help you?
A: Feeling the pain on the outside always seemed to get rid of the pain on the inside, somehow. I was really bad about it for a while… I remember once, I cut in the school bathroom because my ex-boyfriend called me a whore in the hallway.
Q: I can see this situation lowering your self esteem, as you’ve told me. What did you do to feel better about yourself?
A: Well, having sex with guys made me feel sexy and wanted… I didn’t realize that I was looking in the wrong places for attention. I also had a very poor body image, so I became anorexic. At first, that was really hard for me, but then it became like an addiction. When I ate, I hated myself even more, so I just gave it up altogether.
Q: What effects did this have on you?
A: I was constantly cold and sick… I passed out in school once from malnutrition, which started a whole new series of therapies that didn’t work. My parents forced me to eat in front of them at least twice every day- full, nutritious meals- and I gained about two pounds… I remember looking in the mirror and crying on several occasions because I thought I’d gotten fat. At my lowest, I weighed about ninety pounds and at my height- 5′ 5″- that was not healthy.
Q: What happened with the indiscriminate sex?
A: By the time I was fourteen, I was considered the slut of the school, but I used it to my advantage… so I thought. I’d have sex with guys for drugs or money or cigarettes and think nothing of it. I just wasn’t careful enough, and in the middle of eighth grade, I found out I was pregnant. I had no idea who the father was, and of course I didn’t want to have a baby, so I made myself fall down the stairs several times until I was sure it was over. That had to be one of the hardest experiences for me, and I still cry sometimes thinking about it…
Q: Did you ever tell your parents?
A: No, they had no idea, and they still don’t. I hope they don’t find out, because they would be heartbroken. They knew about my cutting and anorexia, and eventually they found out about the drugs- we’ll get to that, I guess- but they never knew about the sex.
Q: Were you addicted to any drugs?
A: For a brief period- maybe a couple weeks- when I was almost fourteen, I was addicted to cocaine, but one of my friends helped me with that. She said, verbatim, “I don’t care about any of that other shit but the coke is driving me insane.” She convinced me to quit, and I’m glad.
Q: Where did you get the drugs and the money to buy them?
A: Well, I was still friends with some of my ex-boyfriend’s friends, and they had the connections. Sometimes I stole money from my parents to pay for it, but when I started having sex for money, I didn’t have to do that anymore.
Q: I see. Besides the people you were friends with, what influenced you most?
A: Quite honestly, a movie played a big part in my downfall… That’s actually where I got the idea of sex for drugs. The main character in the movie did that, and I thought, “Hey, what a great idea!” My friends were no help, as well… they did it too, but to a lesser extent.
Q: Why did you do the drugs?
A: I had different reasons for all of them. Speed made it easier not to eat, so I’d end up losing five pounds in a week with no food, and it was really easy to get. Cocaine wasn’t easy to get, but it made me feel good. Shrooms and ecstasy were just a good time. Alcohol helped me express myself better, so I could have a real conversation with my friends. Pot was fun for a while, but then it got boring, and I hated getting stoned because I ate so much. But the reason behind all of them was that they made me forget all the pain and just let me have a good time. I opened up when I was high, and that was something I couldn’t do sober.
Q: How did your school life change over the course of those years?
A: My grades dropped a lot… I got mostly C’s and I stayed home or skipped at least a day every week and never bothered to make up assignments. But I was one of the most popular girls in the school. The effect I had on people was incredible… I shocked them. A few times I cut on my arms and whenever anyone would notice, everyone in the class would turn around and ask to see it… I never understood that, but I got a lot of attention that way. I loved it when girls would come up to me and say, “My God, you’re so skinny…” It made my day. My grades stopped mattering at all to me, and besides skipping classes and full days, I usually followed the rules. Oh, and I quit playing softball as soon as I started using drugs. I couldn’t risk failing a drug test.
Q: How did your relationship with your parents change?
A: Oh, it was horrible. We got in fights almost every night, and they always knew when I came home messed up on something, so they’d ask me questions for hours on end. Where was I, what did I do, who was I with?… It was always the same answer- I was over at [a friend’s] house watching movies- and it was always a lie. It just got worse with every little thing they found out. One morning my dad came to wake me up and saw a razor on my nightstand, but I told him I was doing an art project for school or something. He didn’t believe me, but he didn’t make a big deal about it, that time. They missed my old friends, and they didn’t really like the new ones.
Q: How would you describe the new group of friends?
A: I wouldn’t exactly call them friends… None of us actually cared about eachother, we only hung out for people to get high with or people to buy drugs from. One of my friends had a “close friend” who died from an overdose, and she didn’t even go to the funeral.
Q: Did you have any trouble with authority figures, like teachers or friends’ parents?
A: Oh, none of my teachers liked me. I had a bad habit of going to the bathroom to have a cigarette every day in some of my classes, and it got to the point where some of them wouldn’t let me leave the room until class was over. Most of my friends’ parents thought I was completely innocent and liked me, but I’m sure they had their suspicions. One of them caught me smoking a cigarette on the side of their house and I wasn’t allowed back there again.
Q: Were you happy with your lifestyle?
A: I was happy when I was high or when I was getting something I wanted. I tried to be happy, I really did, but it seemed like the harder I tried, the worse I felt, so the sex and drugs and all that kept up for a while, gradually getting worse. There wasn’t a single night in a week that I’d be sober.
Q: When did you decide you needed to get your life back on track?
A: It took a long time… at least 3 years. But when I was about 15 and a half, a speaker came to my school. She was just like me… She was a cutter and anorexic, and she did drugs and all that… She told us how she’d gone through rehab and a lot of therapy and how she got better, and how she realized how wrong she was. By the end of her presentation, I was crying, and all the images and memories in my head came back to me all at once… I decided that it was not the life for me and I was not going to let myself fail that way. I confessed to my parents all about the drugs and I was in rehab for a month, and honestly, it was one of the best months of my life. Talking to people about everything I’d held inside for so long helped me more than I thought possible. I learned that there are people out there who understand, and their ideas aren’t all crap. One of my new best friends is one of the girls I met during that month, and she’s like a sponsor for me. I know anytime I need to, I can call her and she’ll help me remember why I quit and how much happier I am now. My attention from guys has changed from being sexual to being real… I can hold a conversation now without getting bored, and it’s really incredible how much good talking can do. My grades are back up to mostly A’s- I get a few B’s occasionally, but I try my hardest. My parents no longer have to worry that I’m out doing things that no one should ever do, and my life is so much better. I thought it was too late for me and I planned to live my whole life like I was, but then I realized that my life could still be saved.
Q: What do you do now when you’re feeling down?
A: I’ve learned that there are other ways to cope with stress and I don’t need to hurt myself. Sometimes I write in a diary, and sometimes I beat up my pillow, but usually I talk to my new friends. It’s so nice having someone who actually cares about me.
Q: Do you have any advice for parents or teens to avoid situations like your past?
A: Parents- talk to your kids and know what they’re really up to. Trust and communication are so important to any relationship. But don’t invade their privacy. Reading their diaries is one of the worst things you could possibly do. And to all teens- just avoid the bad crowd and learn from examples like my own. It is very far from fun constantly worrying about “getting busted.” Don’t try to be “hardcore” or any of that crap, because it will get you nothing but pain. Someday I plan to go to college and become a therapist who can help girls like the one I was, because I feel I can connect, and maybe save someone’s life someday.
Slowly but surely, rates for teen drug use, sex, and pregnancy are declining, but it takes so little effort to bring them down to zero. Every success story like this one is another life saved; another little piece of the world changed for the better. Please, if you or someone close to you is in too deep and needs help, encourage them to seek help. You could save a life, and perhaps eventually we could all save the world from corruption.
