My mom and heroin: The story of a family that is no more
There are no reliable statistics about people in Russiawho use drugs, but according to reports of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, about 70 tons of heroin are consumed annually in our country. The same division declares an opioid crisis that is already taking on a global scale. One of the most vulnerable groups among people who use drugs are women: they are busy at all stages of drug trafficking, are more at risk of contracting HIV and the hepatitis C virus, often resort to use, wanting to cope with mental disorders and serious events. We publish the story of Amina F. (the name is changed at the request of the heroine): her mother used heroin for more than ten years and became infected with HIV - and confused relatives preferred to hide problems in the family.
margarita virova
Mystery from childhood
What do I remember good things about my parents? They were very loving. When they were young, they adored each other and enjoyed the time they spent together. My father was a member of Kazan Pervaki criminal group: they kept the whole district, and their main asset was the market right across the street from our house. My mother did not work when I was born, but before that she had been working as an accountant in a bank for a very long time.
I remember touching moments from childhood. Dad came home in the evening, we sat in the living room, and he played the console. He chose between Sony and Sega (we had both at home), and I sat on his shoulders and interfered, closing his eyes and ears. Mom sometimes played with dad, but more often she just sat next to us and knitted. I also remember that my mother had a special mask that she put on to scare me when I did not want to eat porridge. I was afraid, I was crying, tears were falling into porridge - I hated her, but obediently ate under the supervision of a monster in a mask.
And then my father was killed - it was done by members of another group, it was called "Hadi Taktash." I was fond of the topic of the organized criminal group and I know the details from the words of granny, granddaddy and other people who remember those times. In a documentary film about such groups, which was shown on Channel One, it was suggested why large gang members began to kill each other: one group owed another two hundred grams of cocaine (in the 90s, Kazan organized criminal groups were competing for drug market.) Note ed.). The guys from Hadi Taktash went to a friend of my father, and my father called him at the moment when the “guests” came. A friend listed all those who are in the apartment - maybe he felt that something was wrong. There was a firefight, this man was killed, and after a couple of days his father was also shot as a witness.
Dad came home in the evening, we sat in the living room, and he played the console. And then my father was killed
My father’s death was hidden from me for a long time. Up to eight years, I did not know where he was: they told me that he was seriously ill and did not leave the hospital. One day, grandfather accidentally let it out, and he and his granny had to tell the truth. It turns out, I remember the funeral of the Pope. The coffin did not stand in our apartment, as expected - most likely due to the circumstances of death: after the murder, the body from the morgue was immediately taken to the cemetery. Then I thought that we were celebrating some kind of holiday, because a lot of people came, everyone sat at the table and ate. But there is a detail that distinguishes a funeral from any holiday — these are curtained mirrors that I remember well. So, being already in a conscious age, I realized that it was the day when we said goodbye to my father.
Soon after, heroin appeared in my mom's life. According to the version of granny, her father got her planted. As if he simply told my mother that it would be easier to survive the loss. When mom just started to eat, I did not understand what was happening. I guessed that the adults were hiding something, but I was on the drum, I was playing with dolls. Mom began to quarrel with her grandmother often, some strange people began to come to visit. That is, my mother had friends with whom they had common affairs, but she did not drink. When you are small, you think - so what? And after a while it dawned on me that they were all just in use.
Mom used heroin from about 1997 to 2010 until the end of her life. She had a three-year gap when she was completely clean. At this time, her life was gradually getting better, it seemed to us that everything was finally over. A chance meeting with a person from a past life returned her to addiction. You know how two former alcoholics meet and drink it together - the same story. Many people knew that my mother used heroin, and gossip quickly spread. But no one spoke openly about this. I think that in my family they were afraid that the attitude of others to my mother would change dramatically for the worse, and they did not want to.
Attempts to treat
In the 2000s, when we were actively struggling with mom's addiction, there was no adequate information about what to do close in this situation. It was not clear how to treat it. Relatives sent mom to work in monasteries, then there was a rehabilitation center, fortune teller-healers came to our home, and once a man practiced acupuncture appeared. In general, the family was looking for different ways to solve the problem, but in the end, the same thing happened: my mother was sent to a psychiatric clinic. She lay in the ward, where very heavy patients were placed. There, my mother seemed to be the only person who was in her mind at all and understood who he was.
My grandfather took very harsh measures: he believed that “drug addicts” could only be beaten out of drug addicts. He did not consider them people. At the same time he had problems with alcohol, and when he drank a lot of alcohol, showed not the best features of his character. He beat his mother very badly several times, broke her ribs - unfortunately, this happened at our home. I remember my grandfather bringing handcuffs from somewhere. Grandma and Grandpa tacked my mom to the battery several times when they left the house. First of all, in order for her to wait for breaking - they thought that this should make it easier for her, because she cannot do anything with herself, will not leave anywhere and will not carry things from home. For several years, she really carried away some sort of nonsense such as small machinery and fur coats, and at the end of her life she had a lot of credits for small sums.
Grandma and Grandpa tugged mom to the battery so that she could wait for a break - they thought that this should make it easier for her
Consumption was associated with constant danger. After the death of her father, her mother’s car was set on fire several times: I think that she was threatened so, and maybe she already had some debts. Several times, the mother and her “comrades” in use unsuccessfully took away heroin, they were deceived, something was mixed in — for example, paracetamol was added. Now I understand how she risked: in her hands turned out the compositions, about which she knew nothing. In Russia, a person addicted to hard drugs can kill himself at any second — not even because of the use of specific substances, but because it is incomprehensible that he gets into his body.
And yet, for the most part, mom was socialized. As a child, it seemed to me that it was visible when my mother was "stoned" and when not. Now I understand that most of the time when she was using heroin, we did not notice. And when it seemed to us that she was in use, in fact she was going out of it. She was nervous, obviously uncomfortable. I will not say that I noticed some terrible break-ups: she was just tense, as if she was constantly being shocked. In drug intoxication, she looked rather lethargic, but at the same time remained fairly calm and contact. Perhaps her reactions were not similar sober behavior, but it almost never caught the eye.
HIV diagnosis
Mom got HIV from the last man she lived with. I think it was after the diagnosis that she had no chance of being accepted either in the family or in society. In the psychiatric clinic, she could no longer be kept in the same department as usual - they had very strict HIV-positive patients. She was transferred to another department, where there were terrible conditions of detention.
There everything was lined with tiles and there was always a terrible smell. But my mother did not want to give up, she was looking for a way out. Perhaps the disease and became for her a signal to cling to life, and not to continue to kill themselves further. She had a drug regimen and a regimen, and with varying success she began to refuse drugs.
But at home she began to be treated more strictly. Granny forced her to wash dishes and cook only with rubber gloves so that I would not get infected. She told me to once again not hug my mother. And at that moment it seemed to me that the most important contact that could have happened between us was just hugs. This is the simplest thing we could give each other as a support. Mom tried to explain to me that HIV is not scary, she shared information from some sites. In general, I thought she would get a little sicker and it would all go away like the flu.
At the same time, my mother started having problems with finding a job, especially in recent years. For about five or six years, she worked in the same place where Grandma helped her to work. And while no one knew about her mother's problems, she suited everyone, because my mother is a wonderful person, no one ever treated her badly. But other employers, who heard rumors about the disease, were not ready to accept it after the diagnosis, despite the fact that mom has a higher education and extensive experience in the bank.
Mom's death
I grew up, and the authority of my mother in my eyes fell - she became for me something like a friend. We were very close, but I lived with the feeling that I owed nothing to her. Shortly before the final, it became extremely difficult for me to force myself to communicate with her. Now I understand that this was not due to the fact that my mother really was to blame for something in front of me, it was just the easiest thing for me to close my eyes to the problem. It was easier to imagine that she was not in my life than trying to help her get out of addiction. I remember that a few days before my mother was gone, she wrote me a message asking: "Do you not need a mother at all?" Her numbers were not on my contact list, but I understood who wrote me. I decided that it was better to give her another angry and feel guilty and only then answer. After a couple of days, I learned that my mother is no more. We were called in the evening, we thought that she had an overdose, but it turned out that she had committed suicide.
Mom did not leave any notes. She hanged herself in the apartment where she lived with her then-man. The family decided not to disclose the cause of the incident. We even forged the death certificate: it seems that it says that mother died of heart failure. I understand that this was done in order not to take the whole story out of the house. It seems to me that my relatives still cannot survive the pain associated with this event, because they cannot talk about it. If they had learned, perhaps it would also be easier for them to live with it.
We even forged the death certificate: it seems that it says that mother died of heart failure.
When I learned that my mother died, I, of course, wept. But literally on the same day, when her body was taken to the morgue, I felt as if nothing had happened. I took her death as an ordinary event in life. For a long time it seemed to me that she just disappeared - as when she was put in the hospital, or when she disappeared somewhere for a couple of months or moved. Only a year later I realized that she was no more, and I remembered that stupid message. I felt guilty about my mother’s dependency, about her death, about the collapse of my family, and she herself was beginning to lean toward destructive behavior.
Skeletons in the closet
When I was little, I tried to be friends with all adults altogether, it was as if the link in all this mess. Everyone treated me well, and in my turn, as a child, I didn’t see anything wrong with others. I began to get angry at my mother closer to adolescence - I did not understand why she was doing this to me. Grandma and Grandpa considered my mother guilty of not having a normal childhood. By and large, I did not think that I have something particularly wrong. For a very long time, I was sure that everyone had some kind of drama at home, it’s just that no one talks about them and it seems as if everyone is happy. Growing up, I put up with the conviction that I would never have a normal family. To think about it all the time is awful.
I guess that for mom marriage with my father was the only way to get rid of the relationship with my family. Granny loved her very much and loves till now. Apparently, mom could not stand hyper-care: one adult man choked with the love of another. My father said about her father that this is her only true love. I remember, I told her that clinging to it all my life was very stupid - it, of course, offended her. Perhaps my mother traveled all her life from one co-dependency relationship to another, and after her father was killed, the easiest thing for her was to switch to some other addiction. My attitude towards people who use drugs began to change when I tried to look at my life from the outside. I think it is still difficult to find sensible instructions on how to live with your loved ones. Families of drug addicts simply do not know what to do, and more often they only make it worse.
It became easier for me after I first told about the true reason for the death of a mother to a close friend - and heard the phrase: "You are not guilty." After that, I began to think about the real motives of my actions. I understand that I did this, and not otherwise, not because I did not love my mother. I really thought that my hard position would help her in the fight against addiction. I did not know that it was possible to behave differently, or assumed that it would be more correct.
Last year I went down to the subway and two police officers stopped me, one of them was in civilian. They looked at my documents and asked to go somewhere with them, and that evening I drank two glasses of wine, was scared and obediently followed them. They brought me to the subway station, where the detained girl waited for them. It turned out that they called me a witness there: they took the girl with heroin, they were going to inspect her, and they suggested that I take a look at the substance she had found and assume that it was. And I was horrified by how the police treated this girl. They ridiculed her every word, every request, and joked when she tried to ask them for help. It really hurt me: I imagined that in the same way people in uniform could relate to my mom. I would not want anyone to treat drug addicts in such a way that they, too, have the right to sympathy and understanding. And if they are in use, they need even more support than us.
Images: Artem - stock.adobe.com