Insecure and Addicted to Pain Killers

As I slowly watched my friend's life crash around her, I felt helpless and alone in my fight to help her. The power of addiction had taken over her entire body and soul and I knew I was no longer dealing with the rational, energetic person I had grown to love as family several years ago.

I thought back over the last 20 years that I've known Sara to try and figure out where life went wrong for her. As a young, ambitious, 20-year-old when we met, Sara was the picture of perfection in everything she did. Sara had big dreams of owning her first home with her newlywed husband and she was obsessed with earning the down payment money. Sara wanted her home so bad, she began working two jobs. The extra money earned from her second job became the "house fund". Sara was the nicest, most giving person I knew and she just could not say no to anyone who asked her for help. Sara's husband worked a full-time job but once he came home from work for the day, he did nothing to help Sara around the apartment. I tried to warn Sara that she was overdoing it and told her she could not keep up the pace she was working at. She would just smile and assure me that she wouldn't have to work this hard forever and she said she knew what she was doing. Sara wasn't convincing to me though because I could see in her eyes she wasn't okay. Sara's eyes were puffy, hollow slits from being overworked and only going on a few hours sleep each night. How she continued to push her exhausted body was beyond me. But Sara was a determined, ambitious woman and the only thing she could see was reaching her goal at any cost.

I tried talking to Sara's husband, Steve, but he acted as though Sara's health wasn't important to him. Steve didn't want a wife, he wanted a mother. He wanted someone who would wait on him and he couldn't be bothered with cooking, laundry and housework. I never knew what Sara saw in him. She was always too happy and too motivated for someone like Steve.