A friend from high school, D as we decided to call her here, died a couple weeks ago. Erin called it a tragic failure of our drug culture. Had D not been prescribed opioids, had she not been given them so freely for years, had she not been shunned by family for self-medicating with marijuana….if only, if only, if only. But there’s another element to D’s story that we both felt fit into the topics of this blog and our desire to remove the negative social stigma around not only around substance use but sex. I’m tackling that second one. You see, D had a strict religious upbringing, and her feelings of guilt and shame about sex help motivate her drug abuse.
As Erin mentioned, we’d been friends with D since high school. We’d both been close with her, and she was instrumental in us actually becoming a couple. As we gathered (virtually) with friends after D’s Zoom funeral service, it became apparent that we were the only ones who’d remained in contact with her.
I say all this only to set a foundation: We were close to D. She was open with us. Out of everyone, we knew her story. She revealed the details to us through the years, and we saw the patterns others wouldn’t.
We loved her dearly. We just couldn’t help her through what life was doing to her.
Religious Guilt
I’ve spoken before about going to Catholic high school and the shame and guilt I developed through years of religious indoctrination.
D went to the same high school, but she was not Catholic. Her family is best described as Calvinist. This description is extremely reductionist, but Calvinism believes that the glory of God is salvation of man. We cannot be saved except by the Grace of God as given through Jesus Christ. As I recall from D, they don’t believe in praying to saints or Mary like other Christian sects might because Jesus is the only intercedent you need.
Also different from other versions of Christianity, Calvinists don’t believe that humans can decide to walk in God’s glory. They are chosen by God. True free will leads to vice and sin, which means anyone living a sinful life has shown they have not been chosen by God to live in His glory.
Predetermination: Believing that God has already decided upon our birth whether we join Him in heaven or be cast into hell and that there is nothing we can do in our life to alter that fact. Our actions don’t determine our fate; rather, they show which path we are on.
Throughout high school, D genuinely believed that she and her family were destined for heaven.
I imagine such a belief would bring comfort through life. It certainly brought comfort to D early on.
Up until she realized she was addicted to opioids. She viewed that addiction as a sign of spiritual weakness. And if she had spiritual weakness, that meant she wasn’t living in God’s glory. She wasn’t predestined for heaven as she had thought.
D’s Family
Her father was very much the head of the household, an authoritarian to be obeyed—but a kind, gracious man. In no way do I want to paint the picture of a tyrant. Both of her parents were lovely people if a little bit unyielding in their views.
I recall debating with D’s mom about the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Her mom refused to watch it because she thought it would be too depressing. I think forbid D from watching it, which is how it came up; I’d probably brought a copy over to their house to watch with the family one evening.
Years later, D’s mom admitted she’d seen it and that it was an amazing, uplifting movie. I never asked what made her finally watch it. But hopefully you see my point here: She argued about the contents of a movie she had never seen, possibly on the word of someone who she respected, and refused to let her daughters watch it.
From what I could tell of the funeral service, her family still clings to the idea that we all live under God’s control. They read a prayer saying something like a single hair doesn’t grow on a person’s head without God’s will behind it.
Which means they believe God set their daughter on a path of self-destruction. The entire service exalted a virtuous life free of sin and pain all while condemned those who lived in weakness and vice as being Godless. It seemed an odd choice for a girl who suffered from addiction and died of a (possibly intentional) drug overdose.
The Beginning of the Downward Spiral
D had struggled with anxiety all her life. We didn’t know it in high school. She was so vibrant and outgoing, you’d never think she was plagued by anxiety. She had quickly found her tribe and her support group, and with her friends as her protective shell, she thrived!
It wasn’t until much later that she confided in Erin and me about her anxiety. Still having a hard time believing it, she told very detailed stories of her irrational terrors as a child, like crying every day on the way to school because she was worried her parents would die while she was away from the house.
After high school, she went to college a few hours away from her family. Most of her friends went to the same local university as Erin and me. D’s high school boyfriend was up in Philadelphia, an hour or so in the opposite direction. They were three hours or more apart, but he visited regularly, and they would both occasionally come hangout with the high-school crowd back home.
We were all shocked when D dropped out of school after only a semester. It was soon after that her anxiety seemed to manifest into a physical pain in her abdomen. The pain led to exploratory surgery. The surgery led to pain killers. That led to her feeling relief from the anxiety…until the prescription ran out, then she was in pain again. And that led to more surgeries.
Thus the cycle began.
From the stories she told, she enjoyed college and was meeting new people, establishing a friend group. It wasn’t until she dropped out that things seemed to start collapsing
Why did she leave?
Guilt Over Attraction
D had a long-distance relationship going with her high-school boyfriend. They were already an item by the time Erin and I started dating senior year. I remember D dating a few other guys before him, but nothing long term until him (Erin, correct me if I’m wrong; you would know her dating history better than I. Erin: That’s right.).
When she went to college and started going to parties (though not drinking, I would imagine, given how wholesome she was) and meeting new people, she started to feel attracted to another guy. I don’t think she ever acted on it in the slightest (Erin, correct me if I’m wrong. Erin: Also correct.) or even admitted it to the guy…or her boyfriend, who probably would have shrugged it off with a laugh. Attractions happen. You can’t control them.
But D took feelings as a sign, which makes sense if you believe God controls your life and everything you do is meant to show you if you are a good person or evil. If she could be attracted to someone else, did that mean she didn’t really love her boyfriend? Would she cheat? Or was this attraction meant to show her that going to this college a bad decision?
So she dropped out of school and came back home to the safety and security of family and friends. But the seed of guilt was planted. Her childhood anxiety was back in full force.
Ironically, her relationship with her boyfriend deteriorated quickly upon her return, and she broke up with him after a few months.
Guilt Over Sex
D never had sex with her high-school boyfriend. As I said, religious and wholesome.
She didn’t have sex until years later, when she’d been through a few rounds of surgery. I don’t think at this point any of us realized she had an addiction to painkillers because she wasn’t actively on them. We thought maybe the procedures had worked.
She started to attend the same university as us, though we were juniors at that point. She’d still have been a freshman due to the missing years. She met a guy through a school-based choir club, someone equally religious as she, and they started dating.
As is often the case for people in their early 20s, dating led to sex. Which was a source of extreme guilt for her. And him, it seemed. D once told us about the ritual she and the guy had: Before sex, they would remove each other’s crucifixes and set them on the bedside table. They felt too much guilt wearing their religious icons while committing sin.
As if taking off a necklace can blind the gaze of a judgmental god.
I think this was about the time she started making comments about how she wouldn’t see her parents or sister in heaven when we all died. She saw her behavior, her weakness, as a sign that she was not elite but rather an outsider amongst her family and religious community.
That relationship didn’t last long. But D was now burdened by the guilt of knowing she hadn’t saved her virginity for any future husband. It wasn’t long before her pain manifested again. Then there were more surgeries, and more painkillers.
She dropped out of college again.
The Happy Stoner
After some years of the surgery–painkiller cycle, the doctors suspected addiction, and eventually D was set to rehab for the first time. Her parents, following the tenets of tough love (and/or realizing their daughter was a sinful, non-elite, hell-bound addict), refused to let her back home after rehab. D ended up in a halfway house. She got a job and eventually moved into her own apartment.
She started dating the son of a friend of the family she had known from her childhood who had reconnected with her while she was in the halfway house. His family had been a member of the same church when they were little, but he’d ditched the religious stuff.
He was a nice guy, kind, and a total pothead. He introduced her to weed. Those were some of the best years she had after high-school graduation. Some of her guilt seemed to lighten, especially around the sex out of wedlock. They eventually moved in together and got engaged.
But time and life-stress took their toll, and her pain resurfaced. She had another surgery. During her recovery, she was given morphine.
I distinctly recall being shocked at the time: Do they really give morphine to someone who’s been through rehab for opioids? Yes, they do.
This rekindled her addiction to painkillers. Her life and relationship disintegrated in the months that followed. Eventually she lost the apartment and ended up in rehab.
The Falling Out
Her parents let her move back into the house after rehab this time, but it was short lived. The problems were twofold: She continued to self-medicate with marijuana (the only time she managed to hold down a job was when she was smoking weed), and her father seemed to be having an affair. D living in the family home was uncovering evidence of it. When she was kicked out, the marijuana use was the excuse. She never went back.
She continued through rehabs and half-way houses. At one point, she even detoxed at our house for a week. During one of these stints in rehab she hooked up with the guy who introduced her to heroin. She had a series of bad relationships—we’d occasionally hear how bad an ex was well after he was gone. She felt like she deserved their abuse because she was so sinful. Each relationship just reinforced that belief.
This is when we lost track of her.
She’d reach out from time to time. Erin would be in contact via Facebook or text. Usually it was short lived. She’d been better recently. Back in touch with her family. Another boyfriend who seemed to treat her well, though one who shared her addiction. He was her lifeline. He overdosed a couple months ago. And she followed shortly after.
How Thing Could Have Been Different
Erin mentioned how D’s life might have gone had our drug culture been different.
Me? I wonder what if our sex culture had been different. What if we had positive examples of polyamory or even just a culture of wide and varied dating? What if society didn’t uphold monogamy as the golden standard? Would that have changed her reaction to being attracted to someone else in college?
Or if we didn’t espouse abstinence before marriage, and she’d not felt so much guilt from having sex with her college boyfriend? Maybe she wouldn’t have relapsed.
Holding so tightly to these artificial constructs can lead to anxiety, guilt, and shame for those that don’t easily conform to them. We will all fail if we are reaching for unrealistic standards. How we view that failure will decide if we continue to strive to be better or if the failure is a sign of inescapable shortcomings.
The very teachings that brought D comfort in her childhood doomed her when her life went off course. As soon as she believed her behavior proved that she didn’t walk in God’s glory, she accepted that she could not be saved. She had no place in her family and church community. She was a lost soul.
It’s no one thing that led her onto this path, of course. A life isn’t that simple. But as we remember our friend D, these are the milestones that stick out.
We didn’t have D in the forefront of our minds when we started this blog hoping to change the culture around sex and substance use. But you can be sure every post from here on is done in her memory so that her story isn’t needlessly repeated.
If You Are in Pain, Please Seek Help
You don’t need to suffer in silence. If you are feeling lost There are people who are willing to listen and to help you.
If you are considering self-harm, connect with @800273TALK on Twitter or call a local suicide hotline:
- Canada: 1.833.456.4566
- UK: 116 123
- US:1-800-273-8255
- You can find more crisis hotlines here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
And never believe you are beyond saving. That you aren’t worth it. That you aren’t loved. In this life, we are all connected and have value. We need to lift each other up and help each other.