Addiction

[Cheesenugget]

I think we all know of a friend, family, coworker or even a passerby suspect of being addicted to substance abuse. Maybe you, the reader, was an addict who sought rehab or still someone fighting his or her own addiction. For me, while I was one foot in the alcoholic realm, I was fortunate enough to snap myself out of it before I go any deeper. My husband was a former heroine addict, my dad was a gambling addict and I knew way too many friends or met coworkers who are alcoholics or/and take prescription pills. I know there are many different types of addiction but today, I want to focus specifically on drugs.

As of today, I guess she is no longer employed by our office. No names will be provided. She is a 40 year old single mother with a 6 year old living with a boyfriend. Her older kids live their father. She was hired about a year ago as part of the support staff. Without any experience and no GED or high school diploma, and as support, her pay was okay. It was above the minimum wage and an average pay rate for someone in her position, in this field, with this level or lack of education and no prior experience. I don't blame her if she feels she should get paid more. In fact, we all encourage her to move up the ladder and to do so, we trained her so she can apply for a better position when it opens up or apply for a different firm. She is a nice person overall and with only a handful of us working as a team, we all had voiced our opinion about how we want her to continue her good work and we wanted to keep her.

The reason for concern? We suspected she is on 'something.' She is either late hours (3-4 hours) or does not come in at all, and this always happens on a Monday or a Friday. Her reasons were her daughter is sick, she did not realize the daycare center was closed for the day, her tires got slashed, her neighbor was standing naked outside of her apartment and her boyfriend pushed her. We give her the benefit of the doubt and urged her to call the police when she said she was threatened. But the stories repeat itself and she would not call the police or claimed she did and they never came. She speaks really fast, rambles from one topic to another, and can't seem to understand what we were saying.

This morning (Monday), her boyfriend called our office after she did not show up for work and we did not hear from her. Her bf had called for her before. He said that the pay was too low, she was overworked, she is at the hospital since 3 am, etc. He too was rambling and it was difficult to understand him. Then she called hours later, saying her boyfriend forced acid into her mouth. Well, I think I'm going to stop the story here as one can tell by now what is going on.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, I'm confused on how to feel about this.. I thought by now I should get used to this but no, I think I am in denial that a woman who has so potential and dreams to become a paralegal (I was going to train her myself so she can save $$ from having to go to school for it), and this job is pretty good considering she has health insurance when before she did not. Do you sympathize someone who lies repeatedly? Do you get angry at them? We all had tried to talk to her and told her if she needed help, whatever it is, we would try and help her.

I'm just ranting. I guess just like many other things in life, I will just have to deal with it.