Former addict who defied death now clean for 11 years
BUTLER COUNTY — She appeared headed in the same direction as her mother: From drug user to addict to a cold body lying in a county morgue with a tag attached to her toe.
That certainly was the script that appeared written for Jessica Partin.
Then something happened. As is the case with many addicts, those fighting drug demons need to face death before they make a life-altering decision.
For Partin, then 19 and seemingly without a bright future, that came one November morning in 2006 when she was riding with a friend on Ohio 32 near Cincinnati. They were high on drugs and drunk on alcohol when her friend wrecked Partin’s car against a guardrail. Partin said her friend — her eyes wide open — passed out before Jessica grabbed the wheel to keep them from hitting a semi head-on.
While walking from the accident scene, they were picked up by a forgiving police officer, who told them whoever was drinking shouldn’t drive.
And her friend’s father woke up at 3 a.m. and drove down the street and fixed the flat tire.
They had escaped their poor decisions.
Still that was enough for Partin. She called it her “wake-up call.” She had cheated death many times. She wanted this to be her last.
So that morning, she visited her mother’s grave for four hours, then spent the afternoon at her mother’s favorite family restaurant. It was Decision Time. She spoke to her mother: “I have a life I do want to live.”
Now, she proclaims: “My story wasn’t over.”
Her mother died of a heroin overdose in 2001. She was 34 and left behind two children, Jessica, then 13; her brother, then 9.
Even before her mother’s death, Partin felt alone. After her mother’s physician quit prescribing methadone after her numerous back surgeries, she would disappear for days, leaving her children to fend for themselves. Jessica was full-time sister, part-time mother. She walked her brother to kindergarten when he was 5.
“Everything went downhill from there,” she said after her mother stopped being prescribed pain medication.
After her mother’s death, Jessica pretended her mother was away from home, until the one-year anniversary of her death. Then she was hit with reality.
“It was really upsetting,” she said. “One of my friends offered me a pill and I forgot about my mom for three days after that.”
She was 14 when she swallowed an illegal pill for the first time. That one decision abruptly ended her childhood. She couldn’t get enough.
“I kept going,” she said. “I took every pill offered. I stayed high. I stayed drunk. I was reckless.”
She was either stoned or drunk and recalls spending $80 a day on oxycodone. She doesn’t know how she graduated from Amelia High School in 2006.
Her substance abuse spiraled out of control. More pills. More booze.
“I was ready to die,” she said. “I didn’t care.”
By November 2006, she was homeless, living in her car days before Thanksgiving. She called that “the worst time in my life.”
She enrolled in a rehabilitation center in Xenia in 2007 and stayed there for 90 days. Besides learning to deal with her drug addiction, she grieved for her mother, for the first time in her life.
“They changed my life,” she said of the staff at Women’s Recovery.
Now she’s been sober for 111/2 years. She has been married for eight years and she and her husband, Justin, have a son, 7, and a daughter, 6.
She works full time at the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center and takes classes at the University of Cincinnati. She is different today than that troubled teen.
She volunteers at Hope Over Heroin and has started a recovery services web site. She has immersed herself in service work.
“Your problems seem so much smaller when you help other people,” she said.
If you’re struggling with your addiction, Jessica Partin is the perfect person. But only if you don’t mind the truth. She doesn’t lecture. She speaks from her heart.
One of her friends said she was about to enter a recovery program. The friend wanted Partin to think she was holding a pair of aces. Partin called her bluff.
“‘You are lying to me,’” Partin told her friend. “‘It’s not you lying, but your addiction is lying.’ I told her, ‘Your addiction is a jerk right now.’ You will hit rock bottom. Everybody does. You do whatever it takes to get away from that hole, get out of that misery. I try to keep it real. I know what it’s like.”
So did her mother. Partin hopes to not make the same mistake.