One father’s long journey from addiction to recovery
Heroin ‘stole my life and everything I loved,’ Shane Buffaloe writes Addiction can deteriorate the bond between a parent and child.
Who I became has a lot to do with my upbringing and the adversities I faced.
Growing up biracial and without a father in a predominantly white, affluent New Jersey suburb left me with feelings of abandonment and indifference. While most of my friends had two parents and nice houses, I had a mother and a onebedroom apartment.
I was 12 when my brother and I learned our father wasn’t in our lives because of his heroin addiction — I always wondered how someone could choose drugs over a relationship with their own children. I never shook that feeling of abandonment. I told myself I would do everything possible to avoid my children enduring the same pain.
But my story didn’t go that way.
At11, I took my first hit of marijuana and fell in love. It became a way for me to suppress my feelings and stay out of my head, so to speak. Not long after, I was introduced to alcohol, and the drugs were an outlet for me throughout grammar and high school. I loved playing sports but never excelled, because all I wanted was to get high.
A few months after graduating, my then-girlfriend told me she was pregnant and I was going to be a father. In January 1998, my first daughter arrived, followed by my second daughter one year and11months later. At 20 years old, as I experienced the gift of fatherhood for the first time, I didn’t realize I was also becoming an addict.
Marijuana and alcohol were soon accompanied by cocaine and ecstasy, and although I shared joint custody of my daughters, I always found time for nightlife. My addiction began spiralling out of control, but I was still in denial.
After several years, I began a relationship with another woman, and my third daughter was conceived. During her pregnancy, I started taking Vicodin after a back injury led to a prescription. It was a horrific mistake. When my doctor discontinued my prescription and I started going through withdrawal, I purchased opiates on the street just to not feel sick — from Vicodin to Roxicet to OxyContin — but that grew difficult and expensive.
A few days after the birth of my daughter in March 2009, I began sniffing heroin. Six months later, I was the father with a needle in his arm.
For the next six years, heroin stole my soul and everything I loved — nothing else mattered. My relationship with my two oldest daughters began to dete- riorate. My youngest was too little to understand, but that relationship also started dwindling away. There were times my daughters begged, “Daddy, please don’t leave us.”
I went from having a good job, my own apartment and living with my daughters to losing everything. I felt so worthless.
But all that mattered was supporting my heroin addiction, so I began stealing from friends and family, and eventually from stores. I was arrested and jailed for a month after being accused of robbing a gas station, and although I didn’t commit the crime and was never convicted, my family wanted nothing to do with me. Everyone thought jail was for the best.
As the days passed and withdrawal kicked in, all I thought about was how much I missed my children. My mother and brother eventually bailed me out, and although my body was cleansed of drugs, I went right back to where I left off — a month later, I was arrested for possession of narcotics.
I was given the opportunity to take drug court — an alternative to jail for nonviolent drugaddicted defendants that consists of random drug and alcohol testing, a curfew and mandatory court appearances, among other strict guidelines. But after being accepted to the program, I continued to use. My addiction eventually led to six jail cells; three drug rehabs; physical, mental and spiritual abuse; and suicidal thoughts.
On Feb. 23, 2015, after fleeing drug court because of another failed drug test, I had finally had enough — the thought of continuing like this was absolutely degrading, and I didn’t want to live in the horrors of drug addiction anymore. The pain was so great, and I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired, I just wanted to die.
With 40 bags left of a brick of heroin (50 bags), I was going to inject 20 so there was no chance I’d survive.
That morning, I told my oldest daughter I would turn myself in to jail, but my true intention was to commit suicide. She cried and told me she was going to miss me. I also started to cry. At this moment, I had an unexplainable clarity. Taking my own life, leaving my daughters and my family, would be such a selfish and cowardly act. My daughter saved my life. I turned myself into jail, and being incarcerated was a huge part of my recovery and staying clean. Time away from my daughters — two-and-a-half months in jail, three months in drug rehab and four months in a halfway house — gave me the will to try, this time, to surrender to the12-step program I was previously introduced to. The program promised me one thing: An addict, any addict, can lose the desire to use and find a new way to live.
On Feb. 25, 2018, I celebrated three years clean from all drugs and alcohol.
Today, I share and carry the message of recovery to anyone who struggles with the horrors of active drug addiction.
Today, I have and practise integrity.
Today, I try to continue to do the next right thing.
Today, I don’t have to feel bad for myself and want to take my own life.
Today, I am so grateful to be the father and best friend of the three most beautiful girls in my world, because if it weren’t for them, I don’t think I would be here today.
Today, my daughters don’t have to say, “Daddy, please don’t leave us.”