The best of all days, the worst

It was the best of all times. It was the worst of all times. And, Debbie Kelley can not remember anything that happened on Christmas Eve 2014. She knows she gulped yet another round of pain killers before driving to town to buy rum and diet coke to get through the day. The next thing she remembers is waking up in a strange place and yelling “where am I? What’s going on?”
“Lady, you are in Union County County Jail. You don’t drink, take Xanax and drive. You hit a car going down 167 South and sent four people to the hospital. You kept on driving. We arrested you in your driveway and brought you to the jail.”
Only then did Debbie realize she had a problem. She thought she needed prescription drugs to be normal. Besides, she was a Christian, “I can’t be an addict.”
She thought wrong. It began with the failure of her 17 years as a stay-at-home mom and wife and church lady. She knew where to find relief from her misery. The pain medications leftover pain medications from 13 surgeries.
She never again had leftovers. “I made sure I always had hydrocodone and now I needed Xanax or Ativan for my nerves and Ambien to help me sleep.”
At 43 sipped her first alcohol and soon drank a glass of wine each morning to relax, followed by a pill to get going and more to keep going. She pushed God out of her life with pills and alcohol.
“I thought I was just feeling and acting normal. I liked how Ambien made me feel. I had to have more to sleep. I became addicted to more Hydro, Xanax, Ambien and alcohol.”
As the need increased so did the cost until, “I was writing hot checks, lying, not paying bills and stealing from my husband’s wallet so I could buy more. I felt guilty and depressed but I could not stop.”
She rationalized, “I need this to feel normal. I am using prescription medications, not street drugs.” She prayed that God would supply her needs and thanked God when she got more pills.
Then, “God truly supplied my real need.” He put her in jail. Released to her husband she called her sons to apologize for messing up Christmas.
“They were hurt and disappointed, but my youngest said, ‘Mom you’re not ruining Christmas, this is gonna be the best Christmas ever ­ we are gonna get our mom back.”
“I didn’t think they even knew anything was wrong.”
The local paper and news channel made her hit and run accident the day’s headline story and everyone knew.
Kelley dumped all her medications. Through the holiday, she detoxed at home and waited for insurance approval to enter a private rehabilitation program in Camden.
“At first I thought, ‘I don’t belong here. I just use pills and alcohol and that’s legal.’ I was the oldest one there.” Other patients called her ‘soccer mom’ because she did not look like an addict. She spent 26 days learning addicts look like everyone else.
Follow-up guidelines included attending meetings, calling in daily, submitting to surprise drug tests and reporting to the prosecutor on her progress.
The last 22 months Debbie has learned to turn to God instead of pills and alcohol in hard times. She chooses to seek Him and His way of escape in hard times. She now says, “I never want to go back to that way of life again.” So, on her worst day an accident and arrest changed her life, which made it, also, her best day ever.