‘?Teen Mom 2’ Star Jenelle Evans Is Opening Up About Her Addiction To Heroin
But Jenelle’s addiction quickly isolated her from her loved ones. “The first thing I lost to the drug was my family,” she wrote. “I disowned my mother and siblings and friends, but the truth is no one wants to talk to you when they suspect you’re a junkie.” Jenelle also wasn’t allowed to see her son Jace—and she says that made her drug abuse even worse.
“It hurt my heart, made me sick to my soul that I couldn’t see my son. I filled that hateful void with more drugs,” Jenelle wrote. “The drugs always made the pain go away. They didn’t turn on me or betray me. I guess heroin was my first steady, dependable lover. It gave me what I needed to live and I gave it my life. By this entry, heroin was the only thing I had in my life that loved me.”
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Jenelle eventually blacked out from her drug use and realized that her boyfriend didn’t really love her. Finally, she went to a hospital in New Jersey to get clean. When she left, she reached out to “the last person in the world I expected to talk to, or expected would help me. My mother,” she wrote. “For all of our problems, I owe her for what she did that day. I called her and told her what kind of trouble I was in, and how I needed help.”
Jenelle’s story is disturbing, but Indra Cidambi, M.D., addiction expert and medical director at Center for Network Therapy, says it’s not rare for heroin addicts to lose their family over addiction. “Estrangement from the family is a usual side effect of addiction,” she says. “When someone gets addicted to drugs or alcohol, they are preoccupied with obtaining, using, and dealing with withdrawal symptoms on a daily basis. Consequently, they end up doing things they do not mean to in order to finance their habit—stealing, lying, and engaging in illegal or highly risky activities becomes part of their routine.” And, this behavior leads them to burn bridges with the people they love.
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Shooting up heroin four or five times a day sounds extreme—and it is—but Cidambi says it’s unfortunately very common. “While the average use is between 10 to 20 bags of heroin in total every 24 hours heroin users can use up to 50 bags a day, as tolerance to the drug increases,” she says. People use heroin to get a high, she explains, and as their tolerance increases, they may need to use more of the drug to get the same high that they once did at a lower dose.
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Treatment for heroin addiction takes several steps, Cidambi says. First, a person needs to get off the drug and then have their withdrawal symptoms managed during the detox process, which may involve medication-assisted treatment. “This helps the person addicted to heroin feel physically comfortable and enables them to engage in therapy in order to effect the lifestyle changes they need to make,” Cidambi says. Then, they may undergo therapy, medication maintenance treatment, and 12-step program to get clean. These steps “usually enable individuals addicted to heroin stay sober for longer periods of time,” Cidambi says.
Caroline Fenkel, a clinician at Newport Academy, a teen mental health and drug treatment center, says that heroin is an isolating drug. “Heroin targets receptors in the brain responsible for reward and pain—people who are on heroin experience no discomfort at all,” she says. “They’re much more likely to become isolated.” While some people feel uncomfortable or isolate when they’re alone, heroin users don’t because they “feel no discomfort whatsoever,” Fenkel says.
According to Us Weekly, Jenelle doesn’t have full custody of Jace now, but she does have more visitation time with him. Jenelle has been posting photos of herself and Jace on vacation together on Instagram, noting in one that she’s “so grateful” she can now travel with her son.
Jenelle’s book is out on July 25.