I stayed at Retorno’s detox center for a short period of time. From the beginning, I committed to 21 days to detox from all the drugs that over the course of many years. Since my adolescence, I have used sleeping pills, one pill before bedtime. During the IDF operation in Gaza a few years ago, Operation Protective Edge, I was a mother of a four-year-old boy. We lived in Holon (supposedly a safe city, without the need for nearby bomb shelters, even without a single safe room in the house with protective windows). Then the missiles started hitting our city. We were being targeted by missiles that were being intercepted right above the house. I was about 2 kilometers from the nearest Iron Dome (Israel’s missile interceptor). I remember how the walls would tremble as the rockets would intercept the missiles midair. I had to cover the windows in thick tape to prevent the glass from shattering. I moved my son’s clothes closet slightly away from the wall so that he would gain the advantage of lying between the wall and the closet. When the siren would go off, I would grab the child in panic even when he was asleep (from my panic he would start crying, he was terrified). We had 90 seconds to reach shelter. My kid is my light that always shines on me. I would grab him, put him in a safe position and lie down on him, and even when the warning sirens would stop and I could hear the explosion had passed I was still afraid to leave him.
From those days I stopped sleeping because I was afraid I would not hear the siren and not wake up. My sister realized that I was anxious about the boy and did not sleep at all, she brought me sleeping pills and took the boy for three days so I would sleep and relax a bit. The day she took him I took tranquilizers and sleeping pills, the fear, anxiety and concern for the child did not diminish even though I hated it. So I took more pills. I would always buy medicine for three months so as not to go to the doctor and the pharmacy all the time. I swallowed all the sleeping pills I had for three months in two days and it did not affect me. When my mother went to work and her apartment was empty I went in and opened her medicine cabinet. She had a lot of medication for every kind of situation and she did not even know how much she had. As a small child, I grew up working in hospitals, and I was always interested in the medication and their effects. In short, I took medicine from her closet. Anything that would take away anxiety and help me sleep. I would take five kinds at a time and more than two of each one.
I slept, but not exactly. I would have nightmares. One time it felt real that the army had entered Gaza and somehow I stayed behind with my child. There were a lot of bodies and wounded people around me and I wanted to help them but I could not leave my son. I began to photograph myself in the dark of the situation that I was so sure was real, what I saw in my mind was all the rubble and the IDF in Gaza. I sent the picture to my best friend and sent him a voice message that I was with the child in Gaza. I begged him to identify where we were by the pictures and send a rescue team to save us. It was about two or three o’clock in the morning. Luckily my friend was at work and saw the photo. I still believed that everything was dark around me and I was still sure I was in the territories. Then he called me and left work to come and calm me down.
As long as the war continued, I have not taken sleeping pills, only tranquilizers. When they announced a cease-fire, I was still afraid because they talked a lot about cease-fires but Hamas continued to bombs us. After the moments of silence, I thought the anxiety had lessened and I could go back to sleep quietly, but every time I went to bed a little noise would make me jump, or I would fall asleep for a few minutes and wake up with nightmares and bodies around me. I started my undergraduate studies and left after half a year because I could not function in any way from the lack of sleep and constant anxiety. I also became a mother – an anxious mother. I went to a therapist for treatment and complained that I was not sleeping and that I was suffering from anxiety and nightmares after the war. In addition to my regular sleeping pill, she prescribed me with other sleeping pills and other antidepressants and told me to come back after two months. In the meantime, the pills did not help me, and I began to take them in large quantities every time. I would take prescriptions from two different doctors, one in the original drug and the second in the generic drug. After two months I went back to the psychiatrist and told her that the drugs were not helping me and I felt that I was becoming addicted, instead of being treated by them. Finally, I began to swallow pills left and right, both day and night, so as not to be present and not to deal with fears and anxieties. I stopped seeing friends, shopping, leaving the house, doing things I liked very much like cooking, grooming myself. I had become a kind of zombie, only a body without a soul. Finally, after a lot of persuasion from my ex-spouse (who still lives with me as a partner and father to the child but is an alcoholic and has been in several rehabilitation centers and halfway houses and step groups), I agreed to treat myself.
I went to the addiction unit in the social services office in Holon, where I worked for four and a half years in the club. I started the treatment with a very clear goal; I had gotten tired of the pills and I admitted to myself that I was addicted. Then the problem was the thought of staying without pills at my grandmother’s house. My social worker told me to leave the psychiatrist at the health center and move to the inpatient mental health center.
When I got to my second visit with the psychiatrist at the mental health center, she said that she had no idea how to treat me anymore and that she was referring me to a center for co-occurring disorders in Jaffa that treats both addiction and mental state, but they would not accept me because they said I had too many drugs in me. I had to go to a drug detox center, that’s how I got to the Elah Detox Facility at Retorno. I signed on for a period of 21 days, which they thought was enough to detox me from the drugs I was on. From there I began my recovery progress, step by step. I’m indebted to all the staff who supported; some of them also shared their life story that really touched me and showed me that it is always possible to look at things differently even if can hurt sometimes. Thank you very much to the place that woke me up and let me understand that I did not want to hit rock bottom. I did not want to do inpatient treatment; I was sure I could do this alone. But when I was in Retorno’s youth community for a year and a half, where you spend all day without distractions and all day sitting and talking to people without them judging you, it really helps.
Sorry I wrote so much, when I started it just spilled from me, at first I wanted to write simply thanks to the amazing team. I hope that whoever decides to read it will have a slight impact on him. I wish you all success and believe that you are stronger than addiction. You will receive any help offered with appreciation.
