Erin Bahadur has been clean since May of 2010. But to get to that point there’s a story of a downward spiral of a young lady with a bright future. Bahadur was the guest speaker at the St. Mary’s County Youth Drug Summit Monday at the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center. Her message to those who have become addicted and those thinking of experimenting – “I offer you hope.”
Bahadur’s downward spiral started after she graduated from high school. She described herself as an “overachieving, typical teenager.” She won the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Effort) when she was in middle school. But by the time she hit rock bottom she had been sentenced to a year in jail for theft.
It all started, she said, with a boyfriend who smoked pot. She also was abusing alcohol. By that time she was in college, in pharmacy school and working at a pharmacy, and she needed to keep up appearances and not have pot or alcohol on her breath. So she started taking pills from the pharmacy where she worked.
“The obsession and compulsion of addiction is so crushing that I could not stop,” she said. She added, “It is extremely difficult to explain an addiction to someone who is not an addict.”
After getting caught taking the pills and admitting to a small theft she switched to buying the pills but the cost became prohibitive, so she switched to heroin, which is cheaper and easier to procure. She became so desperate that she would drive to Baltimore and buy from strangers on the street. “It is a miracle I didn’t overdose and die,” she said
While her downward spiral was occurring, she said her family didn’t know what was happening to her because she was able to mask it from them. Local efforts by parents’ groups and health care professionals are aiming at helping parents learn the telltale signs of drug addiction.
Finally the police caught up with her and charged her with a number of felonies. She though because it was her first offense she would get off, but the judge slapped her with a one year sentence.
Before sentencing she concluded on her own: “I was so tired of leading a double life day after day” and she sought rehabilitation. In underscoring being clean since 2010, she added, “I will be in recovery ever since.”
Although the charges against her precluded her from getting a job in her chosen pharmacy profession, she was able to get a job first as a receptionist and then as an office manager and since has married and repaired relationships with friends and family. One of her deepest regrets was the trust she broke with her former employer.<!–
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