Fentanyl Addict interview-Jenny

all right jenny yes jenny where'd you grow up where are you from originally i'm from a town outside of chicago i was born in calumet city in illinois but lived in gary indiana that's gary it's a very different city than chicago yeah it is uh but it's close but yeah it's it's about 20 minutes outside of there yeah it's pretty much 100 black down there yeah uh growing up i was pretty much the only white girl yeah what was your childhood like uh mom and dad mom dad wasn't around he was incarcerated about two weeks after i was born for manslaughter he was a very racist man from what i was told in his past and he was in a bar he thought a black man stole his coat when he went to the bathroom he waited for the man to go outside and he beat him to death later finding out that his coat was sitting on the bar stool the whole time so he was gone until i was about five uh just me and mom but being a single mom she was never there working all the time she was a great mom great but like i said she just she had pity bills um spent a lot of time with babysitters little houses dirty houses lots of kids uh first babysitter was great after that you know she was hard on money so it got to be you know friends dads you know friends dads uh that's kind of when the molesting started i was never raped i was molested in every other way that you could be molested though [Music] by three different men i started getting into gains at the age of 11 being the only white girl i think they kind of liked that i knew how to fight at a very young age just because i was white i had to i had to protect myself in school my first fight actually was with a boy a black boy um but i got into the latin queens my best friend was a boy i've always hung out with boys i think because of my childhood but we snuck out one night to go to a fair and my best friend and all were we was walking over a bridge and a drive-by occurred and he ended up getting shot in the neck bled out right in front of me about three minutes took the ambulance about 15 minutes to get there i'll never forget that after that my mom decided she needed to get me out of that area she moved me to a smaller town in indiana for high school you know stuff like that i actually did very well in high school of course i got into drugs um more like psychedelic drugs i would say in high school i've never been a pot smoker started doing acid ecstasy uh early 20s i uh i started getting with men who i think reminded me of my father because i did spend some time with him throughout my teens he abused me every time i was with him um so i didn't spend that much time with him uh abused you huh physically like a man i mean i would be held up against the wall choked off the ground punched in the face i've had a hammer thrown at my head it i would try to tell my mom about it so i wouldn't have to go there and i mean i don't know if maybe she needed child support or what but she would have to send me oh a big thing i left out um when i was going with him [Music] he was remarried and i have a younger sister i love her to death the woman that he remarried she is my wicked stepmother she's deceased now and i hate to say this but i am grateful that she is worst woman in the world she would steal my clothes send me home in rags for her daughter she would keep them for her daughter she would feed me rotten food at the house get me purposely sick the last time i saw her i'm sorry the last time i spoke with her her and my father called my house i had to say i was probably 13 12 13 years old they called my house about two three in the morning high off cocaine i'm just obliterated uh my dad told me he was gonna shoot me in the face with a shotgun and she was instigating it and instigating i don't know why this woman just was very jealous of me she hated me like i said she ended up overdosing about seven years ago and i paid my respects i went to her funeral everything the family actually asked me to speak at her funeral i don't know why but i didn't um like i was saying into my 20s i started getting with just these horrible men who i think i just wanted to fix them you know they just bad boys you know i got pregnant the ma my ex-husband who i was with for 12 years he's currently incarcerated um [Music] he purposely got me pregnant because he didn't have anywhere to go and i'd say about a year after yeah about a year after i had that child um is when i got into drugs my life was him and he never was abusive he was mentally and verbally abusive but never physically but he could really really talk me down he would never come home he was a really bad drinker really bad drinker he would cheat on me all the time so i started using drugs um i started with pills just like every other heroin addict um and it eventually it progressed to heroin now it's fentanyl and because of that i'm on the streets and i don't talk to my family anymore because i don't want to burden them i think what's my problem i don't want to ask them for anything um my children are i have two children two girls um i gave up temporary custody of them to their father's aunt it's a wonderful woman they have a great life um i think it's honestly the most unselfish thing i've ever done thank you um just in case but but yeah um that's my biggest regret that i don't like talk to anybody anymore i'll talk to my kids every once in a while on facebook but like my mom she was always my best friend always and when i started doing heroin i just i got really ashamed and just went off on my own and you know she um when i got pregnant with my first daughter she actually my mom got pregnant too we found out the same day that we were pregnant she was 43 so my younger sister and my daughter are two weeks apart and because i don't talk to my mom they don't even talk the two girls and they're just heartbreaking to me um but yeah since i've been on the streets it's uh it's hard especially being a girl especially being a girl um i've never been raped or anything like that i've been beaten though i've been kidnapped i had a man in climate city actually i ended up back there i had a man lock me in his basement for three weeks uh you only gave me water a little bit of food every once in a while like every two days um he was a drug dealer and he ended up doing one of his own drugs one night and he left the door unlocked and i just i booked it and after that i ended up going to memphis with a guy um on the way to memphis he beat me and i remember once i became homeless i started carrying a knife always just for protection for me i remember when this man beat me i was seriously about to stab him in this car but we was in the middle of nowhere and i just remember thinking i have to be in this car i can't just be stuck in the middle of nowhere i have no phone i have no money i have nothing um so i ended up going to memphis with this man for three months beat all the time [Music] from there my habit just got worse i mean i can i try to drown out i guess the things that i think about with the drugs but i have such a high tolerance that i just do too much and i i'll end up overdosing or i've overdosed 17 times on fentanyl yeah no on heroin actually yeah fentanyl for some reason it's supposed to be stronger but for me it's not my body is different i don't know why i have no top i have an incredibly high tolerance for morphine it doesn't even do anything to me like um but i ended up getting back to chicago that was a fun trip um when i got back to chicago that man had come with me um by the grace of god he had a warrant out of texas and uh he was caught panhandling and taken to texas on that warrant so i was away from him um and now on the streets by myself again um just trying to survive that's when i started panhandling i never realized how much money i could make doing it um actually at first i didn't make anything i really didn't know what i was doing i kept my head down all the time i didn't look at people and it took about a about two months but i started making enough money to feed my habit um feed myself you know um i was staying in an abandoned hotel at the time with a couple of friends um and it's funny to say uh the man that that had gone back gotten you know shipped to texas his friend was there and he was the only person you know that i really knew uh that was five years ago his friend to this day is still my boyfriend he uh same situation as me great man he's never laid a hand on me i mean he'll yell at me but you know but but he's you know a drug addict like me um panhandles like me um [Music] and this is our life now i mean we where are you living we live uh in a tent um on koenga in hollywood uh there's about 10 other tents there we're waiting currently to get into project room key uh we've been waiting on that for a very long time to get housing yeah to get housing um i think being that i'm not from california maybe that's taking longer um but yeah i mean every day now is just the same thing over and over we panhandle we get our drugs we go home we go to sleep we wake up uh i mean when i was in chicago i had some things happen we were in chicago for about five years yeah about five years because we just recently came here about six months ago um but yeah i mean in chicago and i'm talking in chicago the west side of chicago you know it's an open-air drug market so that's where we got our drugs all black neighborhoods all black all black yeah um you're down there for so long you're respected kinda you respect them they respect you um but i've been beaten i've been robbed i've been pistol whipped that's my teeth um is that where your teeth are missing yeah my front teeth well it started with my front teeth and now it's progressively going back to the other ones um me and him both we were hit in the face with uh a two by four i'll never forget that broke my nose busted my eyes i was bleeding from my eyes that was wow just for being in somebody's garage it wasn't even his it was an abandoned garage that we just went in to get warm this guy beat us other than that i mean just day to day trying to survive now i'm 37 so i've been doing this almost all my adult life um do you have contact with your kids occasionally uh they message me you know on facebook and they're older now they're 16 and 13 you know my 16 year old she wants to know where i've been and i don't know what to tell her you know and my mom i want to call my mom i want to talk to her so bad but i don't know what to say i mean why would i have not called her for the last five years you know like what really could have prevented me from calling her it's nothing it's nothing at all it's a shame it's yeah it's just me being ashamed not wanting to bother her you know because she's got a whole nother life now she's got a whole other kid um her husband has uh stage four lung cancer i honestly had a great man my stepfather great man he actually was a heroin addict too from vietnam so when i was with them you know he me and him were very close and uh he he helped me through a lot and yeah now that he got sick i just i feel like i really should have been there and not being there kills me it really does my kids not being there you know not talking to them at all kills me um but i think a lot of it i've always been a runner my whole life i mean even when i was little you know and then things would happen to me i remember trying to tell my mom one time you know that this man was touching me inappropriately she didn't believe me and i don't know if she didn't believe me because she needed me to have somewhere to go or because it was her friend's dad or what but nothing ever came of it and i had to keep going back there to it and then we had a my aunt married this man who started touching me and my sister and that never came out i mean until we were like 18 you know and as i was never nobody ever believed us and so i think i just finally you know said screw it and just stop kept it all to myself you know even to this day that people really don't know my story they don't know what i've been through and it's i really don't like talking about it if it does it makes me emotional um do you feel like that was the biggest factor in your current situation oh yeah going through all that yeah definitely it changes a woman forever doesn't it changes the person forever yes it does it does and i mean it's it's crazy the simplest little horrible memories that i have my very first memory that i remember was my mom was dating this man i don't know if she had a thing for prejudice men or what but this man was prejudiced too she bought me i had to be two years old um when i asked her that's what she said i was probably about two she bought me a malibu stacy barbie or something like that but the barbie was really tan and this man thought that the barbie was black and he snapped it in half right in front of me it was like my very first toy ever you know because we didn't have money ever you know she worked at a pizza place she still does till this day actually um she owns it now actually though but you know just little things like that my memories they're all just very morbid and disturbing and i don't have too many happy memories especially once uh once my dad got out of prison you know and i started having to spend that little time with him and the stepmother issues and the gang life the gang life i'm really glad i didn't get that much into because i know i would be dead at this point so i'm glad that you know she got me out of there and did what she had to do you know she seen that i was taking a pass that was going to get me killed even though this path could get me killed yeah so what's your biggest fear my biggest fear is dying and nobody knowing that i even died just overdosing somewhere being put into a plain wooden box with the drug you're playing around with it yeah especially with how long i've been doing it did your sexual abuse as a kid ever lead you to do sexual work as an adult no that's something i think it actually sexually kind of repressed me because i'm very shy when it comes to stuff like that um i've never prostituted i've never stripped nothing like that um and i'm very proud of that actually because most of these girls out here that is what they do yeah the men too yeah yeah men too what would you say is the most important lesson you've learned in your life keep your family close because that is my biggest regret just keep your family close because they're really all you have at the end of the day because i know i can call my family still to this day and they would take me back i don't know if they would forgive me but you know if i was clean and trying to change my life yeah they would still be there you know where most people friends and stuff wouldn't so yeah just keep your family close don't ever let that go especially your kids especially your kids what emotions do you go through no what emotions now yeah are you depressed very i get very depressed all the time i think it's just because of our lifestyle it's so repetitive and [Music] just the same thing you know and it's leading me nowhere you know i just wake up every day to do the same thing to just i do a drug that doesn't even have an effect on me anymore i'm just normal from it you know [Music] it's such a waste of time so it's a waste of money i don't know why i even do it but i have to i have to to keep myself well otherwise i'm viciously sick do you think you'll be on the streets for the rest of your life or do you see yourself getting away i hope not but i'm the kind of person i think the worst and hope for the best you know so i could see myself honestly being on the streets till i die just because it's a way of lifestyle that i've grown used to you know everybody hates change but i don't want to be i don't want to if you could have changed something about your your youth your childhood what would you have changed oh other than other than being molested as a kid trying to spend more time with my mom just you know because she was never around because she really she was a great parent you know she did everything that she could i mean she put herself in the major debt you know trying to do things you know for christmas presents things like that um i just i really wish i would have gotten to be a lot closer to her especially when i was little because i think you know i could have turned out i know i could have turned out a different way because like i said when i went to high school i was great i got straight a's all through high school um i was accepted into the chicago artists who got a full scholarship wow yeah i ended up losing that um yeah i mean i know i have it in me i just i'm a follower you know somebody's doing something it's like let's try that i never thought i'd get addicted heroin but that's what happened all right jenny thank you so much for sharing your story thank you i wish you the best of luck thank you thank you very much you

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Length: 26min 52sec (1612 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021