My pregnant girlfriend overdosed

My girlfriend is 6 months pregnant. She overdosed last night and I found her. She survived, but it’s really got me freaked out. She looked dead. I can’t unsee it. Ive never witnessed an OD before.

Shes mad at me because I left her a few months ago to get clean. I’m also an addict. I wasn’t until I met her, but it’s my fault I became this way. I only used for 2 years but it’s already nearly ruined my entire life. I’ve been arrested twice, dropped/failed out of college, got kicked off a college sports team, and hurt a lot of people and relationships. After my second arrest I was sentenced to rehab, but met back up with her as soon as I got out and started using again almost immediately. I’m 22 and have already been arrested twice and in rehab twice. 

She found out she was pregnant about 4 months ago. We were both still using at the time. I remember my immediate thought being that we had to get off the drugs immediately, but instead I just decided to do even more drugs to try to forget about the whole problem and what I really should be doing. She said she was going to get an abortion. I didn’t really know how I felt about it. Im not against abortion, but I knew why she had to get one and that’s what bothered me more. She had to get one because we were/are junkies that shouldn’t have a kid. So that depressed me so much that I just used more because we junkies can really find any excuse. So, I spent like 2 weeks scraping money together for an abortion. Where we live, you have to go to two appointments to get an abortion. The first one is where they do an ultrasound and you basically have a waiting period after that before you can come back to actually get the abortion. She said she was going to the first appointment but she didn’t want me to go. If I was there and she saw our baby on the screen she might decide not to go through with it. I left the apartment before her supposed appointment. I got back when she was supposed to be at the appointment. Instead, she was there and she’d used the abortion money to buy drugs. She started saying she couldn’t go through with the abortion and it was our baby and she couldn’t kill our baby.

At the time, I was like this is a really bad idea but also yes Im so in love with you and want to have this baby too (I was under the influence). So we decided that the next morning we’d start using less. We’d be “responsible.” Well, then we got kicked out of her apartment due to being several months late on the rent. I guess it was our apartment but that point but it was really hers, and I moved in after quitting school. What followed was 2 weeks of crashing with whoever would take us, and sometimes during those 2 weeks I realized I couldn’t keep doing it. I was able to think clearly enough for long enough to realize we can’t have a baby and keep living like this.

I went home to my parents and told them she was pregnant. God bless my parents because they immediately took me in that night and nursed me through days of withdrawals, literally cleaned up my poop and vomit, and stayed with me 24/7 even after I said something really vile things when they wouldn’t let me leave when I decided I would rather not go through the hell of withdrawal anymore. They got me into a rehab out of state and I was actually willing to go. 

When I got out of rehab (was there 30 days), I came home to my parents’ house. I’ve been out for not even a month. I tried to convince my girlfriend to get help. She always says she will…tomorrow or next week or whatever. She never does. She was hurt that I left her in favor of going home to my parents. I can’t live with her right now. I know Im not at a point where I’d stay clean if I was around her and the drugs. I don’t want to live that way anymore. When I’m clean, it’s really embarrassing to think about what I’m like when I’m using. It’s really embarrassing to think of everything I’ve lost because of my addiction. Now I’m going to have a kid who’s born a drug addict too and it doesn’t really get much lower than that.

She was on a maintenance drug – it’s doctor prescribed and is the standard treatment option during pregnancy. Withdrawal is dangerous to the baby, so they use this maintenance drug that doesn’t really get you high but it’ll prevent going into withdrawal. 

She wanted us to find a place and move in together again. I told her I’m not ready for that. I just started a job. I told her maybe when the baby is born it can live here with me and my parents while she gets herself clean, like truly clean. She stopped talking to me for several days after that. Then she started texting me, saying she really wanted to use again. She’d been texting me all day long. The things she was saying just felt like a cry for attention. She said she’d taken some pills and she had stopped taking the prescribed maintenance drug. She wanted me to come over and do some of this stuff with her. I decided to ignore her. I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have the urge to use. The thought of getting high didn’t appeal to me in the moment and I was just more pissed off at her than anything. Maybe it was selfish, but I felt like she was trying to sabotage me and my recovery. She called me late at night and I answered because I had started to feel guilty for not maybe taking her more seriously earlier in the day. She sounded more drunk than high. Her voice was really slurred, so I knew she wasn’t lying about taking something. She said she didn’t feel good and could hear her heartbeat in her ears. It didn’t sound like how she usually sounds when high. She said she couldn’t remember what she’d taken. I told her to not take anymore and that I was on my way. She hung up on me and wouldn’t answer when I tried calling back multiple times. 

I got there and I swear I thought she was dead but once I got over to her and touched her she was breathing very shallowly. Her lips were gray. I called 911 and luckily she sort of started to come to and respond to me a little before the paramedics got there, but they had to give her nalaxone. When I was actively using, I had narcan but I didn’t have it this time. She easily could have died. 

She was taken to the hospital and she’s ok. As far as they can tell, the baby is ok too. An OD and the Narcan can cause misscarriage or I don’t n ow maybe at this point it’d be still birth. This sounds really bad, but I think I was a little disappointed when they said that everything seemed fine. I don’t want anything bad to happen to the baby but on the other hand I think we are the something bad that will happen to the baby. It’s not a good situation to bring a baby into. The thing is that I still love her so much. I can’t get rid of that feeling, seems harder to get rid of than the constant urge to get high. But I don’t understand how I can even get to the point where I realize something gotta change if we’re having a baby, and I want it to change. I want to be healthy again. I don’t want to be this loser. I seriously had everyone hung, like every advantage and opportunity, and threw it all away. I have no sob story or excuse as to why I started using drugs. Had a good life, normal family, so much privilege. I was just dumb. I’m not even the one carrying the baby, but she just doesn’t seem to really care or be serious at all about getting clean, yet she wants this baby so bad. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do. As much as I love her, I wish I could go back 2 years and never meet her.