I was smoking on the roof, while my baby girl fought for her life in the hospital – and I constantly used the medicine through both of my pregnancies. This is the surprising truth about an ‘addict’ from the middle class: Elizabeth Walker

Lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by squeaky machines attached by threads to her small body, fought my four -month -old daughter for her life.

As a new mother I felt guilty because I had not seen the signs of bronchiolitis, a viral lung infection that babies craves breath before the time came.

But in many ways it was no wonder.

Because where was my baby girl in that hospital bed for most of the nine days?

Not sitting next to her, but just sneaking at the roof, just to smoke marijuana.

It was 2011 and, like a mother of two young girls – my oldest was two at the time – I was a drug addict who used weed every day.

If you had met me then, you would probably have had no idea. I was what you would call a ‘functioning addict’: I took care of my daughters, socialized and led my own successful company – all high.

I also don’t look like a typical ‘druggia’: I have always dressed well; I took care of myself and had a nice, clean house and many friends. But appearance can be deceptive.

On the way to the hospital that day, when my mind should have been on my baby, disturbingly sick in the back seat, I smoked a joint while driving.

Looking back on my selfish behavior is completely shocking – and the debt I feel took me for many years to process.

But at that moment I knew no other way to exist.

I almost constantly smoked weed in both pregnancies. While I was pregnant with my oldest, I stopped the first three months, but then I went back to my old manners.

I remember googled how much weed it was ok to smoke before it crossed the placenta – and I would always stay on the ‘safe’ side of it.

Of course I now know that no quantity – not even a little bit – is safe. NHS guidance says that smoking marijuana can influence the brain and nervous system of the baby during pregnancy, and can Increase their risk of developing autism, as well as tremors after birth.

Chemicals of weed, even if you take very small quantities, can also go into your breast milk, so what I did was extremely risky and selfish.

When I was pregnant with my younger daughter, I didn’t even try to stop taking drugs. I thought, “I had one and she is doing well, so it can’t be that bad.”

There is a common misconception that cannabis is not addictive that it is harmless. But this is not true. It fascinates your emotions and suppresses the natural chemical functions of your brain, making you feel flat, unmotivated and trapped in a cycle of dependence.

I justified my drug use and said it made me easier and less angry – that High made me a better mother.

Today I know that is nonsense. I look back on photos of me with my daughters as newborns and I have a glassy, ​​swollen -looking expression. I was not really present. My mind was not on them; It was on my next solution.

This was never how I had imagined motherhood – nor how my mother and father thought I would end up one day.

I can’t blame my upbringing. I came from a happy family from the middle class, which grew up in a large house in Blackheath, Southeast London, with my parents and sister.

My father traveled with his work in financial services and we spent the first five years of my life in Jordan.

Things there were idyllic: I would play in the garden with our peel turtle and the children of the neighbors. It was sunny, safe and felt like a permanent vacation.

Then, one day when I was three, someone broke into our house. A knife was held on my throat. I was hit hard; That’s how my mother was. We returned to the UK shortly thereafter.

In London in the mid -1980s, where it was dark, gray and rainy, I became a depressed child.

When I was eight, my parents divorced and divorced when I was ten. I became even more unhappy and because my mother was a homeopath, she took me to see one to diagnose my behavior.

She forbade me to eat sugar for six months, which was disastrous: instead of feeling better, I became obsessed. I started to hoard sugar, keep candy and chocolates to spot when the ban was over.

I remember that I always wanted more; I now believe that my brain is all that feeling of ‘high’ and happy.

To make matters worse, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis of ten years, around the time that mother, my sister and I moved to a small town in North Dorset.

I loved gymnastics – but suddenly my knees and ankles were in pain. The children at my new school called me ‘The Cripple’.

14 years old and lonely, I started to say yes to group pressure in an attempt to find acceptance and pleasure.

One day one of the big sisters of my friends introduced me to weed – and I thought it was great. As an uncomfortable teenager with buck teeth and frizzy hair, I made me feel calm and at ease with myself.

I started smoking more and more; On the way to school, in my lunch breaks, at home parties at the weekend.

This took place at the university and got worse when I started working in a dead end in London. I hated it. But weed was my relief, my escape from reality, and even when I turned into a job that I liked, I still couldn’t say goodbye to it.

In 2004 I met my ex-partner and the father of my daughters. Our relationship was on and off, but I was afraid of being alone.

When he moved to Cyprus for work the following year, I went too. I set up a massage practice, which I managed to make it really successful.

My partner left when I was three months pregnant with my oldest – and it’s no coincidence when I started smoking again and tried to block reality.

He came back when the baby was born and our younger daughter was devised 13 months later. It was a harmful relationship; We were never officially ‘together’, but we continued to live under the same roof for six months.

I hurry my weed addiction in the midst of the ‘mummy wine’ culture that was so common in our social circle of young parents from the middle class in Cyprus and quickly found others who also enjoyed weed.

I had a friend who would invite me and the girls to play dates so that we could smoke while the children were downstairs.

At this point started every day with a joint and my world crumbling.

Accounts were unpaid because I could not keep track of. You may think that the traumatic disease of my baby daughter in 2011 would have shocked me out of my stupor. But I am ashamed to admit that this was not the case.

In 2014 my girls and I moved to Ibiza and although I told myself it would be a new start, I stabbed some weed in my suitcase and then quickly found a new dealer who lived across the street.

My daughters knew about my drug use. Once, when my oldest was 11, I picked her up from school and asked her day.

“We had a lecture about drinks and drugs, Mama,” she said, and added, “You are a drug addict, mommy.”

I had nothing to say about that, except, “Yes, honey, you’re right.”

I tried to stop for their best will. Every New Year’s Day, and every year on my birthday, I would decide never to smoke again. I tried everything: aa, support groups, counseling, crystals, singing – but nothing worked.

Sometimes I no longer wanted to continue. I noticed that I fantasized about disappearing: packing a bag, leaving a note for my family and disappear without a track.

I remember one day in 2022, my daughters bickled in the back of the car and I just couldn’t take it.

I stopped and shouted at them: ‘If you don’t keep his mouth shut, I’ll get angry. I want to get out. I want to be dead. I don’t want to live anymore. ‘

Their faces crumbled – and I was filled with horror about who I would become. Then I knew I had to do something quickly.

Six weeks later, at the age of 44, after I had known the truth to my mother and begged for her help, I went to rehabilitation.

It was life -changing. I cried the first five days, then I went on a roller coaster of emotions: guilt, sadness and a huge sense of relief.

Recovery was not easy. Cannabis stays in your system longer than most substances because it is stored in the fat cells, and I suffer insomnia, anxiety and mood swings.

But slowly the fog lifted. Today I don’t touch weed or other vices.

Recovery not only saved my life, it gave me one that was worth living. I used to think that life without weed wanted to run a cord without a safety net. But what I found is the opposite: a grounded, lively existence that I had never thought it was possible. For the first time I am fully present, not just for my daughters, but for myself.

The laughter is now real, the emotions are rich (yes, even the hard), and the relationships I have are built on honesty, not performance.

There is peace in my nervous system that I never knew I could have access. Joy in the smallest moments, the spring flowers appreciate as they bloom, a walk with my dog, belly laughs during dinner with my girls.

When my time was used up in rehabilitation, I continued to work in the clinic as a voluntary pear support employee. Now I am a recovery coach and help others like me – parents, professionals, everyone with an addiction. If I can do it, after 30 years addicted to weed, everyone can.

Maybe my girls, despite me, are beautiful, brilliant, resilient people, now 14 and 16.

They could have followed in my footsteps, but instead they dropped me the poisonous path that I was walking. I am so grateful that they did that.

As told to Sarah Rainey.

For more information see: www.theempowermentwarrior.cto.