The opioid crises have killed more than 50,000 Americans per year. Opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50. Growing up in the 80's in Europe I remember reading Christiane F, an autobiography of a 14-year-old girl who lived on the streets, in Berlin, she was a heroin addict and became a sex worker to feed her addiction. Christiane F became a cult figure and left a deep impression on me. Later that year two of my closest friends overdosed on heroin and died. I met Rose when she was 14 years old, she had already survived an overdose once and that summer she wasn't allowed to leave her home. The only person allowed to visit her was her boyfriend Anton, at the time. While I was photographing Rose, I realized that today's heroin and opioid addictions often look very different than the common B/W photo-essays depicting people overdosing in public restrooms with needles stuck in their necks. As a mother of a teenager myself, I believe that within Rose's long journey to recovery, it will be important for her to write some of her own story.
I had grown up with,
When I was 14, on Thanksgiving day, I watched my city disappear into the gray
waters of the Hudson, the skyline fusing with the waterfront as an ambulance drove me
upstate. The once imposing skyline became a tableau of miniatures, a child's playground.
I was being hospitalized for suicidal ideations, and I suddenly realized my life wasn't
going to look like other people's.
I've struggled with depression since I was 13, and eventually developed a
problem with drugs and alcohol. I attended multiple rehabs and hospitals, saw countless
therapists and psychiatrists all throughout high school, desperately searching for "the
cure", something that could make me normal, could stop the endless cycle of treatment,
optimism, and eventual relapse. After exhausting every possible option, I entered Second
Nature on December 9th, 2014. Second Nature is a wilderness program, in which I lived
in the Oregon desert for eleven weeks with four other girls and staff. My time there was
extraordinary; I became so much stronger, mentally and physically. I hiked ten miles into
the night with a fifty pound bag on my back, closing my eyes through howling winds and
forcing myself to just keep taking one more step. I ventured out on my own, away from
my group and campsite for three days on a solo with nothing but my fire starting kit and
my pack to keep me company. I celebrated my 17th birthday and mourned the death of a
beloved grandmother in the same hour. I learned how to feel again; I learned how to love,
to cry, laugh and to trust. I learned how to live with myself, how to forgive. I began to
heal. Currently I'm living in Utah in a residential program, and I'm getting ready to move
out on my own; before, all I was doing was surviving, going from one day to the next
without any plans but the next twenty four hours. Now I'm thriving, and I'm looking
months, years into my future.
This prompt asks for the discussion of a single event or accomplishment that marks my
transition from childhood to adulthood. I can't sum up the evolution of my maturity,
because life isn't like that. It's such a monumental shift in mindset, it's impossible to
happen so concisely. The way I lived before, in adolescence, was hiding from reality,
pushing away the thought that one day I would have to be responsible for myself. Now
I'm doing things I never thought I could; applying for college, getting ready to move out,
getting a job. Preparing to face the world on my own, stepping out into the unknown
while knowing that anything could happen yet still pushing through it is my definition of
adulthood. Growing up is about thinking ahead. You don't have the structure of
childhood, but it requires the maturity to think in the long term. For me, waking up every
day and not only not having the desire to not use drugs, but to experience life to its
fullest, to engage in reality instead of opting out and numbing myself, marks that
transition. So I guess my answer to the question introduced in the beginning of the
paragraph, that one moment where I crossed over from girlhood, would be every morning
when I wake up and decide that I'm going to make it through the next twenty four hours,
that I can and will push through whatever life throws at me without engaging in whatever
destructive behaviors I used to resort to. I make that transition when I know that I have
the option to deviate, to push away the inevitable and numb myself out, but I choose to
progress, to move one step closer to everything I want to achieve, all my goals and
dreams and aspirations. Making that decision to go forwards instead of backwards,
acknowledging at least that you have that option, is, to me, adulthood.