HIGH
TIDE Redondo Beach, CA // Redondo Union High School March 6. 2014 // Vol. XCIV // Edition 10
Overcoming addiction After her niece was born, senior Paris King chose to quit using alcohol and drugs by Nina Gomez
She sits in the corner, hearing her mother’s taunts and accusations, while the guilt floods through her. The only way to rid herself of the burden of feeling inadequate was to drink and use until she could no longer function. Only until the recent miracle of her niece’s premature birth did she have the motivation to enter into sobriety. “My mom was, and still is, an alcoholic and was definitely verbally abusive towards me. She used to tell me that my uncle’s death was my fault,” senior Paris King said. “So to get rid of the guilt, insecurity and sadness that I felt from what she was saying to me, I’d use.” King’s alcohol and marijuana use started at age 12 while living in Tennessee with her abusive mother and enabling friends. “I think part of me started using drugs because alcohol didn’t work. It only worked for so long, only made me numb for so long and then I would feel insecure again,” King said. “With drugs I could get high and the pain would disappear, I’d be in a whole other world.” King made the decision in eighth grade to move back to California to live with her father and give herself new opportunities.
“I knew staying in Tennessee wasn’t going to help me. Yet I instantly fell into the crowd of using my freshman year; it’s just a way we connected somehow,” King said. While in California her father did not monitor her and was completely unaware of her anxiety and serious existing addiction. “My dad just works a lot; unless it’s about work, he’s not really one to sit down and be like, ‘How are you doing? Let’s go do this, let’s go do that,’” King said. “He’s so focused on work and actually had to have emergency surgery after I moved here because his retina detached, so there were a lot of medical problems going on.” By her freshman year King was using alcohol, marijuana, ecstasy and various other drugs daily in attempts to get rid of the insecurity she still had from her mother’s abuse. “Every time I would start to feel inadequate or anything, I’d take another hit, do another line, anything to stop the voices in my head. I never really got caught either because the moment I got it, it was gone,” King said. The realization that she needed dramatic change came from the premature birth of her niece, Danyka, the summer after her freshman year.
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN LEE AND JOSEPH BIESCHKE
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