Why do people take pills to make their pain go away?

I don’t understand and I never will. Is there nothing else you can do that doesn’t damage your body or hurt the people who love you? Why not go out see a movie? Play a sport? Hang out with your family? Something….just not pills.

My dad used to be my best friend. I am his only daughter out of six kids, two from his previous marriage. His only little girl is what he used to call me. I started noticing it when I was in 5th grade, and at night he would walk around and talk gibberish. I just thought he was really tired. Then it became more noticeable, and he started falling down the stairs in the middle of the night.

I would ask him, “what were you doing,” and his reply was always the same, “I don’t remember.”

At the time I didn’t realize what he was doing but he was taking several different prescription medications at a time.

His favorite: Zoloft.

One day, during my 6th grade summer, my dad went to work and my mom packed up as much of our belongings that would fit in our car and we left, and went to stay with my grandma, who lived in Texas.

At the time we lived in South Carolina.

Three years later my dad moved back to Texas also. He lived a couple of hours away so one day my mom decided to let us go stay with him for a week.

Big Mistake

When we got to his apartment he had a lock on his door because the apartment complex was trying to keep him out because he hadn’t been paying his rent.

The whole week we were there he was high, and he slept most of the time.

Once he even drove while high and started falling asleep at the wheel, and I had to wake him up.

I haven’t stayed with my dad since then. That was about 4 years ago.

My mom has remarried, and we recently purchased a house back in South Carolina.

I talk to my dad every blue moon on the phone, but he is usually busy at work. Those are his drugs:

Pills. Work.

I wish he could filter me and my brothers in somewhere between the pills and the work, or maybe he could replace the pills with us. We are healthier for him.

I hope one day soon he will be my dad again because I really miss being his little girl.
But one can only hope.