The post Moms Who Get High appeared first on High Times.
When my son was born, it was through an incision in my abdomen. I was medicated with morphine and several other drugs, and I don’t remember much of his birth. Three days later, I was given codeine and other medications to take at home and sent swiftly on my way. I felt uncertain about taking painkillers while breastfeeding, even though the doctors said it was okay. I used them for a couple days, but they made me feel so loopy that it was hard for me to remember if I’d fed the baby, they reduced my appetite so severely I became malnourished and dehydrated, and they made it difficult for me to connect with my infant son. When I held him, I could barely feel his weight, and I couldn’t tell if I was being gentle enough with him because my sense of touch was altered. So I stopped taking the codeine. After that, the physical pain of recovery from my surgery was more excruciating than I could have ever imagined. When the baby cried, sitting up was agonizing. Lifting him to my breast was literally gut-wrenching.
Psychological Torment
Then, a couple days later, the anxiety hit me: a hot tsunami of fear the likes of which I’d never experienced. Unrelenting feelings of terror—that there was something wrong with the baby, that he was going to die—plagued my every waking moment. I had endless irrational fears that would not be quelled, such as that my husband would die and I’d be left alone with the baby. I would imagine gruesome scenario after gruesome scenario, like my brain was a horror writer trying out new gore pitches on me. I checked myself into