Doris had hardly sat down in a chair across from me when she began to talk rapidly. "As I was coming to see you this morning, a man in front of me on the bus looked back at me with an odd expression and a weird look," she said. "I then quickly realized that I had been talking to myself. I didn’t know how loud I was. Lately, I talk to myself more than usual. I am wondering if I am doing that because of loneliness. You know that I don’t have anybody to talk to."
"What did you say to yourself?" I asked her.
"Well, I said, ‘A guy like Fred should be killed.’ Thank God I said that in Korean. Otherwise, I could be in a big trouble," Doris laughed.
Doris came to the United States in her early twenties after marrying an American service man. "Yeah, it was an escape for me," she said. "I badly wanted to get away from my home, especially from my father who was drunk all the time. He had a violent temper and used to beat my mother and me."
Even today, Doris has trouble talking about her childhood memories because of the anger and resentment she has towards her father. She believes that her addiction to drugs came from him.
"The marriage was okay for a while, but then, you know, it just didn’t work out," she said. Doris had always thought of herself as a "tough survivor," but she became a stronger survivor after the divorce.
"I’ve never asked others for anything. I respected myself too much to receive any help," she said. "Well, I could say I had a lot of like my father, but I earned respect from others by working hard and carrying myself appropriately."
About ten years ago, in her apartment complex, Doris met Fred who invited her over to his home one night.
"He just asked me to try it," she recalled.,"Just to puff a little bit of what he was smoking. I really didn’t have any idea about drugs then. Well, that was the beginning of my tragedy. As soon as I smoked it, I thought my brain was clearly opening up and I felt so euphoric. I liked it immediately and completely the moment I hit it."
Doris had a vivid memory of how she got involved in the abusive “crack cocaine” cycle. "Dr. Choi, you can’t imagine how powerful a drug crack cocaine is. All I had was a one-track mind: “when will I get my next fix?" Less than a year ago, my bank savings were completely gone, and I was flat broke. I hit the bottom in no time. It took all my money and my dignity away. Once you start that kind of drug, you’re finished. I was literally left for the streets," Doris often speaks fiercely about the drug.
After losing everything she ever owned and attending many rehabilitation programs, Doris came to our clinic where she has been receiving weekly therapy for the last three years. Without hesitation, she says the therapy is her "life line," and she couldn’t survive without it.
Although Doris has been clean and sober for seven years, she still attends Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings twice week. She knows that many abusers easily relapse when they are not connected with the program.
Doris has been suffering from depressive moods with recurrent dreams of her late boyfriend Fred, and she still has painful drug related memories. Many nights, she wakes up from nightmares, cries and talks to herself of regrets, anger, and despair.
"I don’t know why I am dreaming such things. It is just terrible," she said. You know, I have used it in my dream again. When I got up I was so thankful that was only a dream. But I found myself all wet from sweating and my pounding heart. I am so scared of myself. I wish I could be free from this kind of temptation. I hate myself for what I have done to myself."
"I don’t deserve the things that are happening to me. I was not a bad person, never stole anything from anyone, and I never hurt anyone either. But why am I going through so much? I wish I could erase all my past like things on the pencil-written story. Even if I meet people, I can’t feel really comfortable with them. I know that they can’t understand this unspeakable pain in the corner of my mind."
Doris has many reasons for isolating herself even now.
As Doris reflects on herself, she learned about her tendency to reject other people’s support, believing that she didn’t need to be connected. However, we discuss the importance of interdependency as an essential element in our personal relationships. We help others as they help us in times of need.
Although there is a lack of data on substance abuse among in Korean Americans, one cannot deny the inevitable high tolerance of accepting drinking as a social norm and not considering it as a problem. As Doris likes to recall, her father used to say "a man is a cripple if he can’t drink." Is that so? I often hear that men have to drink in order to succeed the world of Korean business.
This strong socio-cultural denial is indeed an illusion that we become free of problems. We tend to hold on to a myth of the "model minority." Perhaps it is time to look around to see whether any of us are lagging behind and falling apart from the community, because we tend to use substance to fill our loneliness and stuff our empty selves.
Doris clearly recalls how drugs helped her in her loneliness, inhibition, and anxiety control, but at the same time, how it destroyed her sense of self-worth. Now she is healing. Through the weekly therapy, she regains ego strength, deals with her impulsivity and anxiety, and learns how to relate with others. She faithfully follows AA principles, living and thinking one day at a time.

Dr. Beatrice Sool Choi is a registered psychologist at the Richmond Area Multi Services (RAMS) in San Francisco. She can be reached at (415) 668-5955 ex. 39
or RAMS
3626 Balboa Street, San Francisco, CA 94121.