JESSICA RINALDI

Stories: A Life Unraveling

Heroin and other opioids have devastated Massachusetts families. Boston Globe reporter Katie Johnston and I spent a year with Raquel Rodriguez, a heroin addict from East Boston, as she struggled to get clean for her two young daughters. Raquel opened her life to us in hopes that her story might help someone else. 

  • Heroin and other opioids have devastated Massachusetts families, killing an estimated 1,200 people last year and unraveling the lives of countless more. For Raquel Rodriguez, drugs have been the one constant in her life. High on heroin, after being clean for eight months, a frustrated Raquel Rodriguez begs her daughter Estrella to stop jumping on the bed in their apartment in East Boston.
  • With the bathroom door locked to keep her daughters out, Raquel leans over and snorts heroin inside her apartment. Moments earlier, Estrella had tried to block her mother’s way into the bathroom, and now the girls are crying outside of the door as she gets high.
  • Mimi escaped into her parents' room to watch television the night before her mother started treatment at a methadone clinic. The older of the two children, Mimi is silly but also sensitive and responsible, often helping Raquel with small things like pulling up the socks she can’t reach or swooping in with a hug when she can sense that her mom’s mood is about to take a turn.
  • High on heroin, Raquel Rodriguez reacts as her daughters, Estrella and Mimi, run back and forth across her small living room. Tomorrow Raquel will go to the clinic and get her first dose of methadone, but tonight she worries that she won’t be able to do it.
  • A week prior to getting clean, Raquel flips over a shopping cart so she can rest while walking Estrella home from her Headstart program. The heroin that she had taken earlier was starting to wear off, leaving her in pain. Above all else for Raquel are her daughters. She frets over them constantly, and relies on them to take care of each other, and sometimes her.
  • As the girls play on the way to their mother's trauma and addiction program graduation, Raquel starts to nod off from the methadone. {quote}It's like a battle going on inside me between the methadone and the addiction; and I know I can win but it’s hard,{quote} Raquel says.
  • Mimi holds her mom's purse and their new puppy, waiting outside the clinic in Chelsea, as Raquel gets her dose of methadone. Raquel gave in to Mimi's begging to bring the puppy to the clinic, not realizing that animals weren’t allowed inside.
  • Surrounded by other proud parents Raquel claps and cheers and blows kisses to Mimi during her kindergarten graduation ceremony. It had been a dark spring, but after completing a three-week outpatient addiction program, she was feeling hopeful.
  • Raquel's husband, Jose, sits with Raquel at Walgreens to keep her company as she waits for her nine prescriptions. Jose was different from the other men who had been in Raquel's life. He drank too much, but he didn’t do drugs. He was quiet, supportive and he stuck around.
  • Estrella laughs as she runs ahead of her mother and sister on their walk home from school. Raquel is determined to get clean for her two young daughters. {quote}I want them both to have a childhood that I never knew existed. Happiness, joy, love...{quote} she said.
  • In the midst of a relapse, Raquel leans in her doorway and tells her heroin supplier how alone and frustrated she feels. He encourages her and tells her not to give up, saying that she is one of the strongest women he knows.
  • High on heroin, Raquel checks Facebook on her phone moments after writing a post asking for help to find a new apartment. “I am in desperate need of all the help I can get I have two children ages 4 and 6,” she wrote, “and am a recovering addict struggling everyday to move forward for my children.”
  • Often defiant, Estrella continues to play on the computer even after Raquel repeatedly asked her not to. High and having lost her patience, Raquel snaps at Estrella, telling her that she needs the computer in order to find them a new place to live. The day before, their landlord had threatened them with eviction.
  • While waiting to drop Estrella off at camp Raquel begins to panic. A crucial doctors appointment at the methadone clinic that she needs to stop her relapse is thrown into jeopardy when the councilors are late to arrive. The next day, DCF would come to the same camp and take the girls away.
  • After a bout with pneumonia left Raquel on oxygen, Jose started taking her to church. At the end of mass the children's choir starts to sing and Raquel breaks down, {quote}I miss my babies.{quote} she says quietly.
  • A day after her children were taken away by the Department of Children and Families, Raquel and her Uncle Bobby make their way towards the Suffolk County Juvenile Court to try to get the girls back.
  • Hours after learning the Department of Children and Families took her  daughters away while they were at day camp, Raquel sits on the bed she often shares with them and wails: “I want my babies.” The future is uncertain for Raquel. She continues to go to the methadone clinic and a court date to regain custody of her children is set for February.
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