As I was doing research for this project, I mentioned to a friend what my focus was. She insisted that I get in touch with her cousin, who was transracially adopted at the age of 2 and has experienced issues involving substance abuse. I spoke with her cousin, and we had a brief interview over the phone, regarding her adoption, substance abuse, and what she thinks was the cause of her issues.
C. is a 24 year-old African-American, adopted at the age of two into a family that included an older brother. When C. was 6, her parents had another biological child, a sister. C. says that her childhood experience of her family was relatively idyllic, although she remembers feeling confused as to why she looked different from the rest of her family. Her largest concern as a child, she remembers with a laugh, was that she didn't have straight hair like the rest of her family members, and couldn't make a "long, shiny ponytail" like her mother's. Though her parents did discuss the fact that she was of different ethnic origin than they, C. recalls that her mother in particular was uncomfortable with such conversations, and always ended them by saying, "You're just the same as us; you're one of us; we love you as much as anyone ever could."
C. was raised in a largely Caucasian community, though she attended public school where there were other students of color. She remembers being asked by other students of color why her family was white, and she was black, and having a hard time explaining that she was adopted. As C. got older, she had mostly white friends, and did not see herself as being particularly different than her friends. "We all acted the same," she says, "and I knew that I looked different, but I wasn't all that concerned about it. No one ever really brought it up." As C. started middle school, and began to do things outside of school and home-based playdates with her friends, she began to notice that at stores and movie theaters, she garnered more attention than her Caucasian friends. "People stared, sometimes, and there were a few times when people looked suspicious of me." In high school, C. was called an "oreo": "I acted white, so I was white on the inside, but I was black on the outside. That was really tough -- I didn't know how else I was supposed to act." She began to smoke marijuana and drink on weekends, mostly as a social habit, but she remembers feeling that pot relieved her anxiety about "not being who or what I was supposed to be".
C. began to drink more heavily in her junior year of high school. "I was really interested in this one guy, who was black, and he partied a lot...so I partied to catch up, really." Eventually, she and the object of her affections became a couple. They drank and smoked marijuana together, and for the most part, he soothed her anxiety about her racial crisis. However, during their first fight, he accused her of "acting like a white girl but still pretending you're black", which she was extremely hurt by. Her marijuana and alcohol use escalated from that point forward, and soon she was drinking and smoking almost every day. C. started college, and was academically successful. A class in African-American history stunned her: "I felt like such an outcast. All of my classmates knew so much about the history of African-Americans, and I knew nothing. I was literally, like, speechless." C. grew angry with her parents for not "allowing" her to be in touch with her ethnic roots. "I felt like they had purposefully deprived me of something, like they didn't want me to know about where I came from or anything like that." She began to use cocaine, first as a weekend-only "fun thing", but then more and more frequently. Her grades dropped dramatically, and she lost interest in her classes.
When C. returned from her first year at college, her parents noticed a change in her demeanor, and asked that she go to a therapist. "She was white, I was 'white', so I didn't think it would be a problem," she says, "but after we talked a few times, I realized she had no idea where I was coming from." C. stopped attending therapy, and instead used the money that her parents gave her to pay for her sessions on cocaine. She lost dramatic amounts of weight, and experienced insomnia and depression. "When my parents figured out what was going on, they decided 'enough was enough', and sent me to a treatment facility." C. was able to connect with a therapist that specialized in adoption, and has been clean and sober for about 5 years.
When I asked C. if she thought that being adopted was the cause of her substance abuse, she said, "Yes and no. I think it was really hard for me to grow up in a place where I was so obviously different, but no one really talked about it that much. I didn't even think about it that much until people started pointing it out to me, as we got older, and then it was even harder to talk to my parents about it. But at the same time, my parents were really supportive when I did come to them with my issues...or my issues came to them, whatever...so I think that if I had been more comfortable talking to them about what was going on with me, I probably would have been able to skip that whole segment of my life. But maybe not, you know? Like, maybe my biological mom was a drug addict, or dad, or something. I don't really want to know about them at this point, because even though I think it'd be really neat to know more about myself genetically, I have my family, so it's whatever...If they came to me, I'm not sure I would want to talk to them or anything. I'd probably have to think about it for a really long time."
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