Similar story. My mom was a drug addict (off and on at times) from before I was born until a couple years ago. I'm 21 now, so it's been a while. When I started to notice stuff my dad would always say it was because she was taking melatonin to help her sleep but it makes her loopy. I was sent off to different family members houses which I thought was cool for the most part. When I was 12 I finally found out what was going on. She ended up in jail for a while and I spent a bit over 3 years living with other family seeing my dad as much as possible. He couldn't take me to school, but I went to the same school as my cousin so it made sense to go together and my aunt and uncle were kind enough to take me in and take care of me. It still kind of felt like I was living with strangers though. Especially since I'm so introverted and didn't talk to them much. School was weird. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I made some friends who were friends with my cousin. I tried to cling to him because I didn't like that school but he didn't want anyone knowing I was staying with him, so I tried to distance and make excuses if anyone was wondering why his mom drove me home or why we brought basically the same lunches. A lot of times I'd hide parts of my lunch so they'd look different. I honestly forgot why I started writing this, sorry it's a little off topic lol.