Can Adoption Create Addicts?

For as long as she can remember, Jess has felt different. “I’ve just always felt kind of lost,” she says. “Like I never got the memo on how to live or be happy and ‘normal.’” Though she’s always felt painfully conscious of an invisible line dividing her from family, friends and colleagues, she says she feels “weirdly guilty talking about it, because I know overall I had a really good upbringing and amazing parents.” She continues, “What right do I have to complain about how alien I felt?”

The thing is, Jess actually IS an alien. OK, not literally. But as an adoptee, the 33-year-old New York native has always felt somewhat foreign from the family that raised her. “My parents were loving; I don’t remember ever not knowing I was adopted,” she recalls. “But I also don’t remember ever not feeling ashamed of it. It felt like something that made me inferior to everyone around me.” Why? “My real mother didn’t want me,” she explains.

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