Clean Date:November 8, 2010
Age:30
From:Boca Raton, FL
I’m 30 years old and I am 8 years and 8 months clean. I was born in New York, but I grew up in Boca Raton. In high school is when I casually started dabbling in substances and around that time in Boca, heroin wasn’t a thing. But in South Florida, we had a serious pill problem. It spilled into Boca and I was introduced to oxycontin and all that stuff when I was 16. Unbeknownst to me, they had the same side effects as a heroin withdrawal does. I thought it was just another party drug cause I used everything else as a party drug. Started dabbling into that, and physically got addicted, and then mentally of course. I was always very insecure, so for me it was a form of getting outside of myself; especially with stuff that was happening in the household. Addiction was the darkest times of my life. And it’s so crazy because I don’t even remember a lot of it, but it’s just pure misery. Honestly, the one sole reason that brought me to recovery was getting pregnant with my son. That was the start of it. Of course I was miserable, and I felt defeated, but he’s the one that helped me get clean. Being in recovery is amazing. There’s a saying in the rooms, I may be butchering it, but “my worst day in recovery doesn’t even match my worst day in active addiction.” So, not that everything is always peaches and cream in recovery, I mean everybody has their ups and downs, but I wouldn’t trade that for going back to how things were before. I have been through some serious things in recovery that I didn’t think I was gonna be able to get out of, and just because I kept doing the right thing, stuff always worked out. Circumstances always got better and things always unfolded and they just work out. And that’s just purely having faith that as long as I’m doing the right thing, good things are gonna happen. That was told to me early in recovery and I just hold on to that.
Within Recovery Unplugged, I am now the Director of Outreach and I’m also the Court Liaison. As Director of Outreach, I help manage our outreach representatives on the east coast. We represent Recovery Unplugged to inform people about what Recovery Unplugged does. The Court Liaison program promotes treatment over incarceration, and we use this program to educate the community, lawyers, judges, and the state as well as provide services for those individuals in our program that are dealing with court-related matters. My biggest take away from recovery and treatment is honestly just patience. Patience with yourself, patience with just everything, because whatever situation you’re going through, if you hold on, you’ll get through it. To any others or families struggling, my advice is to hold on, pain ends.