There is Help Everywhere

Please describe your journey to your life in recovery.

I come from a family that doesn’t know how to communicate and is very strict. I am the female baby. I learned very early on not to ask to do things because the answer was always no. I learned how to just do, then lie about it and manipulate. This stuff came early on. I had a best friend who lived across the street and my parents would never let me sleep at her house. I had a lot of awkward years growing up, a lot of movement and transition. I always felt different and apart from others. I really wanted people to like me, love me and I wanted to be popular. I feel like I was that way in my earliest years. Then my parents decided to make a geographical change when I was 12. I never really found my way; instead I learned how to be a chameleon.

When there were problems at home, my parents didn’t sit down and have the conversation about what was happening, what needed to be improved, etc.

We would not communicate, so if I did something wrong I would get chased by my dad and he would either spank me or belt me, so I never understood what I was doing wrong or where I was falling short. I just knew that if I was going to get in trouble I better stuff my underwear with something because I was going to get it. I never knew how to ask for help.

I started high school at 15 and I had an older friend who had a car. She was the epitome of what I was not. She was pretty, popular, funny and I idolized her in that way. She charmed my parents so I started hanging and going out with her. She had been going to 21 and older clubs for some time so she would dress me in a way that no one would question whether or not I was 21. When I would go out I would have a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other and think that this was the right place for me. I felt cool and I knew I was cool.

Once I got a car, I was doing it without her at that point. I had met enough people and I knew how to charm. I built a double life. I would sneak out the second story window and shimmy down the side to my car, put it in neutral and roll into the street to start my car. When I got home I would have to crawl up and sometimes the alarm was on and sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes I’d get caught and sometimes I wouldn’t.

I drank my parents wine and took my dad’s pain pills that he never took. I didn’t think that there was anything wrong with it. I was still going to school and managing things and having fun. There were really no consequences for me at that time. I was invincible, having fun. I didn’t think about things like drinking and driving being a problem. I saw nothing wrong with anything I was doing.

When I applied for colleges, my brother had gotten out of L.A. to go to school in Vermont, I thought it would be cool to go somewhere else as well. My parents said I was going to go to school while I live at home so I was very limited. After the first week of school, I sat my parents down and told them that this just wasn’t going to work. I could use the time I was commuting to study in the library so they let me move into the dorms.

I didn’t want a reason to do what I wanted when I wanted to do it. I didn’t have to lie; I could just come and go as I pleased. I became a club promoter at 17 years old. I was out all the time in Hollywood so school wasn’t necessarily my primary purpose. I joined a sorority which was weird for me. I was doing all these drugs and the problem was my misconception of the whole thing. I thought I had all my stuff together, all my ducks in a row and I thought I was having fun.

What I failed to see was that I needed the substances to keep the perception that everything was okay. I didn’t see that I was getting further away from my family and friends and that I was no longer showing up to school or go to work. There were some very big indicators that my life wasn’t working and I just couldn’t see them. I thought I was really good at manipulating everyone in my life, but the joke was on me. I don’t have that part in my brain that says, “The way that you’re living is really awful.” I am a thick headed, segued from reality type of alcoholic and I need my medicine. At that point I was living in an apartment and I was enrolled in school but I was not going. I was living this insane existence not knowing when I would go to bed or black out.

What happened to me that I’m really grateful for is that I kept getting in trouble, getting arrested. Now I see it as a way my higher power was showing up for me. I didn’t understand then, but I definitely understand now. I don’t think I would’ve stopped. I needed this spiritual intervention. It gave me a chance to ask myself, “Do I want this for the rest of my life?”

When I was 22 years old I found myself in Twin Towers Correctional Facility, which is like a maximum security county jail. I got mixed up in really bad things when I was getting high because I didn’t think about what my consequences would be. I felt I was invincible in a lot of ways. I did not ask, “Is this illegal? Am I harming anyone?”

I remember going to court shackled by my wrists and ankles listening to the judge and DA go back and forth. My parents were there and they read letters about my character, really nice letters. The truth is that that was who they wanted me to be and not who I was. The judge sentenced me to one year in jail. I couldn’t even hug my parents; they took my straight back into the cell. I served six months then they let me out on county parole.

I have a lot of experience in jail that we could spend a long time talking about. What I will say is that the experience gave me the willingness to do whatever I had to do to not go back. What I found there were addicts like me who would get to jail, then be released, then come back and be released again. There was a girl that got released and that same night, she was back in jail. It was scary to me and I realized that this could be my story. I was willing to do what needed to be done so I wouldn’t have to go back.

I had to register as a drug offender, participate in an IOP program, and go to 12-step meetings. I did all of that. I had a couple people in my life from the club scene that I did not know were sober. One of them took me to my first 12 step meeting. He introduced me to a guy that had 23 years sober and I remember thinking that he has been sober as long as I’ve been alive.

There were a lot of good looking guys and a lot of laughter. I hadn’t laughed in a really long time. Another thing was that people were sharing things that I could never and would never. They were sharing their souls and I was embarrassed for a lot of them. That didn’t give me hope that I could do that but instead just scared me.

Due to me being a people-pleaser and not knowing how to be honest, get vulnerable or ask for help I would just greet people or make coffee when others asked so that they would like me and know my face. I wasn’t motivated to get a sponsor and write about steps. What I have found is that there are three sides of the triangle and I was doing community and service, but I was not doing recovery. What that means for me is that I was not treating this mental obsession, which is a problem because I believe the things that my head tells me and I think that I have really good ideas.

The thought that happened for me was this: when I celebrate a year sober I will celebrate with a glass of champagne because how else do you celebrate your recovery? Then I started thinking that alcohol wasn’t really my problem, I decided I was a drug addict. I entertained these ideas then I become bored with my life so I started out to clubs again and eventually began drinking.

I had a dilemma, I was on probation and I had created a life in the twelve steps. I had so much fear around people getting to know me because my self-esteem was so low I “knew” they wouldn’t like me if they only knew me. I was living a double life.

One night a guy pulled me out of a meeting and said, “What you’re doing is killing yourself.” I refer to this moment as my moment of grace because I don’t know what it was about that moment but I heard what he said. That was a life changer and I got a sponsor that night. She took me through the steps and she was patient, loving and kind. She was also hard on me. She suggested that I tell on myself at every meeting, I did. I was afraid that once I got honest at a group level that they would tell me I didn’t belong there. That didn’t happen. A lady came up to me after I shared and said thank you for sharing because I’m doing the same thing. Never did I imagine I would help someone else. That’s just not how my mind works. In my first year I worked the steps with my sponsor and I learned a lot about me and why I do the things I do. Through the process I started to build self-esteem and self-worth.

I’ve been sober for 15 years. My sobriety date is February 13, 2000. I grew up in the rooms of those twelve step meetings. I got a job that gave me structure in my life. When that job ended I went back to school. I showed up, sat in the front and did the work I was told to do and in turn, received good grades. I started working in a treatment center and I loved working with people like me. It was amazing to be able to give others hope. I took a drug and alcohol counseling course because I wanted to be able to run groups, so I did. I was working at an adult and an adolescent facility concurrently and also got the opportunity to travel around the world twice with someone for work.

I met my business partner and we decided that we needed to do something catered towards women in the LA area. We wrote a business plan and took our dads to dinner and said there is a need for this and this is what we need to do it. They gave it to us. We bought our house in 2007 and we opened up in March of 2007. It was really scary. I’ve walked through a lot of adult stuff and stayed sober through it. I just suit up and I show up. Being in recovery has taught me to do that. Even though stuff hits the fan or the sky is falling I can trust that everything is going to be okay.

When I went back to school I started at a community college and I wanted to further my education so I applied for a BA program in psychology and I was accepted. I started college in 1994. It took 17 years to graduate with a BA. In 2011 we opened our second home which is more of a mental health transitional living home for women. I decided since we were going to be working with mental health I should further my education so I applied for a master’s program and was accepted.

A year into my master’s program, my dad was diagnosed with leukemia and AML and lost my dad in 42 days. That experience rocked my core. My world got really small. I would go to school and come home. I’d talk to my sponsor and friends in recovery and they would come over and go to the hospital. I needed a village and they were it.
I wasn’t ready. I had to turn it over to God. When I lost my dad, I moved in with my mom to take care of her. My friends in recovery would show up, bring food and just hang out. Greif sucks. Nothing can really prepare you for that. Walking through that process has been really difficult. It’s been 2 and a half years and I still feel sadness and grief. I often don’t feel like myself. The first six months after he passed away I realized I was eating my feelings and was still a little withdrawn.

How has this impacted your relationships?
I learned early on that amends are way more than just saying I’m sorry. It is about consistency and showing you that I am different through my actions. You are going to know that I love you by the way I treat you and that I show up for you. When it became time for me to make amends I had had some time with consistency and showing up. My parents had come to the twelve step meetings to hear me speak when they believed that this isn’t a disease but instead about common sense and that I just don’t have any. However they came to see me year after year and would bring me cakes and meet my friends. A lot of my friends didn’t have parents like mine. My parents would take them in and embrace them.

Words of encouragement?
There is help everywhere. You are not alone. People struggle all the time and if you’re anything like me, someone who didn’t know or didn’t think that there was something wrong with you but there is something inside of you saying that something may be off, that there are places to go and people to talk to and you may find your people.

I would definitely look and if you relate to my story or other people’s stories you could check out support meetings, you could go to a counseling center or talk to a therapist, any 800 number for any treatment center and talk to someone. There are so many resources that can connect you to people in recovery. If you don’t believe it for yourself yet, check it out. What do you have to lose at this point?

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