Life is Worth Living

I don’t have one situation where everything turned bad. A combination of people and choices I made changed my life. I let drugs and boyfriends take me to lows I had never been to before. I also have always had issues with mental health and I self-medicated since I was about 17 years old.

You would think that being homeless four times, having to stay in a nursing home for six weeks due to endocarditis from using, overdosing multiple times, and getting arrested for theft more times than I can remember would have been enough to change. It wasn’t.

I wanted to change but I didn’t know how to get away from the hell I had built for myself. Finally, the last time I got arrested, I went to jail with a smile on my face because I knew I would be there for a while and that would be my chance to stop using.

First I went to jail, and when I went to court, I begged the judge to give me a treatment program that offered the Vivitrol shot. I have been clean since I left the jail and in treatment since. So I have been clean since January 20, 2016.

While I was in jail, I asked God to guide me on my way and since then, He has not let me down. In my treatment program I have group meetings three times a week and they help me more than I can say. Just the benefit of my friends’ wisdom and experience helps. I also find it really helps me to give them my experience and advice.

I have also gone to participate in mental health treatment and have gotten on medication that helps me immensely. It is hard to admit that I need the medicine, but I do so in order to remain clean and healthy and happy. I need to do whatever it takes.

It can happen anywhere to anyone. No one is immune to this. No matter what your background is, how much money you have, how smart you are, how much education you have, it can still get to you. But also know that it is possible to change once you have fallen into a hole that is so deep you can’t see the bottom. If I could crawl out of hell, then anyone can.

I have been clean almost eight months. I do not have my kids back, but our relationship is amazing and I am on my way to getting my youngest back. I am back in my family’s life and I have an amazing boyfriend who truly cares about me. I report to my probation officer every month with absolutely no worries, which is a new concept for me. I also just recently got my first job in a long time (I am talking years) and paid my first bills in years as well.

So, I guess I can say that life is amazing. In the depths of my using days I really never thought I would make it out of my life, I thought the drugs were going to kill me. Life is something I never realized could be as great as it is now. There are no words to describe how it feels to wake up a normal person when you weren’t one for so long.

Please do not think that life is not worth living, because, trust me, once you get out of the game and get away from drugs, life becomes something so much better than it was before you even started using. People can recover– they just need to know it is possible and that there is help for them.

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