Healthy Community Initiative

October is Substance Use & Misuse Prevention Month and we’re highlighting stories from our community! Sharing your experiences, reflections, and journeys is a powerful way to inspire others and we’d love to hear them. If you have something you’d like to share, please email ashley@healthycommunityinitiative.org.

How did I get here? I asked myself this question a thousand times as I laid on my basement floor, curled up in a ball, praying to God, if He was there, to take me out of this world. I did not want to feel this pain. I did not see any way out of the hole my soul felt trapped in. I was completely empty inside. How did this happen? Another question which circled and ruminated through my brain. 

Two years before this, I had my life together – I had my daughter (7) and my son (5), I was working for a well-known company, I was engaged to be married to the guy I fell in love with in high school, and our “Save the Date” cards were in the mail. 

Addiction has a way of opening its mouth and consuming you whole when you are the most vulnerable, and I was when my life fell apart, when everything I thought in my life was, wasn’t. The lies and secrets of infidelity destroyed that person who I thought I was, or the life I thought was mine.

From a young age, I experimented with drugs and alcohol, and you could say I was an addict by age 12. I was addicted to anything that took me out of Self. I coasted through my teenage years, partying and experimenting with anything that could distort my perception of reality. My main source was alcohol and marijuana, but I had tried just about everything out there by the age of 17. By 19, I had three drinking and driving violations, and I could not function or feel normal unless I was high. 

When I became a mom at age 23, I pumped the brakes, and the addict within me stayed quiet, for the most part. Drinking socially and smoking pot was still my norm, and seeking a prescription to Adderall to “help me” graduate with distinction with my associate degree in health information technology and my bachelor’s degree in health information management. It wasn’t until I was at that vulnerable state at age 31 when addiction swallowed me entirely. 

I remember asking my friend, “What’s it like smoking meth?” In that instant, the Devil owned my soul. Never in a million years did I ever imagine each day, putting that bubble to my lips, or a needle in my arm, being so addicted to a substance that robbed me of my morals, my light, my entire being. Those two years were the darkest days I have ever lived. 

As I laid on the floor, crying to God, to please remove me from this world, that I was no good for my kids, for my family, for me – I didn’t have the fight in me any more to keep going. A friend saw what was happening to me and helped me get into a detox, Gateway Detox, and from there, I was sent to Burkwood Treatment Center in Hudson, WI, where I found the help and treatment that I so desperately needed. While at inpatient treatment, I was educated on the disease of addiction. I addressed the untreated traumas, the anger, and sadness that I carried through life, and I could finally start to heal. I attended an Intensive Outpatient Program at Spirts at Rest in Montgomery and I listened to every recommendation that the counselors gave me, because this was my life I was now fighting for. I did not want to go back.

It has been 3.5 years now since I have been free from those chains of addiction. I am still a bit shocked that I can say those words. I have not touched a drug or a drink – and I feel absolutely whole inside. The promises of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) have blessed me with more than I can thank God for, and I can stand proud when I say, “My name is Nicole, and I am living a grateful life in Recovery.”