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.

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My name is Charity, and I am an addict. Growing up, my childhood was pretty normal. I had a huge, super-close family that spent a lot of time together. There was almost always alcohol involved in those gatherings, but it was normal to me. In fact, if there hadn’t been alcohol, I would have thought that to be abnormal.

In my teen years, I started noticing more how my parents’ drinking affected my life negatively. They were going out more, and I was having to babysit my siblings; they were missing my school and sporting events, and I was having to find my own rides to and from these events due to them being intoxicated. It was embarrassing and made me very angry with them. At age 14, I started drinking and smoking cigarettes. By 16, I was running away, skipping school, smoking pot, and was eventually kicked out of my parents’ house. At 17, I was pregnant, and by 18, I was a high school graduate with an infant son.

When I was 20, I was introduced to methamphetamine. I fell in love with it. I could party all night and still function at work or at home with the kids, and I was able to stay skinny with little to no effort at all. It wasn’t long before meth consumed me. I was putting my use ahead of my kids, my family, my future, and anything else I may have cared about. In fact, I was doing worse to my children than what my parents did to me, which had once made me so angry and embarrassed.

My entire 20s and a lot of my 30s were spent using drugs and dealing with the consequences of my use. I went to a total of 13 treatment centers – inpatient, outpatient, cognitive thinking treatment, long-term, halfway houses – you name it, I have been there, and even completed all but the first one. I had more children during this time. Child Protection Services and law enforcement were regular visitors to my place. Because I was unable to maintain my sobriety, I ended up voluntarily signing over my parental rights to two of my children and came very close throughout the years to losing all of them. During this time period, I also gained a few criminal charges and frequented the Olmsted County Detention Center more than I care to admit.

Now in my 40s, on Jan. 16, 2025, I was called by human resources at work to take a random urinalysis (UA) for suspicion of drug use. I did not pass the UA and was sent home and told not to go back to work until they figured out what the next steps were with me. I was dropped off with people who worked at the MOST (Mobile Opioid Support Team) program, and proceeded to have a mental break along with a panic attack. I felt like my life choices had finally destroyed me, that I had nothing left to give to my addiction. I had given up everything I loved, including myself, throughout my addiction. I had nothing left and was broken. Child Protection Services was also called, but luckily, I was able to give them a clean UA.

While sitting and waiting for work to decide my fate, I contemplated using, knowing I could get away with it since I didn’t know when or if I would be going back to work. But instead I got up and took myself to a meeting. It’s now been nine months since that day, and I have been able to maintain my sobriety. I go to meetings three days a week, have a sponsor, work the steps, and have established an amazing network of sober friends! I am also back to work and found some amazing allies I took for granted all of these years. I never in a million years thought that I would be able to stay sober, much less enjoy sobriety. Today, I look forward to every new day and have nothing to fear. Thank God!