Sarah Jean’s Story
My name is Sarah and for 13 years, from the age of 23 until I was 36, I was chasing. I thought it was the lifestyle that I had to live. And for the last 12 years, I have been able to make it one day at a time on the medication-assisted journey that I'm on.
For me, brutal honesty with my therapist is what I need because in my days of chasing, I would do anything and everything that I could to get the next one in. It didn’t matter who I hurt, where they were, I did it. So, I promised myself right before my son was born in May of 2014, that enough was enough, and that’s when my journey really started. I found out I was pregnant and I went to jail in November 2013 and got converted onto methadone. For a few months after that, I was still using, but right before my son was born, I had a spiritual awakening.
When he was a few weeks old, I went into a 6-month long treatment program and that was where I found out how important honesty was–and still is–to my recovery. After I finished the program, I went into a supportive housing program and stayed there for five and a half years.
I’m lucky that I found the methadone clinic that was right for me. I got a therapist there in May of 2014. She’s still my therapist. She’s been through everything with me. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t even want to think about where I’d be. She really held me accountable and would call me on my stuff. Sometimes she would tell me I wasn’t thinking clearly and other times she would validate that I was absolutely right, and she supported me through a lot of really difficult decisions.
I’m sure a lot of my 13 years of using was due to not knowing myself. I’ve really learned about myself in the last 12 years. I spent the first two years of my recovery just focusing on treatment and raising my son. When I finished residential treatment, I did outpatient treatment until they wouldn’t let me come anymore. I did all the therapy that the clinic had to offer, I did all the groups, and I feel for me, that was necessary.
In 2016, I started working for Child Protective Services (which was crazy because they took custody of my son when he was a baby, so full circle there). I was a peer support and I helped train new hire caseworkers about what it was like to be a parent in the system. I was the voice that said, “You’ve got to give people a chance. Imagine what it feels like to walk out of a courtroom having just lost your child to another family.” I worked there for two years and I like to think that I helped more caseworkers see that just because somebody might have a substance use disorder, it doesn’t make them a bad person and sometimes they just don’t know where to start on their journey.
The next job I got was with the local jail, and I was only there for a month and then I got fired because they thought I was nodding off. I never even got asked directly about what was going on. I think they got wind of me being on methadone (and that was back in 2019, so there was even less understanding then) and they didn’t know how to handle it, so they fired me. I know in my heart that I wasn’t nodding off and that suspicion just came with the territory. After that, it took a long time for me to even admit to people that I was using medication in my recovery because I didn’t want to be judged. I went to another job where somebody had lost their prescription pain pills and I was the first person that they pointed the finger at. But I hadn’t done it and it later came out that I didn’t, but nobody apologized.
When that happened, I spent a week worried I was going to lose my son. But I didn’t, and everything worked out.
After Covid, I got monthly doses at the clinic, and then in November of 2024, I started testing positive for a metabolite of oxycodone and I don’t even know how. That is the part of my story that still bothers me. Because I don’t know why I was testing positive. I got knocked down to having to dose three days a week again.
I got up to once a week doses and tested positive again three months later. I still don’t know why. I was so obsessed with this issue that I would stay up for days trying to research it. Finally, I said I just had to let it go. Maybe someone there at the clinic needed to see that perseverance in the face of what feels like a huge challenge. That I was still showing up. The situation didn’t take me back out. I still showed up three days a week, just like somebody that had 30 days clean and was coming into a clinic for the first time.
I thought about transferring to a new clinic then but I was scared that it would take me a long time to get take-home doses, so I didn’t.
And then a couple months ago, my clinic, where I have been going for over ten years, closed down suddenly. I walked in one day and found out that they were closing at the end of the month–and there was only a week until Thanksgiving and Christmas was six weeks away. I don’t even know how many people have had to go back out because of it.
I started going to a new clinic and learned that after thirty days, you automatically get all these privileges and I was amazed–I had been so scared about making a change, thinking that I wouldn’t have privileges for a long time. And I thought, “huh, maybe I don’t have to always be so fearful that something bad is going to happen.”
Things have really changed in the last twelve years and I never saw that those things could happen for me. My mom and I were able to rebuild our relationship. My 12-year old son has been my everything. And I have another son who is supportive of me. He just had a child of his own, so I’m also a grandma now. My partner supports me, too. I just got a promotion at my job. I’ve never had a promotion, ever.
My son has been the reason why I’ve continued trying to navigate recovery. When he was born, I dropped down on my dose pretty quickly because I didn’t need the full dose at that point. I’ve been on the same dose for 8 years now. I think I’m ready to start dropping my dose, but since I switched clinics so recently, I’m fearful because I don’t know my therapist and everything is new. I think I’m going to really have to do some work on myself and find out what’s really scaring me about lowering my dose.
Even though I have 12 years of recovery, I still have ups and downs every single day. I really turn everything over to like my Higher Power just to get me through. My son is on three soccer teams. He’s in violin. He plays drums. I go to school full time and I don’t know how I do it. I also have terrible attention deficit disorder, anxiety and OCD and I manage those with medication.
Giving your life over to your Higher Power is probably the most freeing thing. Yeah, I still take it back all the time–or try to–but at the end of the day, I know I’m not in control.
We don’t always get the next day. At work today, I found out that one of my clients lost their life to addiction.
I really feel like I’d like to start being more honest about my struggles at work and not trying to hide my experiences. If someone is in active addiction, I would like to share with them what helped me and not have a feeling of, “Am I going to get in trouble?” I would like to say to people, “If you think medication is going to help you, don’t let people talk you out of it or fear keep you away. We only get one chance at life and that chance is not promised. You matter more than you think. If I didn’t take that chance on myself, I wouldn’t be able to be a mom. I wouldn’t be a grandma. So. Really. Do what you need to do for yourself.”