Stacie’s Story
I have been in recovery now for 13 and a half years. My pathway right now is abstinence, but it wasn’t that way the whole time.
I'll give you a little bit of background. I grew up in a really good family: mom and dad, younger brother. I didn't have to want for nothing. We didn't have a whole bunch of money, but we didn't go without. However, my brother had a heart condition and I felt that my parents favored him. From a young age, I struggled with wanting to be loved, wanting to fit in, wanting to be accepted. Even though I know now I was, it didn't feel that way most of my life.
So that started my little journey in relationships, which went on for years. I was always searching for Stacie outside of Stacie. I looked for objects and men to make me feel better, whether that was clothes, shoes, a boyfriend, jewelry. I always needed something to make me feel better and I never knew who I was. I had no idea who I was.
I was a good kid. I didn't get in trouble or anything when I was younger. But then I got into a relationship with a person that–and I did not know it at the time–was a heroin addict. He had a business that made a lot of money. He was selling cars, and I joined right in. I’m a people person, so it was not hard for me to become a salesperson. And I did not know he was doing a lot of illegal stuff, including using drugs.
At one point, he and I were driving to the beach for a vacation and we got into a car accident. I was prescribed pain medication just for three days from the emergency room doctor. And so while we were away on vacation, those three days ended, and I was in a lot of pain, a lot of discomfort. And he told me he had some pain pills that he would crush up for me. Well, that wasn’t quite true, and by the time I came home I was addicted to heroin.
It didn't take long for me to fall in love with getting high. It was probably faster than finding a pair of shoes I liked, honestly. I loved the feeling. I loved the fact that it didn't make me look at me. It didn't make me compare myself to my brother.
I also had a bunch of behaviors that went with it. I would steal from my parents. My younger brother died from a heart attack at 19 years old because of his medical condition, and I took every dime my parents had to bury him in order to get high.
Pretty soon, because of my boyfriend’s business, I got in some legal trouble. Of course, which probably helped me in the long run, because that's how I was introduced to any type of recovery. I got sentenced to treatment multiple times. I would keep violating and keep going back to jail. I would come home, and I would get high, and I would go back to jail, and that went on for many, many years of my life.
And through that process, little seeds were planted within me. Every time I would get high and I would come back to treatment, I learned something new about myself. But during that time, I was still always looking for myself in relationships. Honestly, for a long time, that was the only reason I went to any type of 12 step meeting: because I was trying to get into a relationship. Because more than anything, I needed to be accepted.
But I remember being in different programs and people bringing in meetings: sometimes it was NA, sometimes it was AA, sometimes it was CA. And I was starting to see that people could live differently and be okay with themselves without getting high. But I wasn't ready yet. I was not ready, and this was before any type of MOUD was available. At that time, the only option you would have is to be completely without any drugs at all, and I wasn't ready for that. I was not ready.
And then at one point, a judge sent me to a behavior modification program and that's where I started to learn who I was. That's where I learned some of the simplest little things. I don't like scary movies, but every time I would go out on a date with a guy, we went to a scary movie. I learned that I didn't like the color purple. I can't stand the color purple. I like pink. I kept learning little things about myself. And I realized that part of the reason I was able to learn about myself was that I was not getting high. But there still was something missing because the minute I completed that program, I went right back out and got high again.
That was the first time I tried MOUD or MAT, as we called it at that time. I tried Suboxone. I got it through my PCP and I was probably on it for about six months and then I ended up going back to jail and back then, they didn’t let you stay on your medication. And so they detoxed me off of it in jail. And that was the worst detox I've ever experienced in my life. And when I got out, I instantly got high again. That was just my story for years.
I’d had a daughter when I was in high school and my parents were raising her. For years, I never really was a part of her life. I missed every milestone of hers to get high.
At one point during this cycle, I managed to get about a year of recovery and I thought I was doing really well. I was dating somebody that was in a recovery house and I thought, “I'm gonna move him in with me, and we're gonna get married, and we're gonna be good.” And we moved in together on a Friday and by Sunday, and we were both high. He ended up in a mental hospital and I was back in jail. And that time I said, “That's it, I can't do this anymore.”
My parents weren't talking to me anymore. I never had a relationship with my daughter. I looked like death. I was always looking for love but my understanding of it was totally off: I thought it was a sexual thing, a physical touch type of feeling and I chased it and it never made me happy.
And by that time, I was starting to get older and I realized, “I’m not jail material.” I like to wear makeup. I make a joke: I like to go the bathroom and smoke a cigarette at the same time. You can't do that in jail.
And so I knew that something had to be different. When I got out of jail that time, I said, “I’m going to give this an honest try.” I went to any kind of meeting that I could find: I didn’t care if it was AA, NA, CA, Sex and Love Addicts, Overeaters Anonymous–I didn’t care as long as it ended in “A.” And that’s how I found some people that accepted me. No matter what I was going through. No matter if I had make up on, no matter if I had matching clothes on, no matter if I smelled. And I knew I had to stop being in relationships for awhile so I could work on Stacie and find out who she was. I started to build back my relationships with my mom and dad and my daughter, who was a teenager. I gave it an honest shot. And it worked for a bit.
And then I got to a point where I felt stuck. And I ended up drunk and started the whole ball rolling again. Except for this time, it got pretty bad for me. I was homeless. I lost everything: job, car, family again. That’s when I found out what desperation was. I ended up back in jail. They let me sit for nine months. And this time, there was nobody. There was no Mom visiting. There were no friends from recovery visiting. There was just me. And so started to do some work on Stacie.
I read and I wrote in my journal. I wrote my judge letters every single day. I wrote my judge on open cookie wrappers. I wrote my judge on the back of request forms. I sent interoffice memos to my judge every single day. I pleaded with him to let me out, I told him how I've changed and one day–it was a weekend–they called my name and the guard said, “I don’t know what happened over at that courthouse, but they decided to let you go home today.”
And when I walked out of that jail, I knew that I couldn’t keep going in the same direction. Like, literally. Whenever I walked out of there, I always went left and I always ended up high. This time, I turned right and I walked across a bridge, and I ended up at a recovery center.
By this time, I was in my mid-thirties and most of my adult life I had spent getting high. But don’t you know it, I got out of jail in November and by January or February I had met a man and moved in with him. By August, I was married and by that following January, I had another child. But we were both in recovery and we were working hard, doing good. I was working in a restaurant, he was working at a hospital, we had an apartment and we were going to meetings and life was good. But one day, I came home from work and he wasn’t home and I woke up the next day and he still wasn’t home.
He made the decision to use and I made the decision to stay in the relationship and get high with my husband. And after about a year, he went to rehab. Although I had just recently overdosed, I didn’t feel I could go into treatment at the same time because I had to take care of our daughter. And so I made the decision to get on Suboxone.
That was the best decision I've ever made in my life. I stayed on Suboxone for a year and I did great. I kept going to meetings and I received so much ridicule from folks in 12-step for being on Suboxone. I was told I wasn’t clean. I was told I needed to just listen, not talk. But I just kept coming back to those meetings because I didn’t want to get high. And I knew I needed to be on Suboxone because I had just overdosed and I knew it could happen again.
And I kept hanging out at the recovery center and I started to volunteer there and eventually they gave me a job at the front desk. And my supervisor heard a rumor that I was Suboxone and he called me in for a drug screen and it tested positive for buprenorphine.
He was surprised by the drug test result. I knew exactly what it would show. In fact, I was happy that was all that was in there. That’s a big moment for somebody like me, when there’s nothing else in my urine besides what I’m actually prescribed. I knew I didn’t want to stay on Suboxone forever. But I had a relationship with my oldest daughter. I was a mother to my youngest daughter. I was a daughter to my mom and dad. I was allowed back home again. My mom didn’t take her purse with her when she left the room. My dad could go to sleep without worrying about me going through the house for things to steal.
But after he found out I was taking Suboxone, my supervisor made me completely hate myself for being on it. He made it extremely difficult. I had to get letters from my doctor justifying why they prescribed it. And my supervisor wanted to know everything about my dose and when I took it. He made it so hard and he put everything in my personnel files so other staff could see it. I was always under suspicion at that job. Like, if the register was short, it was automatically, “Was Stacie behind the register?” even though I didn’t have anything to do with money, I was a peer support.
And as a peer, the only people who were allowed on my caseload were people on methadone or Suboxone or Vivitrol. I wasn’t allowed to be a peer support to anybody else, just the “people that were like me.”
And so I remember calling my doctor and begging her to take me and threatening that if she didn’t, I would just stop by myself. And I don’t honestly think I was ready to come off of it when I made the decision. But I rapid detoxed off of it. I got extremely sick. I was unable to care for my daughter.
And I was very anxious afterward. I constantly had a fear of wanting to get high again. But I kept chugging away, working on my recovery, kept going to meetings, and I stayed clean.
And now, I still work a 12-step program and I take pride in being a sponsor to women who are taking MOUD in their recovery. I’m a huge advocate for anybody on it. I will tell anybody: it saved my life. You have no idea what it gave me back. It gave me enough of a time frame that I was able to learn who Stacie was.
I’ve become the person that I’ve always wanted to be. I’m a great mom. I have a fantastic daughter. My husband and I have been married 18 years. My job entails that I help other people. And if I need a meeting, I get a meeting. I’ll make a meeting on the bus if I have to, talking to somebody next to me.
And I’m going to be quite honest–I’ve only recently started sharing this. About a year ago, my husband made the decision to step out of our marriage and entered into a relationship with another woman. When I put together what was happening, my recovery got very rocky. I became extremely suicidal. That was the worst pain I’ve ever been through and in this situation, with my back against the wall, I wanted to use. And my PCP asked me, “Do you want to get back on MOUD?” And we talked about it. The pain that I was going through, the rejection. All those old feelings of wanting to be loved and wanting to be accepted and not liking Stacie and wanting to be good enough. And at that time, I decided not to get on MOUD, and instead I decided to double down on meetings and I also got into trauma therapy. And so far, so good. But when I see my PCP, she always asks, and if I decide to get back onto MOUD, then I’m okay with that, I’ll be content with that decision.
Am I perfect? No. Do I go to meetings every day? Nope. Do I go to my home group every week? Yep. I don't call my sponsor every day, only when I'm getting ready to pull my hair out. But I help people. I grew up. I learned how to become a mom. I learned how to become a respectful woman and no matter what decision my husband made, I didn't make that decision. And I still carried myself with grace.
You know, I'm so tired of hearing people talking about “no mind or mood altering chemicals.” I think to myself, “I'm on Zoloft for being depressed. It alters my mind.” But I'm not being judged for it. I don't feel we should judge each other. I try to not judge nobody. I treat others how I want to be treated. And I will always, always, always help somebody. If they want to get on MOUD, if they want to get off of it, whatever they want to do.