What is your story? Tell us about your story from the beginning to where you are now?
Hi my name is Emma I’m an addict clean today. I’ve been in recovery for 4 years 3 months, and was in active addiction for around 23 years, however my journey started long before I picked up my first drug.
My dad worked a way at sea and when he was home it was filled with drinking, arguments and a very toxic environment. My mum basically raised us on her own and could be very controlling and narcissistic. I lived in a constant state of fear and panic. From the ages of 4- 16 we had a prowler who would come to my window just about every night wearing a balaclava or old man mask and knock on my window and speak to me through it asking me to let him in. My friends wouldn’t stay over and I felt very isolated and alone.
I was also being sexually abused by many different people and my cubby house became a haven for the abuse to be carried out but I always kept it as a secret out of fear of what would happen if anyone found out.
During school I had very few friends and the ones I did have, I was the one who they made fun of and the joke of the group. I was always picked on for being so tall and fat. I’m 6ft 2.5 and grew rapidly so I was constantly dislocating my knees or breaking bones from falling.
I have 3 other siblings the eldest sister ran away at 16, I had another sister who was the brains of the family and was a model and a brother who was the sports super star and golden child. Then there was me who grew too fast, always sick or injured, deathly allergic to ants and had a distorted sense of self. I would later be diagnosed with multiple psychological disorders such as BPD, Bi poplar rapid cycling 1 and 2, schizoid effective disorder, OCD, anxiety, depression and the list goes on. When the truth was, I was so broken and highly drug addicted with a spiritual void inside of me.
I picked up my first drink at 10 when my mum would go visit my dad on the docks my sister would have parties and her friends would think it was funny to get me and my brother drunk. I started smoking ciggies at 12 and by 15 I was having my own wild parties, where my mum would buy me a bottle of Jack Daniels or Jim Beam and carton of cigarettes for the weekend and was told no boys over. But the boys came with the pot and other drugs such as speed or heroin, however I didn’t try speed until I was 16. When my friends mum gave it to me by putting it on the edge of a knife told me to open my mouth put it on my tongue and told me to drink.
My life soon filled with sex, drugs, violence, rapes and an intense feeling of rage.
When I finished secondary college, I started using heroin and I thought I found God’s gift to all my problems. The first thing I said is I want more. I soon fell pregnant to my pot dealer and had my first child at 20. I thought all my problems would be gone and I would have someone to love me when in fact I should have been loving him. My parents kept me away from his dad and I basically did what I wanted and let them raise him and continued my drug use.
I kept telling myself I will stop when he's old enough to know but it was already too late. I was in and out of sever domestic violent relationships, I had been hospitalized multiple times for life threatening injuries, however I kept going back.
I eventually met my ex-husband, we got married on election day 2007 and it was anything but happy families, we both had what we thought was a manageable drug habit but it was incredibly out of control. I fell pregnant with twins and had a really hard pregnancy. I was on monitored bed rest and there were lots of complications. Throughout my pregnancies I stayed off the chemicals but still smoked pot. But then I met ice.
When my twins were toddlers, I went to work in a factory for the first time and when my marriage fell apart so did that job, over seven hundred and fifty people watched my decent and no one really tried to help me. I was a single mum with 3 kids and a massive drug problem. Weeks after my separation I ended up in hospital on my first psychiatric admission and suicide watch.
For the next few years, I was in and out of the psych ward on an involuntary basis. I had police kick in my doors and jump through my windows to take me in. I was in constant state of anger and hyper-vigilance. I lost all my parental rights and had my children removed from my care for 7 years and placed on supervised orders. I was only allowed to see them once a fortnight for a few hours and a 20 min phone call once a week, which I was told this would be forever.
I had become homeless living in tin sheds in summer with rats and spiders, animals crawling all over me, no shower, no electricity, or water, nothing but a bed on the floor. I also lived in my car or hotels. I moved from share house to share house each one worse than the last, each one the bottom jail cell in the pit of hell.
For months and months, I was paying $150 a night for a motel room and was working as a prostitute to pay for that and feed my drug habit. I was spending thousands every day. I was using against my own will. I tried going to cross addiction specialists who said I was the addict he couldn’t help and only myself or a higher power could help me. I laughed and say I know I’m going to die but I have to show my kids that I’ve tried.
I was being heavily medicated with depo injections and multiple pills for mental health issues, which I took triple amount of and Dr shopped to get. I would smoke bongs all day, and inject anything I could get my hands on. It didn’t matter what as long as I thought it was going to do something.
One night while working I had a client just talk to me, he told me about how to get recovery. He told me my story wasn’t over I could rewrite the ending, that I had to accept an apology I was never going to hear from the people I wanted to hear it from the most. He told me to take it one day at a time and keep it just for today. I didn’t know at the time but he was 12 stepping me.
A few nights later I caught my partner at the time cheating on me. I was so broken, I had lost everything, I couldn’t lose anything more, so in anger I went to a park and went to hang myself at 2am on a Tuesday morning, I screamed out for something to intervene and save me. Just as I was about to jump the guy who had told me about recovery messaged me over Facebook, but instead of it going to filtered messages it came straight through. He asked for 5 minutes of my time and told me the chain wasn’t for me. That 5 min turned to 3 hours my phone went flat, it started to rain and I went home.
For the next 8 weeks I detoxed really hard. I was so violently ill I lost 10 kgs in a few days. I went to the hospital and they told me I was detoxing and sent me home. I walked out of there and instantly rang my dealer for my usual amount, which was a lot. I went home and had it all at once and collapsed on the floor in a pool of body fluid. I woke up ages later convulsing and crawled on my belly to ring my mum. She picked up the phone and I begged her to come see me and she said no.
I was crying and spewing and told her I would die tonight if she didn’t come. So she agreed to see me but that was it. She drove the 40 min which seemed like a life time. When she walked in she found me shaking, extremely weak and almost dead. I looked up at her grabbing on to her skirt begging her not to let me die, I said that if I survived that night, I promised I would never use again, just don’t let me die. She looked at me and told me she was taking me home. She is only 5ft 9 but she picked me up and carried me to the car. For the next 3 week my kids spoon fed me jelly and fruit cause, I couldn’t get out of bed, I used methadone to get off the ice. After a few months on that I jumped off 17.5 mils, it was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever been in.
On my worst day coming off the methadone I kept hearing a voice telling me to go get valium and it would be ok but I knew it would just kick off another habit, so I made a choice to not pick up a valium or anything else to take the pain away and completely surrendered to my higher power, which I do every single day. That emptiness and spiritual void is no longer there and I feel whole.
My secret to recovery is simple I surrender my will and my life to the loving care of a higher power greater than myself daily, I also attend many 12 step fellowships and attend multiple regular meetings, where I hold service positions, I am an active productive member or society, I exercise daily, I go to church, I changed my friendship circle, I immersed myself in service to others and give back where I can. I stopped making it about me and made life about we. And lastly, I pray.
I pray all the time and when you don’t see me praying is when I pray the most.
My life is completely different now and unrecognizable I haven’t been admitted to a psych facility in over 4 years. In February this year I was take off supervised orders and got back all my parental rights and 50% of care of my children, something I was told would NEVER happen.
I went back to school and got multiple certificates in AOD, Justice, legal services and now I’m doing a bachelor of Community and human Services, I can only keep what I have by giving it away to others. And every day I thank my higher power for giving me another day of freedom and the chance to be better than the person I was yesterday.
Thank you for the honor and privilege of sharing my experience, strength and hope with you xoxo.
What was the most challenging part about your journey? And what helped you get through?
The most challenging part of my journey was being in recovery and still kept away from my children. I had to constantly prove that I was doing well, I made sure my recovery was as loud as my addiction. It took a long time before family and friends started to truly notice a change and believe it and even longer for the courts to see that too. I had to demonstrate significant life changes in order to get my time back with them which is really had to prove legally.
What support systems helped you in your recovery?
What got me through was turning to my higher power in all things, I changed my mind set to an attitude of gratitude and saw my higher power in everything. I didn't just got on my hands and expected to get recovery. I have to work hard for it, cause it works if you work it. I attended regular meeting, do heaps of service not oy in fellowships but in the community and made my recovery about we not just me. I work with a sponsor. I went back to school and still continue to study.
I have the love and support of many fellowships, I have supportive friends around me who lift me up, I attend church regularly and grounded myself within that community. I listen to speaker tapes, read books, especially in regards to my faith and pray a lot.
What advice would you give to someone who is starting their recovery journey?
The advice I would give would be the same that was given to me. Never give up on getting recovery, your story isn't over yet, you can rewrite the ending. Just don't leave til the miracle happens and live life one day at a time. I didn't just sit on my hands to get recovery.
Before and After
If you would like to share your story please email us at changetosurrender@gmail.com.
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