The Gift of Desperation
I have walked a long road to reach the place I am at today. It wasn’t a straight and narrow
path, nor was it always easy to practice the principles I talk about here. Healing, acceptance,
forgiveness and moderation were ideas I struggled with for most of my youth; foreign,
unattainable goals, always marred or blocked by some great burden in my path.
It began when I was sexually abused at the age of 11 by a childhood friend’s father. It was
an unfathomable betrayal that robbed me of a time in my life when I was meant to feel safe. I
carried this violation with me, deep within my core. It weighed me down. I was furious at the
world and didn’t know how to process this profound rage, one that threatened to burn me up
from within. I turned to drinking for release, as though I could drown my trauma with something
strong, whatever I could get my hands on. I’d steal liquor from my parents and drink to escape
the pain that I otherwise thought would consume me, but there was nothing strong enough on
this earth to quell that kind of pain, nothing swift enough to spirit me away from the trauma that
followed me. Instead, I could only dull it, a temporary reprieve that set me further along a path of
self-destruction.
Try as they might, my parents could not stop me. As a part of my early attempts at
recovery, I was sent away to boarding school, but still the trouble persisted; true demons are not
so easily shaken. I had become a childhood alcoholic. By freshman year, I had overdosed on
Canadian Club Whiskey and fell into a coma. Part of my cycle of destruction stemmed from the
fact that I was highly functioning despite my addictions. I was an athlete throughout my high
school career, basketball and softball were my sports of choice. At this time, I was on the
precipice of two worlds, yet my talents as a natural athlete could not save me from the road I was
on. When I fell into a coma, I lost this community entirely, as my teammates could no longer
understand who I was or what I was going through. There was only one world left, one entirely
governed by my addictions.
And while I was nearly expelled, I did manage to graduate in ’89, yet so did my
addictions. In the 90s, I had shifted into hard drugs; crack, cocaine, anything that could elevate
me and offer me a reprieve from my pain. We’ve talked about the power of community and
coming together, yet here I found myself lost in a different kind of community, a numbing herd
mentality that saw me fully consumed by the drug life. I fell deeper into a pattern of destruction,
as I was often high, engaging in reckless sex and having abortions. I lived with a dealer and
became the go-between for his deals. I was fully immersed in this lifestyle and had truly lost
sight of the person I once was. Throughout this period I worked as a waitress; the world of
substance abuse and my job waiting tables were intertwined. It was all I knew.
I may have continued along this path, were it not for two key changes in my life. The first
was the birth of my son, Sam, when I was 22. From the day he was born, he was perfect in every
way, and he made me want to be better. He deserved nothing less than my best as a person and as
a mother. I had managed to give up drugs and alcohol when I found out I was pregnant with him,
but quickly fell back into old, familiar ways after he was born. The second change came about at
my lowest point.
When I was 29, the wife of a man I was selling to came to my home. Deeply concerned,
she pleaded with me to stop selling to her husband. I had convinced myself that her husband was
better off buying from me, rather than getting ahold of tainted drugs off the street that could be
laced with other dubious substances, and I told her as much. She came to me multiple times, the
same plea, the same desperation, but I never stopped. I could not stop supplying him any more
than I could stop myself from using. Months later, he overdosed and died from what I had sold
him.
There is a benefit to reaching rock bottom, a gift that comes in the desperation that
follows. I had witnessed death firsthand in the form of overdoses before, it was an inevitable
consequence of the lifestyle. But this was different. This time, I was responsible. The searing
guilt and despair I felt for the role I played in this man’s death brought me low, lower than I had
ever been, than I had ever thought possible. I picked up and left it behind, the herd mentality, the
drug life, the toxic community, all of it. I could not contribute to another death, another family’s
pain and suffering. I knew I had to change who I was and the path I was on, not only for myself
but for my own family. At my breaking point, beset by bottomless guilt and fear, while still
weighed down by my own childhood trauma, I knew that this was the moment for true change. It
would have to be. I gave myself no other choice. And what came next was the beginning of something else entirely.