Jaimie Honeysett believed she had it all together for most of her life. She grew up in a home where faith was central, surrounded by a loving mother, a devoted stepfather she called Dad, and an older brother. Her childhood was steady, even after seeing her father struggle with alcoholism and eventually turn his life around through rehab and faith. She never imagined addiction would later weave its way into her own story.
Jaimie’s early adult life looked perfect from the outside. She studied nursing, met her husband at twenty-one, and married him a year later. Within three months, she was expecting her first child. The future looked bright, filled with dreams of motherhood and love. But when she was thirty-three weeks pregnant, everything changed. She started feeling faint and breathless, and a rush to the hospital revealed she had multiple blood clots in both lungs. The diagnosis of Pulmonary Emboli shook her world. Doctors told her she was lucky to be alive.
For the rest of her pregnancy, she lived on blood thinners, her thighs marked by daily injections. But when her daughter Bailee was born healthy, Jaimie felt gratitude. Life, however, had other plans. Months later, the chest pain returned. Doctors reassured her that it was scar tissue and prescribed painkillers. The pills dulled the pain, and over time, something in her began to rely on that numbness.
A year later, she became pregnant again. When doctors couldn’t find a heartbeat during a scan, she held onto hope, returning weeks later to learn her baby had died. Her body refused to let go, and for six long weeks she carried the loss, waiting each day for her body to accept what her heart could not. When the miscarriage finally required a procedure, Jaimie was prescribed oxycodone again. The pills did more than ease her physical pain; they quieted her grief, her anxiety, her thoughts. She didn’t realize it then, but that numbness was the beginning of her spiral.
What started as pain management turned into dependence. Soon she was taking handfuls of pills each day, lying to doctors, her husband, even herself. She hid packets around the house—behind clothes, in drawers, anywhere her secret might stay safe. Over-the-counter codeine became her backup when she ran out of prescriptions. Addiction crept in quietly, and by the time she noticed, it had consumed her life.
By 2017, Jaimie was a mother of three beautiful girls, but she was drowning. She’d been through detox and rehab more times than she could count. Her husband tried to help, leaving and returning, desperate for change. At her lowest point, she was taking over a thousand milligrams of oxycodone daily. The lies piled up until one day, the truth finally broke everything apart. The day after her thirtieth birthday, her husband discovered she’d relapsed again. This time, he packed up their children and left. Jaimie begged him to come back, but he was done. Sitting alone in an empty house, she felt the crushing weight of her choices. With pills in one hand and vodka in the other, she came terrifyingly close to giving up. What stopped her was the thought of her daughter’s upcoming birthday. She couldn’t let her death cast a shadow over that day.
Instead, she made a call for help. Jaimie checked herself into rehab in her hometown. For three months, she faced her pain head-on, peeling back the layers of trauma that had fueled her addiction. She began to understand that drugs had been her escape from deeper wounds, grief, abandonment, and the silent ache of loss. When she left rehab, she didn’t just walk out clean; she walked out changed. Her marriage had ended, but her determination to rebuild her life had only grown. Through faith, counseling, and persistence, her family began to heal. Over time, her husband returned, and their relationship was renewed through grace and forgiveness.
Today, Jaimie is drug-free, working in Christian radio, and raising her children in the home she once feared she’d lost forever. She knows recovery isn’t a single victory, but a daily choice—a promise to herself and her family that she will never go back to that darkness. Her story is of brokenness and redemption, of a mother who found strength in surrender. Jaimie’s journey through addiction and recovery reminds others that even in the deepest pain, hope can still be found.
