It’s strange how a person can sit on a couch, half-awake, half-lost, watching a show about survival and somehow see their own reflection. She used to watch I Shouldn’t Be Alive, barely keeping her eyes open, admiring people who crawled out of snowstorms or escaped from disasters. They had strength, courage, and grit. She’d whisper to herself, I can do this. Then she’d walk to the bathroom, pull out a sunglasses case, and prepare the needle. The heroin would slide into her veins like a dark comfort. I can do this, just not today, she’d tell herself, and that lie would become her lullaby for years. Her story with addiction didn’t start with heroin. It began when she was just a teenager looking for something to make her feel different and to silence the noise in her head. Benadryl, Lunesta, cough syrup, and little experiments with escape. She told herself it was harmless, just curiosity. Everyone tried things at that age, right? But that small thrill of feeling different grew into a craving, which turned into a monster that never slept.
Back home after being kicked out of boarding school, she found something more substantial: Roxicodone. She hated the taste the first time she snorted it, but loved the high. That’s how it always goes. The body resists, but the mind remembers the pleasure. Soon she was living for that chemical calm, snorting pills before class, nodding off at home, telling herself she didn’t have a problem, everyone parties. Everyone drinks. She convinced herself that losing jobs, falling behind in school, and lying to her parents were just growing pains. But the truth doesn’t stay buried. Addiction always finds its way to the surface.
By the time she met the man who would become her husband, she had already been to detox and counseling. She wanted to be clean, to be someone new. He was kind, supportive, believed in her, but addiction is a cunning thing. She promised she was done with the pills, and yet she found them again. And when pills weren’t enough, she met the needle she once swore she’d never touch. That first rush felt like being swallowed by light; warm, powerful, unstoppable. She didn’t know it was also the moment she’d start dying a little every day. Her days blurred into one another, hiding drugs in her purse, lying to everyone, pretending to function. She sold what she could find, stole from her parents, pawned their jewelry, even her mother’s charm bracelet, worth thousands. She told herself she’d replace it someday. Addicts are good at some point.
There were close calls, too many to count. Police sirens flashing in her rearview mirror. A friend overdosed in a church bathroom. Passing out in cars, waking up on the edge of disaster. Rock bottom didn’t come with a crash; it came with exhaustion. The kind that seeps into your bones. The kind that whispers you’ve lost everything. December 18, 2013, was her line in the sand. No grand gesture, no bright epiphany, just a quiet decision that she couldn’t live like this anymore. She went to detox again, the same as before, but this time something inside her shifted. She didn’t want to die. She tried to fight.
Today, she’s still fighting, but the battlefield has changed. Now, she wears scrubs instead of scars. She’s a nurse in Massachusetts, helping women battling addiction and comforting newborns going through withdrawal. Her baby boy is six months old, and his giggle is the sound of everything she has almost lost. She lifts weights and builds muscle and strength that isn’t chemical. Every rep in the gym is a reminder that she’s alive, she’s strong, and she’s never going back.
She knows she shouldn’t be here, statistically speaking. Too many people don’t make it. But she did. Maybe it was faith, luck, a hundred second chances stitched together by people who refused to give up on her. Whatever it was, she’s proof that survival isn’t always about escaping a snowstorm or a wild animal. Sometimes it’s about surviving yourself. And now, as a nurse fighting the opiate epidemic, she sees pieces of her old life in the faces of her patients. She tells them through her actions, not words, that you can return from this. You can be alive again.
