“I came from a good home. I didn’t suffer physical or sexual abuse. I didn’t feel ‘less than.’ I was a 3-sport athlete, excellent student. But I found a new love: drinking and getting high. My friend’s parents let us get wasted in their houses. I’d wake up, teeth chattering from withdrawals. I remember thinking, ‘I’m a college graduate! How did this happen?!’ Addiction had me whipped, and bad.”
‘We were 2 hopeless drug addicts society had written off. We were felons, dealers, thieves. Then, we found each other.’: Couple find hope, sobriety after years of addiction, ‘We are finally free!’
‘This is addiction. This is ‘just one more time.’ ‘Just a little hit.’ It’s a 3 a.m. phone call we knew was coming, but prayed never would.’: Family mourns loved one lost to addiction, ‘drugs don’t love you, your friends and family do’
“Addiction is a room (and whole hospital waiting room) full of brothers, sisters, nieces, uncles and friends beating themselves up because they didn’t save you. It’s a doctor saying the words ‘legally brain dead.’ An empty chair at every family event. It’s a daughter, a son who have to figure this world out without their dad. This is a man who loved with everything he had. Drugs don’t love you. Your family and friends do.”
‘At 19, I got pregnant and relapsed. My son wasn’t enough to stop me. I continued to use behind his back. I went back to hiding it, and was caught by my son’s father.’
“My friend introduced me to a better way to get high: injecting. He left when I got pregnant. I looked at myself in the mirror. ‘What are you doing? You are worth so much more.’ I wanted my kids to have love, but first, I had to find it myself.”
‘She is our daughter. What she is NOT is a junkie’: Dad’s desperate plea ‘to do a better job’ after daughter’s overdose death
“We need to send a message to drug dealers that we will no longer allow you to peddle poison in our neighborhoods.”
‘I feel so free’: Man loses jaw-dropping 234 pounds while overcoming opioid and food addiction, depression, anxiety
“For about 5 months I did not set foot outside. I never thought I’d live to see this day.”
From heroin addict to PTA treasurer mom: ‘I used to stick needles in my neck’
“In the process of dying, I learned that I wanted to live.”
‘She messaged me, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be home in the morning.’ I told my husband something was wrong. I finally laid down, only to be woken by my doorbell minutes later.’: Mom tragically loses ‘beautiful’ daughter to heroin overdose
“It was 3:44 a.m. I remember walking to the door and seeing a woman standing through the window. I thought it was Ashlyn. As I got closer, I realized it was a woman and a man, both in suits with badges. They were there to tell me my baby had died.”
