Steve used marijuana as a gateway drug to alcohol. He started using marijuana at age thirteen with an older brother and some friends. By age fifteen, he got into alcohol. By age seventeen, he stopped using marijuana because it did not mix well with his heavy alcohol use. Everything Steve did had to have alcohol involved with it in order for him to find it fun. Steve was a functioning alcoholic until his mid-40s…
Meet Kendra, a thirty-four-year-old woman who shares her ten-year journey of back pain pills, heroin, homelessness and recovery. Kendra’s emotions are etched on her face. She is not the best narrator but her story is real, beginning with a car accident in her teenage years that caused her to suffer chronic back pain. The medications eventually progressed, and soon she was using and abusing pain pills and heroin by the time she was 24. Kendra…
Marty, a 31-year-old male, talks about his real life experience with heroin addiction and his journey of recovery. He is a client of The Gault House Sober Living Environment in Santa Cruz, California and he bravely shares his inspiring story of overcoming the tough experiences and the mental battles with addiction. Starting with being diagnosed with cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, he talks about how that nihilistic view affected his decisions. He lays down the path to…
Born to a teenage mother, Aquia, an African American female who is now 23 years old, started abusing alcohol at age 12 when she felt her mother loved men more than her and her brothers. That opened the door to drug abuse. Aquia started using Methamphetamine at the age of 18 and was living either on the streets or in jail. At age 22, Aquia was using heroin but all of her drug and alcohol…
Ivy’s recovery from addiction was a long journey that started when she first got hooked on alcohol at the age of sixteen. Her relationship with alcohol led to cocaine and an abusive boyfriend who got her pregnant with a son. Soon after, she developed breast cancer which gave her unlimited access to pain killers. She reached such a low point in her life where her only options became ending it or getting sober. She opted…
