♪ ♪ (rain and wiper blades).

TRAVIS: So the best way to explain, like what heroin did for me was, you're ever driving in a thunderstorm and it rains just beating down on the car and it's just crashing down around you, and you're driving down the road and you go under a bridge and you get that moment of silence.

You see, heroin was my bridge.

My whole life, I felt like was crashing down around me all the time.

But when I put one more in me, I had that sense of peace.

Just for a moment.

JEN: I wasn't some innocent victim in this.

Like I was using drugs, I was shooting heroin and smoking crack, and prostituting.

All of these things led me to that spot.

BUNNY: I tried crack because I wanted to stop heroin.

So basically, what I did was just switch seats on the Titanic.

LaTONIA: I remember one day I came to the club and came home, and my Mom was flicking a lighter.

And I asked her what she's was doing.

And she said she was freebasing.

So, I said, "Can I try it?"

BRANDEE: Addiction isn't a moral failing, it's a disease.

I wasn't a bad person.

You know, I made some bad choices, but I wasn't a bad person.

And how I could get back to that was where recovery really set in.

EMMANUEL: One of the paradigms of addiction says that addiction is a disease, a physical body ailment just like any other chronic disease, it affects a certain portion of the population.

What we're going to have is a portion of that population irrelevant.

Irregardless of who, where, when, how much they make, where they live, what their religion is, they're going to be affected by the illness of addiction.

ANNOUNCER: Major funding for this program is made possible by... Michael Silberman and Family.

Because every story deserves hope.

(cheers) And is produced in cooperation with... Behavioral Health System Baltimore... works with partners across Baltimore City to support the emotional health and wellness of individuals, families, and communities, by ensuring they have access to services and resources to thrive.

More at BHSBaltimore.org.

WAYNE: I'm Wayne, and I'm an addict, and I'm going to tell you my story today.

Growing up, I was really not comfortable being Wayne.

If somebody I looked up to, would be accepted to, was smoking pot, I smoked pot.

But pot didn't make me feel comfortable with Wayne.

So I went through those gateway drugs 'til I found a drug that made me comfortable with me.

And that was heroin.

And once I found heroin, I found something outside of me that I could put in me that fixed me, and it was a love affair.

All the other drugs didn't matter, all other people didn't matter.

I had something that made me feel okay with me, and I had never felt okay with me.

ANTHONY: I'm an addict.

My name is Anthony.

I've been clean for the last 40 years.

Before I got here, I was struggling.

I never believed that there would ever be any help.

I started getting high when I was in my teens.

I was just drinking.

Hanging out with my friends, going to little parties, getting into a little mischief.

The first drug I ever tried was marijuana, and it made me laugh a lot.

I was giggling and stuff, and then I started taking pills.

But before I knew it, I was dealing with the drug of my choice, which at that time was heroin.

I had to do what I had to do to get drugs.

And it's crazy.

It's crazy because I had a good job, but nothing that I did was ever giving me enough money to deal with the drugs that I needed.

BRANDEE: Hi, my name is Brandee, and I'm a person in recovery.

For me, recovery has been quite a journey.

Um, I really started out early on in my life, probably around the age of 11, where I started using alcohol.

And I think for me, one of the reasons that I started using alcohol is because a lot of the trauma that I experienced when I was younger.

And what's interesting about that is that my sister, my baby sister, was actually getting watched by a neighbor, and I was getting watched by that same neighbor.

And, you know, around the age of seven, I was molested.

And the real raw truth about that is that when I was molested, I didn't tell anyone about it, but there were a lot of other girls in the neighborhood who were also molested.

And the way that my family found out was because law enforcement came to my door.

And when they came to my door, you know, my mom gave me this look.

And I don't know what that look was, but for me, the interpretation of that look was that, you know, there was a lot of guilt and shame that I felt that was directed toward me.

And, you know, law enforcement came in, and when they came in, they sat me down on the couch, and they handed me a baby doll, and they said, "Tell us where he touched you."

And that was my first experience with law enforcement.

Um, it wasn't pleasant, and in fact, it really changed the trajectory of my life.

BUNNY: My name is Bunny.

I'm a person in long-term recovery from alcohol and drugs.

I really say that my addiction probably started to, to surface in college.

We did a lot of drinking, partying, and somewhere along the line, somebody told me that cocaine was not addictive.

And I said, yeah, okay, that sounds good.

(chuckles) And I'm here to tell you today that it's highly addictive, of course.

JEN: I'm an addict, and my name is Jen.

To me, the disease of addiction is all about feelings, um.

And the main thing that comes up for me with my story is isolation, loneliness, and hopelessness.

My first addiction wasn't drugs or alcohol.

My first addiction was self-harm.

When I was about 13 years old, I started to self-harm.

At this point in my life, I lived in a very rural community in southern Maryland, and I really had no idea about the disease of addiction.

I didn't know that you could become physically dependent on anything, and I was just taking these Vicodin every day.

I liked the numb feeling.

I was a very young mom.

I had two young children that were two years apart.

And eventually this led me to lose my house.

I lost my vehicle.

I lost custody of my children.

I was using, I mean, probably $1,000 worth of OxyContin a day.

I went straight from pills to shooting heroin, sniffing pills to shooting heroin.

WAYNE: So early on, I started running afoul of the law.

With prison, I was scared of being shanked.

I was scared of being sexually assaulted.

The thing that probably feared me the most was that if somebody confronted me, I didn't even know if I was man enough to stand up for myself.

I was such a shell of a person.

But what I didn't know and what I didn't have was that I was an addict.

I didn't know that.

I knew I liked to use dope, and I knew that... I knew that I needed to use dope to feel comfortable, but I didn't know I was an addict.

JEN: I decided to start prostituting.

And when I was prostituting, I had another woman that I was using with, and she said, "Well, why don't you try this online platform?"

Somebody wanted me to come to their home, which wasn't very unusual.

I was, homeless at the time.

I was living in hotels.

I was paying for my drugs through prostitution, paying for my hotel rooms, through prostitution.

And, um, this guy picked me up that night, and I did not leave his house for nine months.

But I was trafficked for those nine months, and... I was stuck in a house with these other women and this guy that would beat the crap out of us and rape us and treat us worse than you would treat a dog.

EMMANUEL: When do we intervene if we want to help prevent drug addiction in our society?

It surprises a lot of people, but most drug prevention theory operates with the idea that a child makes their decision as to whether or not they're going to use drugs in the third to fifth grade.

Now, that sounds a little crazy that we might have 8, 9, 10-year-olds deciding if they're going to be addicts.

What they are deciding at that time in their life, is, is the use of addiction, a use of a chemical like pot, like alcohol?

Is it something that I want to try one day?

That's when the decision is made.

They don't use that day, they may not use for another five years.

So, if we want to intervene early on, we have to treat the children who might have some emotional risk-taking behavior that happens in that age group.

ANTHONY: My job had insurance, health insurance, and because of the health insurance, I was introduced to a treatment program.

I was introduced to a treatment program through a friend of mine who every now and then when we got high, we would tell the truth about how bad the agony was of addiction, how we wanted to stop, how we wanted to be better fathers, how we wanted to be better brothers and sisters, how we wanted to have our family look at us with something more than disgrace in their eyes.

BRANDEE: I started using substances like I said, at the age of 11.

Um, and for me, it was alcohol.

And it wasn't like dibbling and dabbling in alcohol.

It was more fan spinning, blackout drunk.

And as that fan was spinning, I just said to myself, at the age of 11, I'll never do this again.

And I found myself from that molestation standpoint.

I found myself moving toward promiscuity where I felt like I had to be validated by men.

So, with that, I got pregnant with my first child at the age of 16.

And at that time, when I got pregnant with my daughter, I was with her father.

I remember her father telling me on the phone when I told him that I was pregnant.

He said, If you get rid of this baby, I'm not going to be with you again.

And for me, that was a translation that, oh my gosh, he loves me.

You know, I'm 16 years old and he loves me.

He wants to be with me.

We're going to start a family.

And, you know, fast forward, by the time I was in my mid to late twenties, um, I was coming up on my fourth child, and the disease had just taken over.

You know, there was not a day that went by that I could not use.

There was not a day that went by that I could not have a drink.

I had to have a drink and a drug with me everywhere I went.

I couldn't participate in life without those substances in me.

BUNNY: The disease of addiction has a component in it, a characteristic about it that forces you into isolation.

I found this place in some bushes, some trees near Georgia Avenue and Blair Road in Washington, DC right at the DC line, right Maryland.

One side of the street is DC, the other side is Maryland.

And I found that place, and it was almost like I found my own apartment, you know, like I had found a condo and I could go up in there and just go up in there and sleep, get high, drink.

Nobody could ask me for anything.

Well, I was laying up in the bushes one night and out of money, everything, nothing, no drugs, no alcohol, no anything.

And this other guy, drunk, starts stumbling in there and falls out on the ground about 15 feet away from me in the bushes, in my little spot there.

And I get mad.

I'm totally, I'm totally incensed, but I don't, I'm not yelling.

But I'm looking at it and I'm saying to myself, look at this drunk bum.

Look at this drunk bum falling out in my... I felt like he was, he had walked into my living room and fell out on my living room floor, while I was like on the couch watching TV or something.

That's the way I felt.

And then in the next second or two, I realized that I'm laying in the bushes, that I'm a drunk bum.

And I started sobbing.

I started crying, and then it dawned on me, and then I said, "Man, you... what happened to your life?"

JEN: On Christmas Eve of 2017, one of the girls tried to get away, and this guy was very, very intoxicated and very angry when he was intoxicated.

And all that I remember is he had this wicker basket at the bottom of his stairs, and inside of the wicker basket, under blankets, was a handgun.

And I heard them screaming and yelling, and I heard her run down the stairs, and I heard him run after her, and she got to the hallway of the doorframe of the front door, and I guess he had grabbed the gun, and he smacked her across the face with the handgun.

I was too scared to go downstairs, so were the other girls.

So, we kind of just sat silently in that room, not really knowing what was going to happen, but kind of saying a silent prayer that she was able to get away.

And, you know, I had always dreamed of like, what would happen if one of us got away?

What would happen if he got caught?

I was so just dead inside at that point that like the only time I would pray is when I would pray at night and I would pray that I wouldn't wake up in the morning.

WAYNE: I went and got on a methadone program just so I wouldn't shoot any more dope.

Methadone doesn't fix Wayne.

Only heroin fixes me.

So, I'm still shooting heroin on a methadone program.

Fortunately, I was just sick and done.

I was so tired, you know, I was just sick and done.

I went to a social worker in that methadone program and just must've expressed my frustration.

And she arranged for me to go into treatment.

They did two things.

They took us to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and they took us to Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

But I'd never heard of Narcotics Anonymous.

And I like to say this today, when you say the ... word narcotics, you know, it's like EF Hutton talking.

My nipples get hard.

BRANDEE: It got to a point where at the tail end of my addiction, I was facing 11 years in a Maryland state prison and a year and a half to four years in a Pennsylvania state prison.

And when I finally got to that jail cell and I just looked around, I detoxed in that jail cell, and it was the most horrific experience I'd ever... (jail cell slam).

That I've ever had.

Hallucinations, the shakes, the trembling.

I didn't know where I was at.

Correctional officers would come into my cell every 15 minutes shining a flashlight on me, and I didn't know what was happening or what was going on because I had never really understood the power of addiction and what that can have over you.

When I was sitting in that jail cell, the one thing that I did do was I asked for help.

And when I asked for help, I got that help, and I was transferred over to a treatment center back in Maryland.

They actually took me back to my home state of Maryland.

Um, and that was actually the first time ever that I met people like me.

JEN: You know, and I prayed that every night.

And she ended up getting away, and she found somebody, and she used their cell phone, and she called the police, and the police came, and they knocked on the front door.

And he told me that I was going to go downstairs with him, and I was going to tell the police that I was his girlfriend, and this woman was crazy, and we don't know where she is.

And all of these times that I had been fantasizing about getting away and what I would do, and I did the exact opposite of what I should have done, I followed every one of his instructions out of fear that if I didn't and he didn't get arrested, what he would do to me.

So, I lied for him.

He did end up getting arrested that night, and to this day, he still incarcerated.

And that still wasn't enough for me.

Like all of that pain, all of that trauma, all of that abuse, and I still wasn't ready to give it up.

I still wasn't ready to get clean and to think about living a different life.

And I couldn't imagine being clean.

I couldn't imagine being clean.

I didn't think I was capable of being clean.

WAYNE: What NA gave for me, it gave me the opportunity to be clean, and not having a parole officer telling me to do it, a classification officer, a drug counselor.

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired of the consequences of using.

And I found the same people in a Narcotics Anonymous room.

Usually when I get out of court and get probation or I get released, I had right to West Baltimore to get a shot of dope.

I went to Friday night NA meeting in Catonsville.

At that time, there was only seven NA meetings in all of Baltimore.

I stayed clean for five years.

I didn't know if I was doing it 'cause I didn't want to do 20 or I had just found a new way of life.

But I finished up that probation for that 20 years.

It gave me five years' probation, and I celebrated my six-year anniversary.

And I knew I was here because I had found the way to live without using drugs.

And it's been over 43 years.

I'm still here today.

You know, there's two ways that I've found to stay clean.

One is in the Maryland penitentiary on the fifth tier on deadbolt.

I can't use, I can't get it, and nobody's bringing it to me.

And in Narcotics Anonymous.

For me, that's what worked.

And my life has just changed so much in the last 40 years.

JEN: So I get to this treatment center, and it was a 28-day program, and I don't know what happened.

If you would want to call it a spiritual awakening, um, or if something just kind of clicked in my head, but it was on day, maybe like 26, that something clicked and I made the decision that I didn't want to do this anymore.

I don't want to live like this anymore.

I was scared to death to leave.

I wasn't ready to leave.

And I was finally starting to feel like my old self, like, how I felt as an 18 or 19-year-old when my addiction wasn't that bad yet.

Things just kept getting better.

Every day that I woke up, I felt better.

Every day that I woke up, my life looked better, and it was amazing, and I didn't want to let that go.

I can't sit here and say that every day in recovery is great because it's not.

Some of my days really, really suck.

Um, it's hard.

And the first year that I was clean, my kids wouldn't talk to me.

I had done a lot of damage, a lot of damage over those years.

I left them when they were very, very young.

And today, I'm like so proud to say that my daughter is one of my best friends, and both of my children call me.

Like I am their point of contact for anything big that happens in their lives.

As long as I keep applying myself as long as I continue to work on myself and work on my mental health and work on how I interact with others, that everything's going to be okay.

ANTHONY: It was kind of funny, 'cause we would be in church basements and we would be smoking and drinking coffee in these church basements and listening to the stories of people who had gone through the same things that we had gone through.

In these church basements, people was using cuss words.

And I was thinking to myself, this can't, this ain't going to last too long.

But nobody, nobody judged us.

They just allowed us to give free expression about how things were, and how we hoped things would get better, and what things were getting better.

And I remember my first year, I felt like I was back.

I was the person that my parents had raised, I was their child again.

I wasn't some kind of zombie state individual that was passing out, coming to.

I was an individual that finally was able to go to sleep and wake up.

And this was new to me.

BRANDEE: I learned very quickly the principles of recovery and how to change my life and it didn't happen overnight.

I had to clean up the wreckage of my past because during the time of my active addiction, I actually lost all my children.

The one thing in the world that was the most important thing to me, I lost.

And that was devastating at the time.

So, to get into a fellowship and to be around people in recovery that have had those same situations happen to them, and they didn't feel guilty or shameful about it, but they felt happy and free, that's what I wanted to do.

So, after losing my kids, I really started to stick and stay with the women in recovery.

The women in recovery taught me that I did not need to be validated from anyone.

They taught me that you know I could present myself in a way that created this self-worth and integrity that I had never experienced before.

So that's what I did.

I went back and I continued to push and push and push and push and push to the point where I ended up getting a job in behavioral health.

So, for me service work was giving back was freely given to me.

BUNNY: I didn't realize it at the time, but God remembered my prayer and sent the angels.

I just, I just didn't know they would have Montgomery County Police uniforms on with, uh, guns on their hip.

And the reason I say that is because it put me squarely in the path of recovery.

At that point, you know, I was either going to change my life or go to jail, and I went into local treatment center, and the path of recovery started for me.

And I'm not going to say it was smooth right away.

Uh, just like most addicts, we think we know more than we do.

As I helped others, it helped me.

It is the most perfect thing that I've ever known in my life.

As I help others, I get the help I need.

ANTHONY: I was making a whole bunch of bad choices and dealing with the results of that.

And I was able to sit down in a meeting and talk to people just like I'm talking to you, and tell them that you know what?

I was the problem, not my circumstances, not my life.

I had a chance to dig in and find out what the core of my disease was, the self-centeredness, the selfishness, the low selfish esteem, you know, this self-hatred, and, and confront it, man.

And in doing that, I was able to actually heal.

I still try to help suffering addicts end their suffering.

And that's why I'm doing this today, 'cause I want people to know that if you're stuck in that addiction, it don't have to be the end.

You don't have to put a period at the end of your sentence, you can put a comma.

You know, and let the next sentence be something positive, be something productive, be something beautiful.

BRANDEE: And what I also learned through that process was that in order for me to rise to the occasion in behavioral health and to be an asset in this field, that I was going to have to go back to school.

And, you know, if I think about my past, I'm a 10th-grade high school dropout, so I wasn't really quite sure if I'd be able to, if I was cut out for this college thing, or going back to school.

But I wanted to do it, it was a goal for me to go back and get my AA degree.

And I learned very quickly that my addiction manifests in many different ways.

And because it manifests in many different ways, I said, "Okay, I'm going to get this AA degree."

So, I went and I got the AA degree, and you know it felt really good.

And again, that built on my self-worth and integrity.

And I said, well, why not go back and get my bachelor's degree?

And I went back and got the bachelor's degree, and then I said, okay, let me keep going.

Let me keep chasing this, this euphoric high.

And I went back and I got my master's degree.

And I said, "Oh, shoot, why stop there?

Why not go a little bit further?"

And I ended up getting my doctorate.

10th grade high school dropout, lost her kids, person now in recovery who was an active addiction, where her life completely crumbled, can now sit in front of myself and say with conviction that, I did it, I made it.

WAYNE: I could tell you all the things, all the gifts I've been given.

I found my wife in Narcotics Anonymous.

Financially, I've been blessed successfully.

I had a steal to get a, go get money for a bag of dope.

Today, I've just been blessed in so many areas.

I like to say this, I've been on every continent in the world.

I've flown and landed every continent, including Antarctica, and that's a long way from the fifth tier of the Maryland penitentiary.

That's the kind of life I've had.

And all I had to do was stop using, and the way I stopped using was find some other people not to use with.

So, today I do the same thing.

It's not rocket science.

I know what works for me.

I've been given all these blessings by staying clean in Narcotics Anonymous.

But the most valuable thing that I've got being clean in Narcotics Anonymous is that today I'm comfortable most days being myself without putting heroin in me.

EMMANUEL: If I could give the person out there struggling with an addictive issue, one serious piece of advice that is, it works.

You have to put out the effort, you have to engage in the process, but it works.

I've been working in the recovery and treatment fields for 40 years, and I can honestly tell you that I have never seen a person fail who has dedicated themselves to the process of recovery.

LaTONIA: I'm LaTonia, and I'm a person in long-term recovery.

I grew up in a very abusive household, right?

My mom was always getting beaten, you know, and the helplessness that I felt as a kid, not only that, we were always told, "You can't tell anybody."

So, like learning how to stuff our feelings was really important to her.

She used to give me, my stepdad would beat her up, and then she would buy us tickets to the wrestling match 'cause she didn't want me to be mad at him.

So, it was kind of a warped sense of what love was.

It was taught to me at a really early age.

DESIREE: My name's Desiree.

I'm an addict.

There was shame at one point thinking of the admission of being an addict, whether that being alcohol, marijuana, opiates, benzos, I lived my life using for 12 years.

It brought me to a corner, selling my body to not be dope sick.

It brought me to jails.

I ended up in psychiatric units because when I'm using, the easy way out is death.

I don't want to live.

It's a really sad existence.

JOE: I'm an addict named Joe, and this is my story.

The survival instinct was put into me at a very young age.

Um, I was placed into a psychiatric ward, um, and when I was, I was, um, I was sexually molested by a man who worked there, and that was just another part of my learning to survive.

I had to take what happened to me, and I had to keep pushing on.

I became violent.

I became, um, a kid who just really didn't care.

I didn't care about anything, anything at all.

It didn't matter what you looked like, who you ran with, what drugs you had.

I was taking all of it.

ASHLEY: My name is Ashley, and I'm an addict.

Before I even picked up a drink or a drug, I feel like a lot of my childhood shaped my feelings, emotions, patterns, and behaviors.

Then I remember when my mom came and told me that my dad was leaving and that they were going to get a divorce.

And as a kid, I definitely felt that a lot of that was my fault.

I felt like maybe if I was a better kid and a better daughter, maybe my dad would want to stay with me and my mom.

My mom was struggling, and she, you know, needed help taking care of me because my dad was no longer in the picture.

So, I was sent to my grandparents' house.

Most kids going to their grandparents' house is a really good and fun experience.

Unfortunately for me, mine was not.

So, my grandmother worked a lot, and I was left alone with my grandfather.

And when I was probably six years old, he started sexually abusing me.

I felt that the abuse was my fault, that I had done something to make him do that to me.

And I really felt different from everyone else.

I really felt, um, damaged, I felt gross.

Ultimately, I felt like something was wrong with me.

But I can remember when I put alcohol into my body, it gave me everything that I couldn't feel on my own.

I can remember it... When I drank, it made me feel like I was pretty.

It made me feel like I was smart.

It made me feel like I was funny.

And ultimately, it made me feel connected, because that was something I hadn't felt before.

You know, even being popular in school, getting good grades, being a good athlete, being part of a team, none of that ever gave me a real feeling of connection, and that's what I was dying for.

LaTONIA: I remember one day I went to the club and I came home, and my mom was flicking a lighter, and I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was freebasing.

So, I said, "Can I try it?"

You know, and, um, and little did she know what that decision would mean for both of us, for the rest of our lives, right?

So then after that, I didn't care if my mother loved me anymore.

I didn't care if she wanted to be with me anymore.

At the time, that was when the crack wave came in the 80s and hit DC really hard.

It hit my whole family.

And I had just had a baby, like, right when that encounter with my mom happened, and, um, I literally missed the first five years of her life.

I was just getting high.

Couldn't stop, wouldn't stop.

Then one day, you know, um, I got tired.

I called my cousin.

I had one cousin that survived the wave.

And she wore dashiki, she had dreads, she had a tea to fix everything, so I called her, and I was like, can you help me?

And she said, "Come on."

So, she brought me into her home.

I slept for three days, and then she took me to my first meeting.

And I want to tell you, when I went to that meeting, I saw men on this side and women on that side.

I just wanted to get with a dude that wasn't getting high and go back to being young again.

But I found a guy.

But, you know, so be careful what you asked for.

And he wasn't using that day, but he was shortly thereafter.

We had moved into an apartment in Montgomery County because, I thought, I'm from DC, right?

They don't get high in Montgomery County, right?

But guess what?

I moved in right next door to a crack house.

I sent him to the store to get cleaning supplies, and he just did not come back.

Right?

The first day we moved in.

CINDY: I'm an addict named Cindy.

I started using when I was about 11 years old, and I used just about anything that I could get my hands on.

And I used, so, I found out later that I used because I absolutely hated who I was.

I hated everything about me.

I hated the way I looked.

I hated the way I walked.

I hated the way I talked.

You know, I come from a household that was physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually abusive.

I believe that the disease of addiction manifest itself in every area of my life.

And I believe that the disease of addiction is, it's, it's not just about the using.

It's not just about drugs and alcohol.

I believe that when it comes to the disease of addiction, that the drugs and the alcohol are only a symptom of the problem.

But the problem is really me.

You know, I remember being two years old and just running around the house and taking butter knives and stick 'em in sockets because I liked the way that it made me feel because I was always chasing something, chasing anything, people, place, thing... outside of myself.

I was the kind of addict that would jump in and out of cars and do things that I didn't want to do, just to get one more.

I was the addict that became homeless and, and shot dope using gutter water.

When my children were babies, you know, I was the addict that would tell them, I'll be right back.

And I never came back.

I would be gone for days.

I was the addict that would leave my children laying in ... diapers and, and in cribs for days at a time because I had to get one more.

Quite embarrassing to the point of where every value, moral principle, or anything that had ever been instilled in me was gone.

Again, it took me 13 treatment centers to realize that maybe heroin was a problem.

ASHLEY: At one time, I had all Division I schools looking at me.

I was invited to these elite camps, was considered one of the top 50 players in the country.

I was really, really going to do things with basketball.

But once I got in trouble, um, for using drugs in school, all those letters stopped coming in the mail.

All the phone calls from the schools stopped.

Nobody really wanted me as part of the team, because I was considered, you know, a liability and, and one of those problem basketball players.

But a local school was willing to give me a scholarship, so I went to Wilmington University and played on the team for three years.

I was a captain every year.

I was one of the top scorers in every game.

But what people didn't see was that I was oftentimes failing most of my classes.

I would have to go to summer school in order to stay eligible.

I would show up to practice and games drunk and high.

Um, if I even showed up at all, I would get in fights and get suspended.

So, life was not going well.

It was actually continuing to spiral down more and more.

And the only thing I knew to do when I had those feelings, um, was to use drugs.

JOE: I had no empathy for anybody.

I had no ability to see things the way that they did.

So, I think obsession and addiction go hand in hand because my obsession for my addiction took me to places I would've never gone before.

There's points in my life where, you know, you say to yourself, why did all this happen to me and I'm the victim?

But in all actuality, if you really begin to learn what a victim actually is, you're not.

I put myself in precarious situations because I was looking for something, and I could never find it.

And finally, the lights came on.

DESIREE: And I wanted the consequences of my using to stop.

I wanted to stop selling my body to not be dope sick.

I wanted to stop ending up in jail, and I wanted to stop waking up every morning sick.

My father and I ended up using together.

We ran together.

We went to jail together.

His disease got so bad that he made a decision to sell my body when I was a teenager to continue his addiction.

So, it got really bad.

The one person that I trusted sold me to not be dope sick.

The lifestyle that was associated with using was also most comfortable.

It was insanity, but that's all I knew.

When I came in, I really had to let go of this victim mentality.

All these terrible things happen to me.

I mean, terrible things happen to people all the time, but I used it as fuel for my addiction, and I really did not want to use anymore.

I wanted something better.

CINDY: And I just remember being 24 years old.

I was homeless, I was hopeless.

I was jobless.

I was all of those things.

I was 80 pounds.

I was skinny as a rail.

My eyes were black, my hair was gray.

I looked like death.

I walked like death.

I smelled like death.

Baths and food were no longer a part of my story.

I wanted to stop.

I couldn't stop.

I just didn't know how to stop.

And I truly believe that, like, an addict is not going to stop using until they're ready to stop using.

But I also believe on the flip side of that, that there's no right or wrong way to get clean.

And so, when the seed is planted, you know, and that's what happened, like, even the 13 treatment centers that I went through, and, um, unfortunately, like, that's what it took for me, but my story is my story.

And, and during those times of, like, trying to get clean, I believe that the seed was planted.

The disease of addiction, again, for me, it's not about the drugs.

I mean, after you're clean for 30 days, you're not getting any cleaner.

And so, you know, life shows up.

I share these things because I was also taught that, you know, I come from a place where I don't use no matter what.

You know, using's not the answer.

If I have 10 problems and I use, I now have 10,000.

And so, I don't think that mental health is talked about when it comes to the disease of addiction and within the recovery community.

And one thing that I've learned is that most people that are in recovery do suffer from mental health issues.

LaTONIA: I met a guy in a club and he came to my house for dinner and just never went home.

I don't even, I never remember asking him, "Move my house," none of that.

He just started fixing stuff.

He started just doing whatever he does.

And because I was drunk, I was just making a lot of drunk decisions, right?

So, this guy moved into my house.

He took over.

The kids had to ask him permission.

I had to ask him permission.

He just took over my life.

I got pregnant by this guy.

When I had the baby, I felt no maternal instincts towards this baby.

The baby came home.

I took care of her, but that's it.

Um, I went downstairs one day.

We were having a party downstairs.

I came back up, and the baby was in the bassinet.

My kids were on the floor in front of the TV, and my ex-husband was on the couch and, um, and she passed away in her bassinet right in front of everybody.

And I remember coming the stairs and picking her up and her being like a rag doll and screaming, right?

That right there was the beginning of my end.

I felt like it was my fault.

I didn't love her enough.

I wasn't, I wasn't.

She knew I wasn't connected to her, and, and she, and she left because of me, right?

So now, like I'm, forget drinking.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I'm going hard now.

Like I, I couldn't even be trusted to go to the store.

I, I was just disappearing week after week, getting high in DC.

You know, I saw, at the end of the road, I saw my face on the news as a missing person, right?

I didn't want to feel it.

I didn't want to face it.

And then I'm married to him.

Only reason why I married him was because of her, and she's gone.

Right?

So, um, almost a year to the day I, um, I walked into treatment center and asked for help.

Right?

I went from the crack house to the treatment because I knew if I went home, I had been gone for a month.

That's when I saw myself on the news and, um, and I went from, I went to the $10 store.

I had some money and I bought clothes, and I went to treatment, right, I smoked all the way to the door.

JOE: I walked the streets.

The second day I got out of the treatment center, I started walking the streets with bottles of water and asking people if I could help 'em.

I learned that service to my fellow human, created some kind of self-acceptance of myself while being acceptant by the people who were most down on their luck.

And to be in that environment and to feel so much love from somebody who's a complete and total stranger, just because you're reaching out your hand and offer 'em a water, you're giving them some kind of feeling of I can make it.

My life is that reality can be some of the darkest gloomiest places in the world.

But if you learn to accept it for the moment that it is and move on from it and explore how much that pain could bring joy to others, you'll realize why you were in that point in your life.

ASHLEY: I had been homeless.

I, jobless, carless, eating out of dumpsters, um, stealing everything from not only my family, but strangers.

And I became unrecognizable, obviously not only physically, but I knew I hadn't been raised this way to do the things that I was doing.

But yet at the same time, I didn't know how to stop.

And I always say, like at my end, I can remember, um, I just wanted to die because I had just, I didn't know that people got well.

I didn't know that recovery was a thing.

I had never met a single person that I knew of that was in recovery, and I knew the damage that I was doing.

And again, I just, I didn't think that people like me could ever possibly have a life after the things I had done, the person that I had become, that-that just... it wouldn't be possible.

So, I had at one point really made peace with that.

I was going to die a junkie, and, um, that I was, I was okay with it.

LaTONIA: So I walked in the door and a lady came in from H and I, and it was so weird, right, cause I still wasn't convinced that recovery was going to work for me, right?

But this lady came in, and she was from my neighborhood, and, um, she, she mentioned the same corner.

She was talking about a house on that corner, and I knew those people, right?

And I was like, she really is from my corner.

But she was put together.

She had just, um, graduated with a master's degree, and, um, she was about to buy a house.

I'm like, well, maybe it's not over for me.

I was committed, you know, I was committed.

By the time I got to a year clean, if someone would've handed me a Heineken, I would've punched him in the throat, you know?

There was no way I was going to hand back all the blessings that I had achieved in that one year.

By being here so long, the biggest blessing that I have is just to be able to watch so many lights come on, right?

To be able to see a new person walk in the door, feeling the same way I did when I came in here, not sure I wanted to be here, not sure I could do it, and then watch them build into the human beings that they they, they, they, they become, you know, and be able to be a part of that.

To be able to assist a person and find their true, authentic selves is one of the greatest gifts of recovery.

CINDY: I never imagined that life could be this good for me.

You know, and, in 1997, I guess after I had about six months clean, I decided, you know what?

This is what I want to do.

I want to be able to give back, and I want to be able to help people, and I want to be able to help people that are just like me.

And, um, you know, I, I get a little emotional because when, you know, I reflect back on where I come from, I mean, we're talking 11 years old with needles in my arm, you know, homeless and hopeless on the street to somebody that was able to, like, go back to school and, you know, get degrees, and I got letters behind my name and I became a clinician, and I started to work in the field of substance abuse and mental health, which I've been doing for 26 years.

ASHLEY: Recovery has given me a life because I wasn't really living before I found recovery.

I felt like I was always just existing and my life today because I stopped using drugs and alcohol has changed so much.

So, when I talked about as a kid never finding that connection and never, you know, finding my place in the world, um, I found it in recovery.

DESIREE: I'm a woman who lives with integrity, and I never thought that could be my story, being a person with integrity and dignity and self-respect, but I, I live that way truly.

I've gone through hardships in recovery.

One of the biggest things that I've gone through is losing my sister.

I lost my sister June, 2023 to the disease of addiction.

I'm really grateful that I was clean at the time that happened, and I stayed clean through that.

CINDY: I'm not perfect.

I fall short a lot.

I'm human.

I make mistakes.

Yes, I have wonderful assets that I've, you know, that I've gotten and that I've learned about myself, and I've learned to love myself through the years, you know, but I still have a lot of defects of character.

But you know what?

I'm human, and, and I'm a much better person today than I ever, than I ever was before.

You know, recovery, for me, is spending time with my grandchildren.

Recovery, for me, is spending time with my boyfriend.

Recovery, for me, is spending time with my deaf dog.

Recovery, for me, is getting up in the morning and not have to worry about where I'm going to get a bag of dope from.

Who am I going to rob?

Who am I going to manipulate?

Who am I going to steal from?

What, what am I... Am I going to have to prostitute myself?

What am I going to have to do today just to be able to get out the gate to get well?

DESIREE: I choose not to be a victim.

They said victims don't recover in recovery.

So, I had to let go of that victim mentality.

I've also sought outside help.

Recovery isn't end-all, be-all, or hasn't been the end all be all.

I've made a decision to seek outside help and go to therapy and work on healing the trauma that I had felt inside while also not using it to fuel my addiction.

I take charge of my life from going from the broken person I once was to the woman that I've become.

I can't help but feel excited and, really genuinely grateful.

How I live is in gratitude.

I wake up and I'm grateful that I don't have to use to feel okay.

I don't have to use to not be sick.

How can I not be grateful for something like that?

EMMANUEL: With resentment being one of the major obstacles to recovery and getting long-term abstinence from drugs and alcohol, the answer is actually pretty simple but people look past it every time.

And that's forgiveness.

People with resentments don't want forgiveness, they want justice.

And as long as people hold out for justice, they won't get past their resentment.

It will never go away.

We say all the time, forgive and forget.

You might not always forget, but I promise you will never forget until you forgive.

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is I am an opiate addict; can I still drink alcohol?

And the answer to that is a short, "No, you can't."

And here's why.

Alcohol reduces inhibitions.

Inhibitions are the very things that keep an addict from not using their drug of choice.

So, if I lower my inhibitions, I'm more likely to take a risk as do something that I wouldn't do if I wasn't under the influence of alcohol.

Anyone whose every had a couple drinks in them knows what happens to your inhibitions under the influence of alcohol.

So, if I'm a recovering opiate addict and I want to stay clean and sober, I need my inhibitions in place.

TRAVIS: You know, and life was always like that.

Like, I don't know if I was born an addict, but after the first hit an addict was born.

You know, the miracle isn't that I didn't, didn't shoot dope today.

The miracle is that not one time did I think it would be a good idea.

ANNOUNCER: Major underwriting for this program was made possible by... Michael Silberman and Family.

Because every story deserves hope.

(cheers) And is produced in cooperation with... Behavioral Health System Baltimore... works with partners across Baltimore City to support the emotional health and wellness of individuals, families, and communities, by ensuring they have access to services and resources to thrive.

More at BHSBaltimore.org.

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