My work is an amazing gift that helps me remember why I’m choosing to be in recovery.
I came to treatment at Rimrock for my addiction to methamphetamine and alcohol. I started using at a very young age, around fifteen. I went down a really dark path pretty fast.
By the time I turned twenty, I had run out of answers. I was traveling out of state in Chicago for work and had gone out with friends and decided to try and find the best high. When I finally came to, nobody knew where I was. My parents had called the police, and I had been gone for over a day. So, at that point I realized with my addiction, it was either going to lead to death or I needed to do something different. Before that happened, I had never even thought about wanting to be sober. But that really woke me up. To look in the mirror and not recognize yourself makes you realize things have to change.
My addiction really, really hurt my family. I recently talked to my older sister and asked her what that looked like because we had never really talked about it that much. And, it destroyed her. She told me she completely cut me out of her life because she couldn’t watch me killing myself. I remember my mom was at her wits end and she just couldn’t take it anymore. And I just remember sitting in front of the door and crying, begging her not to leave me. The insanity of what I was doing was just so incredibly selfish and painful.
My family knew I needed treatment and so they started doing research and looking at different facilities, and Rimrock was at the top, so that’s where we decided I should go. That was really really hard. When I decided to go to treatment, I didn’t know any sober people. I didn’t have sober friends. I didn’t want sober friends. I didn’t like sober people. All the sober people I did know I had pushed out of my life.
I went into treatment thinking, “Okay… Yeah, I know I’m going to have to quit drugs, but maybe they’re going to teach me how to drink like a normal person.” And, I remember throughout my stay it was like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t do any of this because if I drink, then I’m just going to go back to using drugs.” And I didn’t want to die. Rimrock saved my life.
When I got out, I had to call all my friends and say, “You know, hey, I’m going to be sober and if we’re going to hang out, I need you to be sober too.” And, I didn’t really end up really having any friends. So, I really had to dive into where sober people are, which is AA. That was a really humbling experience to go from knowing all these people to not having a lot of support. But, I realized that making that choice and changing absolutely everything was what I had to do to be successful. That meant of letting go of going out with friends and going to the bars. My twenty-first birthday was my first sober birthday, which was awesome. I loved it!
Now, I’m an outpatient counselor at Rimrock and I do assessments in addition to our level-one continuing care. I feel like without my recovery, I wouldn’t even be a counselor. My recovery helps me to connect with people on a very real level because I am not any different than they are. And, for them to be able to walk into Rimrock and have someone sit there and listen to them with compassion and love and understanding and say, “Hey, I get it. Like, this is not you. You are not your choices, you’re not your addiction.” It’s just an amazing gift that helps me remember every single day why I’m choosing to be in recovery
There is always, always hope. It is never ever too late to change, to get treatment, and to try and live a different way. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone. There is always something that can that can change. We are not our addiction. I am not my addiction. I may have made some really horrible choices in my addiction, but that’s not who I am and that’s not who they are. It is never, ever too late and there are always going to be people who will show up. To be a part of the ongoing mission of Rimrock and providing the chance for recovery is just the most amazing gift in the whole entire world.
For me, Rimrock is recovery.
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