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  My mind was caught up at the same time with thoughts about the drug party. Nothing could shake that as my secure place that I wanted to get to no matter what. I never got there. I was given two options by the counselors: go to residential treatment now, or choose to go camping with my mom and Bob. I chose to go camping and let this whole thing sink in. I had agreed to enter the residential house on the condition I could finish up my last days of school, where I knew I could at least party with my friends before disappearing. I partied all night at Robert’s house after I finished my classes. We were back to speaking because I’d go back to him when I needed drugs, but then I got to a place where I had no way to tell him what was about to happen for me. I was about to be gone for six weeks at the residential house, so I told him that I would be on vacation and would call him when I got back. He drilled me, like always. Where was I going? Why? There was no way that I could tell him I was going to treatment because I knew if I had let him, Robert could have talked me out of it. My glimmer of hope led me in good directions when it was encouraged by people that wanted me to get well. Robert wasn’t one of those people. I woke up from partying with him with a horrible hangover and just tried to keep myself busy, packing for inpatient, so I didn’t have to completely freak out and shut down.

  It felt kind of good when the counselor actually came to my house to take me to treatment. That personal connection made the counselors at the twelve-step center different from other counselors I’d known. I felt very much taken care of, and it calmed my nerves some. I was taken to a group session when I arrived at the residential house and met the two other housemates who were admitted to the house. The house held ten beds that were given to five girls and five boys. Over the next few days a roommate joined me, and that helped to make me feel more comfortable. She seemed so much like me. We were both regular girls that just liked to get high too much. We went to group with everyone else in the house, and it was a very intense experience. We covered everything from our stories of using to our beliefs about God to learning about honesty to connecting to our fears. There was no rock left unturned. The group would often focus on one of us at a time while the others listened and gave input. I was given a nickname I loved, “Fireball.” I was becoming the spunky, outspoken, fiery redhead I remembered I was around these people. The name made me proud! Everyone knew who they were talking about when the name was mentioned.

  I had a hard time being totally honest, even with these people that clearly cared for me. We were asked how much sobriety each of us had, to give ourselves the best chance possible to achieve total sobriety. I, of course, stuck to my story of several weeks sober that I usually told when anyone would ask. I would just make a number up off the top of my head. My group saw straight through my lie and called me on it. One session became focused on trying to get me to be honest about my real length of sobriety. All I knew about being confronted at that time was that it felt threatening, which made me feel like I couldn’t back down. I felt like I would lose all the credibility that I had just barely started to build in my life if I didn’t go head to head with the counselor. I thought what would happen if I became honest was that the people in my group would never ever be able to trust me again.

  There is so much shame attached to addiction. When I wouldn’t get honest with my group, it was just my disease trying to deceive me again into thinking that I didn’t have a disease. I was a long way from believing I could ever be accepted for what I was. My coping skills told me to put up my walls, give them attitude, run, and try to get high. So that is exactly what I did. I waited until the evening meeting. When I saw there were other group members I could lose myself between I disappeared out a side door with my phone book in hand and didn’t look back. I decided that it probably wouldn’t be smart if I went to the pay phone just a few yards away on the corner, so I decided to walk down the street a little ways to a more discreet phone. I was a few hundred feet away from the phone booth when a car pulled up next to me and out jumped a couple of counselors. Again, they were drawing me in as I was trying to force them to reject me or get them to kick me out.

  I was busted but surprised enough that they would come find me, and the counselors kept showing up, one after another, each one taking a turn to intervene and try to reach me. As I sat on the back tailgate of one counselor’s truck, I just kept chain-smoking and clenching my phone book tightly. I wasn’t willing to get honest, and I knew that I couldn’t go back for the long haul unless I became willing to get honest. I would call someone as soon as the counselors left and I’d get away. Next thing I knew, up drove a black Mercedes Benz. The passenger door flew open and out stepped the founder of the program, which stunned me. His words were pretty harsh. He obviously wasn’t happy that I had taken off, and he threw it in my face that I was tossing away what might be my last chance to get this right. He asked me if I would go back and give it at least twenty-four more hours. This I agreed to do. I surrendered my phone book filled with drug connections and the numbers of my party friends.

  The next day group was the same old story. It was a full-court press to get me honest. I was confronted about my length of sobriety and was still too scared and nervous to actually tell the truth or admit I had lied, so I kept to my original story. After a couple of hours of being grilled and probed I became furious, just like I had before, and decided I had had enough and was going to leave. The counselor pointed toward the door and told me that I was free to go. My head spun. What? This question turned to whatever. As I walked out the door, I could feel all eyes on the back of my head, and as I stepped outside, I was faced with the fact that I was alone. I had turned my back on people trying to help me, but I had just wanted to get out of there, and that’s when I realized I had signed up to figure out my next move in life on my own. Right off, I was going to call Steve. The problem was, I had only a few of my belongings and was absolutely broke. It was like being stuck out with Christy with our tin of coins. I ended up resorting to nickels and dimes again. I asked the first guy I came across if he had a quarter that I could borrow so that I could make a phone call, hoping desperately that he wouldn’t tell me no.

  The guy didn’t hesitate to pull the change from his pocket. He fished out two quarters and reached to hand them to me. “Why don’t you take them both; you might need the extra one.” How generous, I thought as I headed back to the pay phone. I put his first quarter in and dialed Steve’s number, but before I could say hello, the phone was hung up. I turned around to see who had ended my call and was surprised to see a fellow group member, his finger holding down the receiver. I was overcome with confusion and then anger. This guy was actually trying to stop me again, making it impossible for me to get the heck out of Dodge. I screamed at him, “What do you think you’re doing?” He then proceeded to tell me that I was making a big mistake and that I shouldn’t leave. That just made me surer than ever that I needed to get away. Soon he realized that nothing was going to make me stick around, and he took off. I let out a sigh of relief when I realized that I still had the second quarter. By then I would have fought off anyone who even thought about hanging up my phone call.

  I called Steve’s house. He picked up and asked if I had just called and hung up on him. I told him I had, but that it was a very long story, and I asked him if he could come and get me. As I waited for Steve to show, I started to feel very uneasy because at any moment counselors might swarm me and try to get me to decide I wanted to go back to group. I wasn’t surprised when this happened. My group counselor came walking around the corner, clearly searching for me. I had to do something quickly, before Steve arrived, that much was for sure. He didn’t know I had been at the residential house, and that was the way I wanted it to stay. It was a huge embarrassment for me to be there at that time. I didn’t want all my friends sitting around getting high, talking about how I ended up not being able to handle it in the end. I grew more nervous as my counselor approached me, feeling very unsure of what was going to happen, but nothing really did. The c
ounselor looked me dead in the eyes at that point. “I love you and I hope you don’t die,” she said. The counselor hugged me and turned around, and then she walked off and didn’t look back.

  I can remember so vividly that when Steve finally pulled up after that, I was in complete disbelief. He arrived in his aunt’s car and was wearing these sunglasses that had a picture of a marijuana leaf on the front corner of them. This at least confirmed for me that I had made the right decision about whom to call. All I wanted to do was get high anyway. I jumped in the car without hesitation, and we headed off to his house to party. Steve got me high, and we spent the rest of that afternoon smoking joint after joint. The whole time I heard my counselor’s voice in my head saying, “I love you and I hope you don’t die.” The sound of her voice and the words began to kill my high, and the higher I got to try to forget, the more depressed I became, and the more I wanted to die. After hours of sitting there it started to sink in that this death wish was all I had. Unless I did something to change it, this would be my life, day in and day out. All my life would be doing nothing and then getting high, getting high and then doing nothing. I finally spilled my guts to Steve and told him the whole truth about where I had disappeared to. Then I got up off the floor and told him, “I know I have to go back.”

  The bottom line was that I didn’t set out to have a crappy life—no one does—but I was born into a legacy of family addiction that I didn’t know I could choose to change. I had walked away from the best thing that probably had ever happened to me. When I realized that I had, I chose to walk myself back.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE TRANSFORMATION

  I HAD STEVE take me to my mother’s house after I chose to go back to the residential house. I had a few hours before the next group meeting and used the time to explain to my mother and Bob that I had run away from group but that I truly had a desire to try again. While I was waiting for my meeting to roll around, there was a huge battle in my head. My addiction was still fighting for its life, while the rest of me, which had decided to hope, was ready to experience the feelings of my real life. When I arrived at the coffee shop, my counselor asked me to explain to my fellow housemates why I had left and why I wanted to come back. At this point I knew that if I stood any chance of them allowing me back, I would have to get honest about my real length of sobriety. To their knowledge I had ten days sober, which was the truth at that time, but that was before I had run away with Steve and got high. This was my last chance, so I told them that I had ten days sober even though that was a lie, because it was as close to honest as I was capable of being.

  I was paranoid that I might not be let back in if the group knew I had relapsed that very same day. After I pleaded my case I was asked to step out of the room. It was up to the group whether I was going to be allowed to return. I paced back and forth, fully feeling like the decision they were making was a life or death one for me. When they called me back in, I was greeted with hugs from every group member and counselor, welcoming me back. I hadn’t come completely clean with them, but it was the closest to the truth that I had come in a very long time. I spent the next weeks in group, listening, talking, and arguing. I began to go through a process to change my old ways of thinking and to evaluate my decision-making skills as they had functioned in the past so I could learn new tools to help me make better decisions to stay sober in the future. This process included taking a closer look at the people that had been in my life. I came to the conclusion that they were all there for the same reason: so I could use them either for drugs or for getting loaded. This included everyone from my best friends to acquaintances to even my own boyfriend, when I had dated Robert. I realized that there was no one in my life, no one that I had surrounded myself with, that I could count on to understand the place I had reached.

  At the very bottom, transformation only happens at the moment the pain becomes extreme. Nobody I knew at that time could have understood I was at the end of my using, whether that meant getting sober or pushing myself to die an addict. I was choosing to use the pain I felt at the bottom to work my way back up to a normal life. I could have transformed myself in death just as easily by choosing to let the bottom drop out when I hit it and then freefall until my life ended. But to live and do the opposite now meant I had to completely surround myself with new people who didn’t get high, didn’t drink, and were sober. Because I didn’t have the tools yet or the willpower to say no, it was crucial that I cut ties with everyone who could or would enable me to use. During inpatient treatment I wrote a number of letters cutting ties with people that I knew I couldn’t have in my life. One of the hardest letters for me to write was to Robert. As far as he knew I was still on vacation.

  The letter I wrote Robert was very short and blunt and gave no details of my whereabouts. I had a good idea that it would not be the last contact that I would have with him if I were to tell him where I was, knowing that he would want more answers than those that I gave him in the letter. Also while in inpatient I received a letter from my father. It was postmarked from the Yavapai County jail, where he had been locked up following a third conviction for driving under the influence. I knew everything the letter was going to say before I even opened it. By then I distrusted his promises. I guess you could say that I was not surprised or even excited to read all the empty vows to me that things were really going to be different this time. The letter read: Dear Lauren & Ryan,

  How are you kids doing? I wrote you a couple of weeks ago but I haven’t heard from you. I was hoping you’d write. I’d like to hear from you. I miss you very much. I hope you’re not mad at me for anything. I know I haven’t done right by you in the past but I’ve changed. I’ve been in classes and counseling for seven weeks now and I’m feeling good about my progress. I’ve come to an understanding that I can’t drink ever again. I’m working on my attitude and trying to deal with feelings and emotions that I’ve hid from you and others and most of all myself. It’s very hard to realize one’s faults and problems. To admit I have a problem and take action to fix the problem is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I will make it and get through it a better man and father for it.

  I want to be your dad again. To spend good times together. I want to be able to help you with your problems and you can help me with mine. I hope that when I get out in August and I get settled that you can come and visit me. I’d like to set up some kind of regular schedule for phone calls and visits with you. We need to spend more time together. We need to get to know each other again. I don’t want us to get any further apart. We’re family and we need to be close. I need to be close to you. I’m not the same man or dad you knew. I think you’ll like me.

  Well kids I have to go. I’ve got a counseling session that I need and don’t want to miss. So please write me and tell me how you are and what you’re doing. I love you both very much. And I’ll make you proud of me.

  Love, Dad

  This was just one more thing for me to bring up in group so I could get support for my emotions instead of getting high to make them disappear. I was learning to make new decisions about who to keep in my world. Was I going to start any type of relationship with my father once he was out of prison? Part of me didn’t want to believe him that anything would ever change, because I didn’t know if I could handle being hurt by him once again. This led me to realize why my addiction was such a powerful illness. I had been using it to numb my feelings, so I didn’t have to feel the pain. This was nothing new for a person in my family. I was so much like my father was at that time and what my mother used to be. It was through her family that she learned that addictions held this power. It was realistic to ask if I would be able to stay sober even if my father didn’t, and that brought me pain. With the help of my counselors, I was able to sit down and write my father a letter about these thoughts. I let him know that I was also trying out sobriety and that it was important for me to surround myself with sober people. I told him I would love for him to be in my life if he
was able to stay sober. At the end of the letter I wished him luck and told him that I loved and missed him so much.

  Once I wrote the letter, part of me became very excited. I thought that maybe this was a new beginning, not just for me, but for my whole family. At this point I needed optimism as a way to look forward to and be excited about life. It opened new doors in my imagination. I tried to fathom what it would be like if my father were sober. My whole life, I barely ever saw him this way. I came to the realization that I couldn’t imagine my father sober because I had no clue what type of person my father was without his alcohol, and he had no clue what type of person I was without my addictions. If we did reconnect, we were going to have to get to know each other all over again.

  In group therapy I was making progress but continued challenging some of the concepts the counselors were trying to teach me. In day-to-day life, the choices they recommended seemed so difficult to make. They told me that I had to change three things in my life: people, places, and things. To imagine changing all this was the same as giving up everything I knew. I fought against changing so much all at once. I had let Robert know that I didn’t want to see him, but my head told me that I could handle being around my other friends that used because I just wouldn’t go back to using. I felt loyalty to these friends, and I couldn’t grasp the concept of turning my back on people that I had known for years just because some counselor I had known for two weeks told me to. Over time it became obvious I was wrong. The one thing that I had never tried before in my life was to change my circle of friends. Even during the time I had been involved in the youth group at my church, when I tried promises to God and to myself that I would change, I refused to hang out with anyone who didn’t get high.