Let's Freaking Live! - Melissa's Story - Finding Addiction Recovery Before 20

Melissa England, CADC • Aug 07, 2024

About Me

I'm Mel, an addictions counselor, health and wellness coach, and a recovery coach with a profound personal and professional commitment to transformation. Sobriety has given me over 12 years of living a life I once couldn't imagine—a life filled with hope, happiness, and achievement. Once struggling with addiction, I have redefined my identity from addict and felon to a resilient, successful wife and mother. Today, I am passionate about empowering others to rewrite their stories, offering the tools and support needed to build fulfilling lives free from addiction. It doesn't matter how long it takes, new life can begin at sobriety.


My Story


Recovery means to me “building, maintaining and living a life that you no longer NEED to use drugs to make it through the day”. I have been sober for 12 and a half years and something I have learned is that getting sober is an opportunity to live a completely different life. A life you can look forward to living. The terms that I used to associate or describe myself were addict, felon, loser, thief, estranged from family and failure. The more recent terms I have thought to myself are sober AND happy about it, wife, determined, strong, resilient, successful and mom.


You can change the narrative, you can build a whole new you! I have built a life that the old me could never have dreamed of. Now I help others achieve the same, as an addictions counselor, health and wellness coach, and recovery coach I am ready to help you when you build your recovered life too.


I tend to think of my childhood in the sense of “the before” and then “the after”. The “before” childhood was happy. My father, mother, little brother and I went on family vacations, had dinner at the kitchen table every night, had rules and structure and was stable. We lived a typical suburban NJ family life.


This was before my mother passed away from a slow, sad death from cancer. The “after” childhood never looked the same again. My family crumbled. My father is from another country and the cultural barrier without my American mother to mitigate only propelled us further apart.


My father's previously low-key alcoholism spiraled out of control and my brother, and I were left to fend for ourselves. I easily fell into the comfort of the “wrong” crowd at school. Started experimenting with drugs like marijuana, ecstasy, prescription anxiety medications and cocaine.


It wasn't until I found and started taking my mother’s leftover pain medication that my habits soared to a new level of use and eventually addiction. I started to get in trouble and spent most of my high school years in and out of hospitals and rehabs. I was young so the options for treatment were limited.

Eventually the pills ran out and heroin was the next step. Heroin was my life, I didn't do anything else but wake up, use, find ways to use more, go to bed and repeat.


Once I started with heroin there was no stopping and eventually, I was expelled from school for refusing to complete anymore treatment. This only accelerated my use as I had nothing else to do, no adult supervision, and no other goals in life.


Then I started selling drugs to fuel my habit. During this time, my little brother eventually followed me into the drug life, who unfortunately until this day remains battling his demons. After I turned 18, I started to acquire criminal charges and a couple arrests which eventually led to a yearlong investigation and a raid.

This final arrest is where everything finally changed. I was finally given very serious consequences, jail time and a criminal record. I went to rehab for the last time and ended up being clean for my 20th birthday, and every birthday since.


Over the last 12.5 years I have achieved things I never thought possible for myself. Number one being not only sobriety but finding extreme happiness as a sober person. I'm married, my husband is also in recovery, and we have two beautiful children together. I went back to school and obtained my credentials in alcohol and drug counseling in the state of NJ. I am also a health and wellness coach. Currently I'm in the process of furthering education in both fields. My mission is to be able to provide a whole self-health approach from addictions to whole self-wellness. Getting sober reminds me there is no timeline on what you can achieve in life, life starts when you start living it.


Now let's freaking live!

Worth the Wait: Megan's Path to Lasting Addiction Recovery and Purpose

By Megan Miller, CAC • 29 Oct, 2024
I grew up full of fear. Everything terrified me. I never felt comfortable in my own skin. It wasn’t until I started smoking pot at 14—because I was too afraid to stand up to peer pressure—that I finally felt a sense of freedom and relaxation for the first time. I chased that high for the next 16 years. Somehow, I managed to graduate college with an OxyContin addiction, and after that, with nothing tethering me to the real world, things got a lot worse. I went to detox for the first of many times in 2005. I left there thinking I wasn’t an addict and that my use had just gotten out of control. That denial kept me in and out of treatment for the next decade. Heroin became my entire life. I couldn’t hold a job, I overdosed, I got Hepatitis C from sharing needles, and I didn’t care about anything except getting high. I was so full of shame at what my life had become, but I just couldn’t stop. I was great at trying to stop, but I couldn’t stay stopped. The gift of desperation came to me in April 2012. I couldn’t keep living the way I was. I finally wanted to live instead of die. That compulsion to use left me when I finally surrendered to it. Today, I wake up grateful for the life I have. My 6-year-old daughter is the greatest joy of my life, and she has never seen me use. Today, with the support of my wonderful husband, my family, and my recovery network, I live a full life of joy and purpose. There is no more rewarding feeling in the world than sharing the gift of recovery with others.

Overdose Awareness Day: A Reflection on Hope and Recovery

By Dave Aumiller, CPS, NCPRSS • 03 Sep, 2024
Overdose. It’s a word that catches in my throat and a topic that stops me in my tracks. As a person in long-term recovery from Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and Substance Use Disorder (SUD), I have overdosed many times. I have been revived by paramedics three times. Waking up in a hospital bed with no idea how I got there—scared. Or in the back of an ambulance, sick and angry for being Narcaned, a crazed hostage of my addicted mind. Or in a front yard, soaking wet from someone throwing me in a cold shower, unsuccessfully trying to revive me before leaving me outside—confused. These experiences don’t account for the countless times I have overdosed and been revived by a concerned party—now scarred by the trauma of my disease in its final stage, trying to carry out its final act, resulting in an untimely death. Overdose. After all of this, it was the kindness and care of others that made the difference between another chance and another day. Another dose of hope and life. An opportunity to begin again. On a day like today, reflecting on a topic that is so close to the heart of everyone connected to this reality, I am grateful. I am hopeful. I am humble. Because I know how lucky I am. How undeserving I was. And I live my amends and gratitude by doing my best to embody and live the values of a recovery that works. I also keep close to my heart, at the forefront of my mind, and on the tip of my tongue, the names of the countless others who weren’t as lucky as I. In honor of Overdose Awareness Day, I will say the names of my friends who weren’t fortunate enough to receive as many chances as I did, and I will live in their names—sober today and willing to extend a hand to anyone who needs it in their journey to recover and spread hope to both the sufferer and the caregiver.  Today, let us remember those we have lost, cherish the moments we have been given, and continue to fight for a future where overdose is a distant memory. Together, we can make a difference. Together, we can spread hope.

Overdose Awareness Day: Survivor's Guilt Transformed into Hope

By Shannon Schwoeble, CPS • 29 Aug, 2024
I was devastated when I heard that another close friend I'd made in treatment was gone. Seven friends in my first six months—two had come into treatment, left, and passed away while I was still there. In the years that followed, many others who had walked this path alongside me were lost as well. Nine in my first year of recovery. I found myself asking, "Why am I still here? Why didn’t they ‘get it’?"  Survivor’s guilt was not something I expected to experience in recovery. It hit me hard and fast when I began my journey in 2011. I was terrified. I would sit and think about friends I had just seen or spoken to—did they seem different? Did they sound off? I was so scared of who I would lose next. Through my work with a therapist and finding my own voice, I learned to transform my survivor's guilt into hope. I realized that by using my voice, sharing my story, saying their names, and talking about the profound impact each of them had on me—in life and in death—I could help others understand that recovery is possible. Perhaps, something I share will give someone struggling a glimmer of hope that they, too, can find recovery. On Overdose Awareness Day, August 31, we remember and honor those we've lost to this devastating disease. In loving memory of Ben, Pat, Krista, Harry, Christina, Brook, Dustin, Jeff, Jamie, and everyone we have lost—you are remembered and loved, today and every day.
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