My recovery began about 12 years ago when I began processing the idea that I wanted to quit using. The roads that idea led me down brought me to a complete dead end. It was at that dead end that my recovery began. On June 3rd , 1999, after 10 days of around the clock drinking, I picked up the phone and called a mental health facility seeking help. After a few hours of talking I decided to call the local police for a ride to the hospital. That, in itself, was humiliating because they cuffed me and put me in the back seat. At the hospital I had to enter the emergency room cuffed. I was in the emergency room all day. The on call doctor was one who knew me and when he heard that I had suffered alcohol-induced seizures he admitted me. I was hospitalized for 4 days where I detoxed medically.

My journey of difficulty wasn't over. I'd been homeless for 7 months and hospitalized several times for suicidal ideations. I went from the medical hospital back to the mental hospital because I'd spoken of wanting to die when I was on the phone with the mental health facility. The social worker at the mental hospital put me in contact with Marathon House of Keene. I was accepted and I began the real process of recovery there. I learned a lot and got much needed support. The difference for me was that for the first time in my life I wanted recovery. From Marathon House I went to Keystone in Nashua. There my education towards recovery continued. Because of the limitations of my back problem, I could not apply for the TLC program but my counselor helped me to get into Mary's House in Nashua, a 40 unit transitional housing program for women in the city. Because I'd been away from my hometown for too long I'd run out of my medication and even though I finally had the first housing I'd had in a year I fell into a terrible depression. I had nothing in my studio apartment but a bed and a small table and I had nothing to do. I was looking at 3 days jail for my last DWI and I didn't want to live.

On the 13 th of October I awoke in the worst of depressions. I hadn't been able to sleep for more than a few hours in weeks. My first thought was that I was going to find the liquor store, buy a half gallon of vodka and find a bridge to jump from. But I had listened and learned from my stays in the two facilities and I picked up the phone and called my counselor at Keystone. She made a call to the building manager who in turn came to my room and stayed with me while a call was placed to the Crisis Center. In a few hours a crisis interventionist showed up. We talked for a while and it was decided that I should go into the center. I was there for 2 weeks where my medication was reintroduced, increased and a new one was added. I got plugged in with a therapist and regular visits with a psychiatrist.

Upon returning home, I began my plans for getting my few belongings from my sons. I called the court to reschedule my time in jail and began attending AA regularly. Today I have turned my little space into a warm, comfortable, bright, colorful place to be. I've put things in motion to get housing and I'm seeking employment. I am now the secretary for my home group and have made many friends both in and out of the program. Things haven't always gone smoothly since I put down my drinking but today I know that that's the way life is and that I must resolve my problems not run from them. I drank to escape a lot of pain. Today I'm examining the origins of that pain because I never want to go back to the horrors that alcohol took me to. I lost everything from drinking and I almost lost the most valuable possession of all - my life.

Recovery isn't easy, nor do I think it should be, for only by learning to live life on life's terms and seeking the divine love of our Higher Power, can we experience the joy of success!