Mary: I Found My Way Back

I was the girl people expected to make it.

I was a straight-A student. I was accepted to Yale with hopes of becoming an attorney. I was a first violinist in local philharmonics and symphonies. I played sports, danced, and studied abroad in Japan. Growing up in Norwalk, I had dreams bigger than anything I was facing at the time. From the outside, I looked like a young woman with promise, direction, and every reason to succeed. Then, at 17, in a moment of vulnerability, I was introduced to heroin.

It was handed to me under the guise of being a crushed pill, which were not completely unfamiliar to me. I had suffered sports injuries before and been prescribed pain meds. But that one moment became the line between the life everyone thought I would live and the life I would spend years trying to survive.

People like to believe addiction looks obvious. Like it announces itself before it destroys you. Mine did not. It came into the life of a girl with talent, dreams, and family who loved her. It came in quietly, then took everything loudly.

Before long, I no longer recognized myself. I was caught in a cycle of toxic relationships, dangerous friendships, unsafe situations, and trying to numb pain that kept getting bigger than the drugs themselves. I was the girl being supplied by a drug dealer who would later tell on me for selling the same drugs he put in my hands.

One summer, I was arrested six times in four months. Six times. And not once was I connected to treatment. Not once was I offered real services or meaningful support. My family wasn’t given a roadmap either. They loved me, but they didn’t know where to turn. They were scared that asking for help would make things worse or get me into more trouble. So we all kept trying to survive something none of us had the tools to understand.

That is one of the parts of my story that still stays with me.

There were so many opportunities for someone to intervene, and instead I kept being pushed deeper into the system.

My addiction eventually led me into drug dealing and a federal conspiracy case. I was arrested by the DEA and sent to prison. The first prison I ever entered was York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Connecticut. I will never forget walking in as a young woman carrying years of addiction, shame, fear, and survival in my body. All while recognizing, I didn’t belong here. While incarcerated, I was offered the first treatment program I ever attended – 8 years into my addiction. I was eventually sentenced to time served and a term of supervision, but I was still too broken to fully grasp it. My addiction led me to violate probation, and I ended up back in prison.

That violation became the beginning of the end of my addiction. My sobriety date was my first day back in prison at Wyatt Detention Center. From there, I was transferred to Cimarron Correctional Facility in Oklahoma, and I wrapped up my time at FDC Philadelphia.

By that point, I had lived through things that tested my emotional and mental health in ways drugs could no longer numb. This is what most people do not understand. At first, drugs may feel like an escape, but eventually, they stop working. The pain comes back louder, and the trauma comes back heavier. The shame becomes its own prison before you ever see a cell. And I had lived in shame far too long. 

This last time in prison, kicking my 12-year IV opiate addiction cold turkey, stripped me to my core. There was no version of myself I could perform my way back into. Just me, my choices, my consequences, my pain, and the truth of what addiction had done to my life.

I guess that was finally my rock bottom. Since 17, heroin was all I knew and wanted. It was the best feeling in the world. A seduction that takes you over mind, body, and soul, and lays you down where no pain exists. It’s like touching life’s surface so closely, but feeling the euphoria of coming back to reality, numbed… desensitized but overflowing with sensation all at the same time. I had crossed to the other side and been brought back before. Thank God for Narcan. 

Heroin was the love of my life. But how could something that felt so good cause so much pain?

My recovery didn’t start in a beautiful, inspirational moment. It was pretty horrifying. I had also been on methadone for 10 years. I felt like every tooth in my mouth would fall out and every bone in my body was going to break. Sleep became a stranger. I would just lay on the prison floor, right by the stainless-steel toilet in case I shit myself or threw up more. I had seizures and did in fact lose a couple teeth. I dropped 40 pounds in just a few weeks. 

This purge was the absolute most painful thing, both physically and emotionally, that I have ever overcome. I had no choice but to sit with the person I had become and decide whether I was going to keep dying slowly or fight like hell to live.

I just celebrated 5 years free from the grips of addiction. Recovery gave me back my voice and purpose. It gave me the ability to turn the parts of my story I once carried in shame into something that can help someone else feel less alone.

Today, I work with people impacted by addiction, incarceration, and systems that often punish pain before they understand it. I mentor women who have been counted out. I advocate for others because I know what it feels like to be judged by your worst chapter. 

I also found sisterhood in prison in a way I did not expect. I became part of it, carried it with me through my incarceration, and back home with me after. So many of the women I met were not “bad women.” They had been hurt, misled, used, or never properly guided. Many were there for crimes influenced by other people, or choices that came from low self-esteem and survival. That stayed with me. It made me realize that if we really want to see a reduction in crime, we cannot just talk about change from a distance. We must contribute to it. We must support, empower and feed hope to the people around us, especially the ones who have been made to believe they are too far gone.

Sisterhood has become very important to me because I know what it feels like to need it and to need someone to see beyond your worst chapter. Today, I strive to be the support I once needed. And in doing that, I have found that my blessings come back to me in ways I could never have planned. It really is full circle.

You can only keep what you have by giving it away.

I also know what it means to come back from places people thought would bury you.

I want to be clear – I am not proud of every part of my story. But I am incredibly proud that I survived it. 

I am proud that I got clean, came home and built a life rooted in service and purpose. The same voice of mine, once buried under addiction and shame, is now used to speak life into other people.

And if my story proves anything, it is that a person can lose themselves completely and still find their way back. While recovery does not erase my past, it gave me the strength to stop letting it control my future, and the courage to become the support for others that I once needed. 

All by the grace of God.