Recovery is possible. Addiction does not have to define someone’s future, and people…

This last part may be difficult for me to get through, but it matters that I say it. There are many faces, backgrounds, stories, people in different walks of life and reasons for addiction. I know this because I am one of those faces. I am one of those walks of life. I am a recovered addict. I fell into addiction in high school. It starts as fun and escaped from reality, good times with friends, and then it turns into something very different. It becomes your life. It steals from you, you burn bridges, and you make choices that trap you in the life of continued trauma. No one talks about the dark side of addiction. Those choices, the self-harm, the trap houses, the abusers of vulnerability, the realities of the life of addiction. I was young. I was vulnerable. I had my own trauma. And then one day, while I was in one of those trap houses, I was looking around and I thought to myself, what am I doing? What is this life? What is my future? What's next? Death? That's when I decided to change. When I was in addiction, my mom showed me tough love. While I was in active addiction, I was not allowed at home. But she always checked in on me. She always knew where I was and she would make me go for coffees or go for Sunday dinners at Nana and Grandpa's house. And every time she checked in on me, she would always plant a seed. When are you going to school? When are you going to school? So the very first thing I did when I got through detox was march up to my mom's office. She worked for the Waterloo region her entire career and at the time she was at 99 Regina. And I went into her office and I said, Mom, I need a Conestoga College book. I applied for early childhood education, radio, broadcast, and television, or mechanical engineering, specializing in robotics and automation. I literally had no idea what I wanted to do next. I just knew I wanted to do something different.