Podcast Transcript
hi my name is Rachel Honda from straight jacket podcast and I am Kay Lauren with straight jacket podcast and today we
have our lovely guest Vanessa with us hi Vanessa how are you doing well doing well amazing and Vanessa is has about 11
years in recovery this time she is a uh PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology
which is incredible and you’ve worked in the recovery field for 13 years 13 years
and you’re currently doing your internship hours towards my PhD while I
write my dissertation at Transformations care in La okay that seems like a really strenuous process how can you walk us
through the process of yeah well I got a master’s degree before I started my PhD
and then my PhD program included a master so I ended up getting two masters unintentionally show
[Laughter] off double mastered up on a Tuesday yeah
so I’ve been school for like the last 10 years at least right you know yeah
what’s the um how long is your PhD program or your internship so the
program’s three years of education which I completed and then two years of writing dissertation and accumulating
hours I’m very fortunate that I get to do my hours at my full-time job so I get 40 hours a week that count towards
internship so I’ll be done with my hours possibly even before I’m done with my dissertation but I’m really trying to
fast trck my dissertation so that I can just Fast Track getting my PhD right
yeah and by fast tracking it you mean writing it faster and like spending more time yeah seems like a really strenuous
coursework you know but you have a lot of personal experience that kind of assists you in this in this cour work
tell us a little bit about your early upbringing and about Vanessa yeah so I
have never met anyone who was conceived by a father as old as I was my dad was
about 60 when he and my mom had me yeah and she was 30 years younger she married
him when she was 19 and he was 47 and he was like descended from Brazilian royalty and you know he was an actor and
she wanted to be an actress but he worked for mcdonal the Old McDonald Douglas which is now Boeing and we lived
in Fountain Valley you know Suburbia but the neighbors always treated us like we were kind of different partially because
my mom was so much younger than my dad they kind of put their nose in the air for toward that and then um when my
parents split and it was just me and my three sisters in the house I remember they would put like crosses in the
window facing our house cuz they said we were witches which now I think is kind of cool but at the time I was like why
do they think that right I would feel like you’re an outcast you know yeah
well we all had lots of hair and that’s number one requirement for
being a witch is you have to have lots of hair yeah my mom like to light candles and um but yeah I had a a good
upbringing in Fountain Valley um there was a lot of mental illness and a lot of dysfunction in my family that pushed me
in school that much harder I have a half brother who went to Berkeley and a half brother who went to Stanford that were
from my dad’s first marriage and um I wanted to go to Berkeley to be like my
brother so everything I did Growing Up was like it’s going to look good on my college application and I did get into
Berkeley and unfortunately senior year I found the Rave
scene and that kind of took precedence over school and this is Circa I
graduated high school in 1995 so like Peak Rave scene Peak Rave scene like my
brain was never the same but I trade it cuz it was a special time and so by the
time I started school in uh the fall I was just completely discombobulated like
finding my classes alone was so difficult and nothing was working out for me so I was like you know what I’m
just going to get two technique 1200 turntables I’m going to be a rapper and a DJ and I’m going to be I’m just going
to do drugs and alcohol till I’m famous that is a plan yeah that’s a
career plan if I ever heard one right you know I was like Berkeley it just it wasn’t as cool as I thought it was going
to be when I got there there was a lot of racism on campus at that time which I didn’t expect to me it was like if
you’re intelligent enough to get into Berkeley how can you be racist but um there was especially with how liberal
the that area isig much controversy with affirmative
action and like um yeah there was actually bomb threats to the black
Student Union building when I was there just yeah there was a lot of weird stuff going on and I wasn’t feeling it I had
like purple hair and all these piercings and right you know I wanted to be at the
Raves yeah I did and how long did that go on for with the r you dropped out of
school then I dropped out of school yeah I dropped out of Berkeley to be in my mind a superstar DJ rapper but um just
ended up in the San Francisco Tender Loin strung out on heroin right strung out on IV heroin those are two uh
distinct different realities there can you take us to your first experience
with drug use and like how that progressed into you being at the tenderloin yeah so uh I had an eating
disorder when I was a kid I’ve always been tall I was like 5’8 when I was 12 and I’ve always and I developed young
and you know my friends still look like little girls and I developed an eating disorder which is pretty common and the
first time I took ecstasy at a rave like I looked in the mirror and was like oh my gosh I’m not fat skinny yeah and I
stopped making myself throw up and I never never did again but you know and the Ecstasy there was frequently cut
with like methamphetamine or with Heroin so it wasn’t like I hadn’t done those drugs and ecstasy you can only do so
many times until it stops working yeah and then it’s like you know pretty quickly you turn to something else for
me it was like a really hot guy with leopard print hair that got me started on heroin and I really would have done
like anything to get close to him and uh I ended up um I ended up doing it for
like a week with him but then going back home to my apartment in Oakland and not doing it again for like a year until I
got really depressed uh when I was living in downtown San Francisco and it just you
know I remembered it I met a girl who said if you smoke it you don’t get addicted which I knew better but it was
what I wanted to hear and what’s so weird is you know it made me like the skinny that I secretly had always wanted
to be very quickly and with everything that you learned in school from dare and
whatnot about heroin you would think that you know if you had the opportunity to go to Berkeley and be any you wanted
you wouldn’t want to be on heroin but it was like on heroin I was skinny yeah so
that took yeah I don’t think we connect enough how much image plays a part into
you know using because I remember when I first got sober being like I have to go
be obsessed about going to the gym because if I get fat I’m going to relapse because I know what makes me skinny and I remember having that
conversation with myself mentally and I think yeah that’s a huge thing luckily I was able to turn to like Fitness but
we’re just kind of programmed and brainwashed into skinny as you know how you get love this was the era of Kate
Moss I mean it was really it was like really like you need to be very thin to
be beautiful yep unfortunately and so I chose to be thin and um I ended up I
lost my apartment in lower Knob Hill in San Francisco and ended up in a weekly rent motel with a shared bathroom for
like 5 years with my boyfriend five years in a weekly rent motel and you’re
an full-blown active addiction at this fullblown IV heroin addiction was just like just heroin or were we sprinkling
in other I mean there was some there was some methamphetamine yeah there was some methamphetamine going on too but that I
don’t really think there was anything else at that time I was like oh no alcohol is for scumbags
but how we differentiate is so hilarious and how was your mental health around
this time that you were in I was fine um okay yeah I was fine it wasn’t until so
I had a a friend who went to Chicago and was able to get China White which back then in the 90s in San Francisco all
they had was tar and it was you know a big deal except that when it ran out like the regular tar wouldn’t get me
well and I had just moved to the hate with some friends and paid for a full month and I could never really I would
get on the methodone detox over and over again and as soon as they started dropping my my dose I’d be too sick to
go to work at the strip club and then I didn’t want to lose a place to live so I would end up using and so I finally had
a place paid for the month where I could just like go through it cuz the last time the last day that I used heroin I
remembered that I must have spent like 500 bucks and I couldn’t get well enough to go to work so I was like okay I’m
just going to go through it you know I’m finally paid somewhere I have a roof over my head for a month I’m just going to go through and it was really bad like
I remember having a couple days where I couldn’t make my mouth stopped like screaming like just nonstop for like a
couple of days you know just like the yeah it was really bad at that time were you living with people yeah I had I had
um my roommates and um unfortunately like I got through the kick but I
developed psychosis like very bad um and you had no like mental health markers
before that other than genetically like you hadn’t displayed any yosis before that never never no no I’d experienced
the depression but I had never had anything like that like I was I literally thought there were like people
living in the walls and you know it was it was really bad and uh it’s bad when
you live with a bunch of people who are doing drugs and they’re like you got to go CU they’re just like scared of you like you don’t make sense like you need
to go and so I was just then out on the street in San Francisco by myself 22
years old um um completely in an alternate reality like it didn’t occur
to me that I was homeless because in my mind I was like fulfilling some mission
for the government like a video game you were on like little side quest yeah and you know
like I would walk back and I would just be on a walk and San Francisco is so small you can be on one side of town and
walk over to the other side of town and back and forth and you know when you’re when you’re young there’s like I swear
it doesn’t matter matter how crazy you are there’s a thirsty dude for every young chick Y and so people would be
like oh you need a place to stay and I would go there and then you know most of the time they’d end up being creeps and
so I would end up like fighting them and having to leave but uh I would also do
things at that time that just didn’t make any sense like if a door was unlocked to a house I would go in and
start moving furniture around because this was right after 911 and in my mind
like if this chair is over here the terrorist can’t attack Us in San Francisco and that made sense to me you
know like I thought I was like preventing yeah oh yeah I’m saving the world how bizarre is it what our brain
does and I think because that’s a trauma response to your kick right like the the withdrawal was so traumatic that your
soul literally freaking left your body and checked out like some type of brain damage was done in that to make you go
into such a deep psychosis yeah and I would know things that there was really like no explanation for me to know which
is what’s so interesting because In some cultures like if someone has a psychotic break it’s like oh this person has a
gift they have a window to the spirit world we need to give them a guide and teach them how to manage it they’re
straddling realities yeah but you know in this country I just kept getting
5150ed um I would do you know I’d go in buildings that I would trespass quite a
bit I got arrested for um stealing a car because there was a car with the key and the ignition and to me that like meant
your car oh they left me this car yeah thank for the good for uh but somehow that one was
like receiving stolen property so the car was already stolen it was weird and then uh like trespassing and then you
know terrorist threats and just all all these crazy charges but when they would test me down at the station and I was
clean they would just send me over to SF General on a pych hold and I had you
know numerous pych holds in that time until the last time when they were like look you don’t have anywhere to go so we
can’t release you um you don’t have an address so we’re just going to keep you here for like 2 years indefinitely yeah
so I finally I hadn’t called home um I had a pretty gnarly resentment going on
and I hadn’t called home which was just ridiculous but I hadn’t called Home in 5 years so my family did not know if I was
alive or dead when I was strung out on heroin I kind of figured that the unknown was better than the truth and I
really didn’t want to subject them to any of like what I had become cuz it was really bad you know chaotic and yeah it
was really bad heartbreaking so I finally called my family after 5 years
and my dad who was in his 80s drove all the way up to San Francisco to get me from the psych ward and brought me back
down to Westminster where you know where he had moved to when my parents split
and yeah he came and got me but I didn’t understand that I had mental illness yet
like I would still I remember they gave me this bottle of respir doll and on the drive back I must have taken like six of
them oh my gosh mhm were we trying to induce sleep or just still in psychosis
and just like six six seems like it work better than one I have no idea what I was thinking you know it’s just like oh
I don’t feel better yet so I’m just going to keep taking these and he took me back down to Orange County somehow I
got a job at abami and Fitch and then had like a psycho you know psychotic break at South Coast Plaza where I was
like tackled by all these security guards and ended up on um and what’s
crazy is that psychosis run like I got off of heroin in April of 2001 and I
wasn’t back down in Orange County until I remember I spent Christmas of 2001 in
the psych ward on a 5250 hold which is two weeks cuz like you’re extra crazy
and like you know 72 hours isn’t enough and had a court date where they were
going to decide if they were going to hospitalize me long term which I think I was looking again at 2 years so to back
that up if they were to have a court date would they contact family do they because I know they have some protocols now it’s not like it was back in the day
where you could just lock somebody up and without a key you know for years and years yeah well it’s an interesting full
circle cuz my dad did have his mother locked up like that she spent like her last at least 10 years I think at Camaro
state mental hospital my grandmother was like this silent films actress Barbara Leonard and she when her career started
floundering she developed a morphine adct a morphine addiction and my dad walked in on her injecting and just had
her committed for the rest of her life cuz that’s what you did back then so it was kind of this full circle that then
he came to my court date and was like look I’ll make sure she takes her medication please don’t hospitalize my
daughter and and got me out and so I was like okay I’ll take the meds you know
cuz they said that if I got in trouble again my dad could be liable do you think he had some guilt about doing that
to his mother and that’s why he oh yeah yeah he always he always said that we didn’t know what to do back then like
they didn’t have substance abuse treatment Camaro state mental hospital was like the best treatment for opioid
addiction at that time and they did labotomy and you know they they did all this crazy stuff when my brother visited
my grandmother she was just like she didn’t even know who he was you know she was just out of it like completely
mentally comos yeah like they’re there and their eyes are open but there’s nothing going
on like yeah yeah and I don’t know if my dad was trying to prevent that something like that but he was like no no no
you’re not hospitalizing my daughter for two years so I started trying to take the meds
right and things changed really quickly like I started sleeping at night cuz my
psychosis was a full-blown Mania where I would be awake for like two weeks straight in a completely different re
ity and I would take these little like naps if I if I got on a bus I would just like sleep and go back and forth all day
till they were like ma’am you have to get off like you’ve been on the bus all day you need to go and other than that I would just you
know be awake for like weeks at a time and I was out on the street homeless and psychosis for close to a year like nine
months you know and you know just so many so many traumas that you go through
in that situation when you you know you’re a young chick yeah on the street yeah well people also don’t correlate
like the lack of sleep to psychosis like when you’re in Mania like that’s and if you’re on a meth Bend or or whatever it
is the lack of sleep is actually what can cause the psychosis because your brain doesn’t have the the shut down to
like to program everything like to sort everything out and stuff and it starts Crossing wires and you can literally
lose your mind just from the sleep deprivation it’s like when a computer starts getting weird and you need to restart it like it needs it’s restart to
stop you know kind of similar it’s very similar so yeah my mental health
improved but um I was on outpatient Thorazine and I would just fall asleep
at work like I thought I had narcolepsy I didn’t understand the pharmacology of Thorazine and how strong it is so I was
like oh my gosh I’m falling asleep at work I have narcolepsy and at work one night a girl was like oh come in the
bathroom and I smoke some meth with her and I was like oh this is amazing Cur to my narcolepsy mhm yeah and so that
started this next like eight-year run with that which um after just two years
I ended up in the hospital with congestive heart failure like full-blown congestive heart failure like um my
heart was on my ejection fraction was only 10% and I you know everyone was like all
the doctors are like you have to get cleaner you’re going to die but I didn’t know how to do that so I would leave the
hospital after just almost dying and stay clean for a few days but I would just get to this point where I felt like
I had no control over it you know and I lived like my ankles would swell my belly would swell I would like look
different I would sound like I was having an asthma attack and this would happen like so many times I’ve almost
died of congestive heart failure and every hospital in Orange County pretty much they put me on the UCLA heart
transplant list but they were like you’re never going to get a new heart because you have IV drug use in your
medical history and that’s something I hadn’t done since I stopped but you know I thought gosh I thought it would be
good to be honest with the doctors but now I kind of wish I hadn’t and so the prognosis was really bad a lot of
doctors said I had about six months to live however somehow I think even meth
was keeping me alive because it would mask all my symptoms and then when it would wear off I would swell up and not
be able to breathe and almost die and you know just kept on like that for 5
years somehow this whole time I’m doing music um so that was for five years yeah
for 5 years somehow held on with an ejection fraction of 10% which is crazy
and um my I had a fiance at this time which blows my mind but I had been
rapping since I dropped out of college as vup for like years and years and then I meet this guy and his last name’s
Upton and we’re GNA get married and I’m GNA be Vanessa Upton and I’ll be V up like oh my gosh it’s Destiny sign and he
was my producer and my bass player we had live bass guitar and drums that I sang and wrapped over and we did shows
all over orangee County even though my heart was only pumping at 10% that was really the thing that was keeping me
alive like that was like my Saving Grace was doing music and our Myspace was doing well and um he gets busted and
tells me I have to get clean so he gets court ordered to treatment he’s like I’m not going to marry you unless you get
clean I’m like dude you know I have heart failure and I’m going to die like what’s the point and he’s like no I’m
putting my foot down like I’m not going to marry you unless you get clean so uh at first I was like well I’m going to do
what I want to do you propos to me like this you’re supposed to love me unconditionally and you know my as I’m
going to get in my car to go get drugs the tire just spontaneously pops right and my my father had just passed away
like a few months before but him he did it he’s the culprit who knows but then I’m like well I’ll just walk there and I
took like 10 steps and started crying I was like okay you know I’ll get help and thank God for his mom because she said
something to me that made so much sense she was like you’re up against something that’s bigger than you and you need help
I was like oh my God all these years I can’t stop because it’s bigger than me and I need help she’s like they have a
bed waiting for you at the Rock Center which was like the old Rock Center in Orange County on 13th Street Low Bottom
Indigent recovery like it’s the last it’s the last block house on the Block like if you have ex ex uh exhausted
every other resource yeah I didn’t have health insurance the last place that you go before you know you end up in a grave
honestly here County yeah definitely and I went through detox then I went and stayed a sober living for a couple weeks
until a bed opened up in the 90-day program and when I got into the 90-day program there’s you’re supposed to be in
a 10-day blackout but somehow my family is in the lobby and I’m like oh no my grandma died this is the last thing I
need oh and so I sit down and my mom just looked horrible right she was you
could tell she’d been crying all night and I was like you know what’s going on and she said your fiance didn’t make it
and I was like whoa what do you mean like she’s like yeah they sent him to go
on job search and his mom found him dead in his room and he was just like my
world so I couldn’t even breathe I was so I was just like sobbing for days such
a shock yeah just sobbed for days but fortunately I had had a little bit of a
taste of recovery and it felt like like if I left and used I would feel that he
was gone that much more right disrespecting his death like it was a sacrifice or something yeah which in
some ways like if he was going to go back out that was the kindest thing he could have done for me because if he
hadn’t died I would have left and gone and used to and I wouldn’t be sitting here right now you know but he decided
to use again and passed away and so I had a taste of treatment and a taste of
recovery and just you know stayed with it for four years and how is your health at this point
after he passes my heart was still only pumping at 10% after 30 days they sent me out on job search and I fainted
behind the wheel and total my car go cuz my heart was so weak I would just like rock back and forth violently in
meetings telling me I had to sit still for an hour and a half to get better was like the worst thing in the world because sitting still was really hard
and I think it’s cuz my heart was so weak that I had to you had move your blood you would like fall asleep keep
moving and uh just sat there you know rocking in meetings for about six months
until now I’m clean so the doctors will help me and there was a program medical
services for Indigent that paid for a pacemaker defibrillator for me at 6 months which was a game changer first my
function went up to 15% and I remember even just that increase was like amazing you know it
was like I the way you felt your energy and stuff like that okay yeah and then you know as the years progressed at um I
ended up reading this book uh punished for purpose by Lori Burns and it was so
good and my pacemaker was like this big box that stuck out of my shirt and you
know I was kind of I was planning on working real estate but I thought like gosh I’m going to have to wear turtlenecks in Southern California like
how’s that going to work and I read her book and she talked about like when you’ve been through these struggles if
it can help one person it’s worth it like she wrote her book to help one person and if it helps one person it’s
worth it to relive like the horror of my life story and that really resonated
with me so I enrolled in drug and alcohol counseling School CU I thought I can wear a v-neck and my device will
show and if it helps like one young girl right like look this is what drugs will do to you you know it’s not worth it to
be skinny yeah going back to when you were struggling at the lowest with your
health was there any point where you like truly grappled with the idea of like I’m not going to make it oh yeah
I’m going to die yeah my cousin always tells me how she remembers this time that I was like oh my God I’m never
going to get gray hair like I’m never going to get wrinkles cuz you know I was
26 when I had congestive heart failure and I was told by professionals I wouldn’t make it to 30 right like that
the odds were pretty much against it right yeah especially if you didn’t get
well but in general I think that was the consensus right yeah yeah
how does it how does it polarize like being in that place to where you are now
like that’s so crazy isn’t it it’s so crazy I’m so grateful to be alive every
day like just in recovery after I went to school to be a counselor I got to work at the Rock Center and I was the
happiest person who ever made $10 an hour cuz it was like I was like this is my dream job I’m working where I got
clean and you know then went and worked at other treatment facilities and um
and it was just like a dream come true to get to sit there and now like everything I went through was for a
purpose right like now it can help the next person out like the next person who’s really struggling with wanting to
go use it’s like you know actually really gnarly things can happen to you
yeah yeah they can and you had such extremes so yeah yeah and uh what’s
crazy now is that the woman that wrote that book punished for purpose that inspired me to be counselor in the first place is my sponsor like I met her at a
friend’s funeral who died you know had some time relapsed and died from fenel
and you know got to meet her and thank her and then you know now I get to redo my steps with her which is That’s So c
one of those like Cosmic one of those Cosmic alignments which happens you know
more often than you think like especially in early recovery like when you really need to see
those those really like there’s no way that just happened like that’s how it feels like God’s knocking on your door
like no I’m real if you’re if you’re willing to walk with me and you’re willing to fully depend on me and let me
show you how we do things like this is what’s available to you but it’s my will
it’s my way you know but there are signs like and the one thing that I that I always say to people who may be
struggling with that part of recovery or is just ask ask it to show up it call it
it ask it to show up and to show you that it’s real like and you will see in
the most remarkable ways I have millions of stories but I’m sure you do as well
what’s one of the what’s one of the most like remarkable God shot one so uh when
I started my PhD program and they’re like you got to do your practicum hours I was like I work full-time I’m in school full-time my heart has for the
most part gotten better but I still get tired like maybe a little you know I still need a lot of sleep every night
like I need my rest I have to take care of my myself and I was like how am I going to do an unpaid practicum and work
full-time and go to school fulltime and I had just gotten recruited to go work at this new place for $5 more an hour
with benefits and they gave me a $5,000 new hire bonus which was amazing right
and I had just taken this position and so I look on the list of my school’s approved practicum sites and it’s number
one on the list like the place I had just started working so I got to get paid for in for practicum I got to do
all my hours where I was already never had to go work somewhere for free never had to go interview to go work
somewhere for free which sounds terrible yeah no but I mean you have to be able to survive like God knows what you need
in order to be able to make it like you’re not being asked to you know like you’re not being asked to give up
everything for nothing yeah there’s there’s a even exchange yeah and it made
so much sense to me when I got to the Rock Center that I needed something bigger than me to get better because I
had just had that realization that problem was bigger than me so that made sense right my problem’s bigger than me
so my solution is bigger than me it’s basic math like checks out did you have
a relationship with your higher power before that I did so I had a really powerful experience when I was in the
tenderloin in psychosis um there was this guy that was like oh you can come stay with me and be my assistant and
I’ll pay you and he ended up being a total creep and I was like take me back to San Francisco and he’s like punching
me in the car and I jump out of a moving car and run into Golden Gate Park and he’s chasing me right like I’m going to
chop you up and bury you I’ve done this to so many dumb chicks like you no one’s ever going to find your body and I went
behind this tree and I just suddenly had this feeling like I wasn’t alone and just like felt these waves of like love
and just like something was just like just stay right here you’re in my care nothing can harm you and I just like sat
there and went to sleep and when I woke up the next day I had like a new watch on and um I think it you know I think it
was probably someone just saw oh this poor girl is like asleep in the park let me at least give her a watch you know
but it was a I still have the watch like it was a it was a game Cher to suddenly know what time it is and when it was
getting late and I needed to find a place to get indoors cuz it was going to get dark like knowing what time it is
but to me it was like it’s a watch because something’s watching right like something’s watching over me like
something’s with me I’m not alone you survived that yeah like that’s definitely an account
of a miracle yeah you know yeah that’s that
that I need a deep breath for that one you know to think that we’ve walked
through these things and to come out on the other side because I know this much about you I know you were told that with your diagnosis and stuff that you would
be on SSI for the rest of my life for the rest of your life you would never be able to amount to anything more than
that and um here you are a PhD candidate just a Living
Testament and proof of like there is no label anybody can put on you unless it’s
one that you put on yourself like you didn’t believe it like that’s the thing is like people and what they say to you
only has power if you believe it but you said no I’ve already defied dying of
congestive heart failure let me just try this one thing which going back to school and it you just took one step
after the other and then here you are and like I was saying we would call this episode from psychosis to psychiatrist
you know psychologist psychologist to psychologist you know but it’s such a remarkable feat like you know I hope you
give yourself the credit that you deserve for walking through all of this and like the ability to tell that story
was so much poised because your confidence in your character is through experience it’s real it’s
authentic every single Mark you’ve hit you know so what do you think has made
you such a resilient person like what made you keep going oh wow H that’s a
lack of choice yeah sometimes it is a lack of choice and it’s also like I think when you know they said I was
going to die of heart failure and the best I could hope for with my mental problems and physical problems was to be
on disability the rest of my life it was like you guys don’t know me that well I cold kicked heroin all by myself like I
can do this Defiance Defiance I think is another one that’s really vital definitely that is a superpower at times
you use it yeah Rebellion yeah just just to spite you I’m GNA get
well I’m Gonna Save my own life and become a psychologist just to literally spite you as all yeah well now it’s such
a great thing to get to sit with people when they’re going through breakdowns cuz I have the know I feel like the
beauty of therapy is we develop addiction and we develop these mental problems anxiety depression when we go
through a breakdown and we’re not like sufficiently held you know we don’t have like someone to sit with us and let us
know it’s going to be okay and like co-regulate like how a mom does with her newborn baby you know like just to get
to sit with people and do that you know is a huge gift seems like it was what
you would put on this Earth for MH yeah you get to live in that purpose yeah you
know a lot of people never know what that is a lot of people will never know what their purpose is so that’s that’s a
gift thank you for sure feel like they don’t ask the right questions to get there or experience enough how did you
get to know your purpose or how did you know like this is what I’m supposed to do so it’s kind it’s a funny story first
uh since I had relapsed I couldn’t go work as a counselor and it was like well I’ll get my associates degree in
substance abuse counseling till I have at least like a year or two under my belt again because I’m not going to go work and you know what I mean and and so
I got my associates in substance abuse counseling and you know you get that degree in the mail and I have like
addiction issues so when something feels good you going to do it again like we
got to do some more of this so then I got my bachelor’s and then I had an amazing recommendation letter and got
into Pepperdine for my masters and you know like just getting that paper in the mail it was like became like a whole new
but to think that if you hadn’t relapsed and I don’t advise relapse for anybody you know but I do believe and I I said
it before and I’ll say it again as um if it could have happened any other way it would have but to think if you hadn’t
relapsed you would have never gone back to school maybe you would have just stayed in that position like God works
everything for good you know what I mean like whatever it is whatever part of your story it will be used yeah and I
actually met my husband who I’ve been with for 11 years who’s also works in
recovery and is my rock like I met him the day that I just sucked it up and went and took a newcomer chip yeah I
mean I had met him before but you know he didn’t have enough time I had four years like we can’t really commiserate
so yeah but then you know some people were giving me a hard time like how could you do that and he was just like
look for you to come here and take a newcomer chip like that’s the kind of thing that saves people’s lives like
that takes so much courage you know and I was like oh well you need to ride home yeah
open the door for our love our love story to to ensue and even with that you
guys have been together so long so everything worked out yeah yeah we’re
co-directors of Transformations care so he’s actually the he’s actually my boss he’s the executive director and then I’m
the sleeping with the boss totally I know that’s usually frowned
upon but apparently if you’re married first it’s okay and I think it gives it models like a healthy relationship to a
lot of the clients and I know they tell them like don’t get in relationships but it’s still like you know we’re all human
and we all want that connection and you know so at least to see like something modeled that’s like healthy and
functional is and to work with them too like that’s a whole another challenge that you are overcoming I guess I love
we’ve worked at a couple jobs together actually like maybe like three different facilities we’ve worked at together and
when we were both new we got um the uh opportunity to manage a sober
living that we managed for six years together and that was like a huge gift
too we you know I was living at my mom’s like he was staying on the couch at sober living so then we had like an
apartment behind the sober living that we got to live in it was just a huge blessing because I could just go to
school and you know get some education under my belt which was really important um going through psychosis and all the
mental illness like my brain was not the same and I really feel like if I hadn’t been in school for years and years like
constantly challenging myself it wouldn’t have healed properly right maybe with some TMS
but I did it the oldfashioned way by like exercising my brain for years and
years to get back to where now I feel like I’m the girl that got accepted to Berkeley but there was this big chunk of
time where I was totally lost you know my health was gone my mental I was completely mentally ill you know it was
like a Brick by Brick situation like little by little you know you put those pieces back together you know and
now you have this beautiful life it’s like the best case scenario to be honest like it’s such a it’s a it’s a testament
you know and um I think that that’s the one thing
like people don’t get is if you stick around it gets really good like it doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be
shitty sometimes it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have struggles and that life’s not going to happen and people are going to die and you’re going
jobs and relationships are going to break up and you’re going to be betrayed at some point but like if you just keep
going you know like it gets really really beautiful what do you have what do you
have to say to the person that doesn’t believe that right now I would remind them that people struggling with like
addiction issues are we have some of the strongest will of anyone we can wake up
with like 50 cents in a paper clip and by the end of the day we’ll have a cell phone and a hotel room very resourceful
yeah so you know know it’s like if you can just stick around and I definitely recommend work through the steps it’s an
important process but stick around and do that then apply that will to
something positive you can do whatever you want you know you can apply it in any direction and that strong will will
benefit you you know once you’re healthy definitely that’s true I love that I
think what I got the most is just that what you said like the purpose from your pain like that’s like the biggest thing
from your story yeah definitely that yeah I thought that you know I was in
this unique situation when my fiance died in treatment and I can’t tell you working all these years how often that
happens you know when a couple is partying hard together and one goes to treatment or they both go to treatment
like it happens so frequently because now your body is like free of all the substances if you use once you’re so
likely to just pass away happens so often yeah I think that’s what is not
spoken about a lot is like most of the deaths come from relapses after treatment um because of the lack of
Tolerance you know whereas when you’re using every day like you know how much you can take but then you’re in
treatment for 30 60 90 days whatever you come out you take that same dose it’s a lethal dose you know cuz you can build a
tolerance really quickly but you can also lose a tolerance incredibly quickly like you don’t realize how quickly it
can go yeah your body becomes like opiate naive again like yep yeah
immediately well it takes a little bit but still pretty immediately yeah I’ve walked a lot of
people through that situation you know and it’s it’s terrible but I but at
least to be able to show that you can come out on the other side you know right and what is the best part about
working in the field that you’re working in um I think it’s always a great
reminder of where we came from and that’s important and um like I mentioned before
getting to sit with people getting to normalize mental illness is so important
to me yeah because um I feel like there’s so much shame around it you
know around having a diagnosis or around like having you know something going on
mentally and just getting to be that person that is there to say everything’s
gonna be okay you know like I’m proof yeah I promise and you have like the the
ability to like prove that you know with your story thank you yeah what’s the worst part the worst
part is people dying yeah yeah cuz people die a lot when you work in
substance use treatment and mental illness mental health like people die so frequently yeah you know you someone um
you hear they inherited all this money from their grandma and you’re like you should stay in treatment longer right
you know and then they you get those phone calls too many times and that’s
the worst part but for uh for those ones there’s usually one that comes out the
other side you know that makes it worth it yeah I always say like being in recovery like you got you see a lot of
people get their lives back but you also go to a lot of funerals yeah it’s one
it’s one way or the other MH you know so the polari is the polarity is crazy yeah
you get to see them get their lives back and have babies and like have full beautiful lives you know like create new
lives yeah that part is amazing but yeah the people passing away you never really
get used to you know unfortunately yeah I think you could just deal with it in a healthier way but
I try not to become numb to it you know like the further away it is the less
like the closer it is you know like the more devastating it is but always keeping that that wall down and being
like no that’s real that’s really happening like people are really they’re gone now like they’re not because when
you experience it so much it’s easy to like nope like oh that’s what happens
that’s just what no and it’s not just what happens it shouldn’t be happening it shouldn’t happen but it you know like
there’s some type of protective mechanism that goes up still trying to like find that
Humanity um and sift through it for the lesson
that’s you know the best that you can do with such a tragic situation you know
but yeah I like to say their names out like just you know here and there like
just and it helps to have my husband like we’ve known a lot of the people that we’ve lost together and tried to
help them as a team so it helps to have like a partner that remembers them too
yeah yeah I love that that’s nice well it was so wonderful having you on today
we’re bless you yeah thank you love your story yeah yeah incredible it’s an
incredible story and that’s it with another episode of the straight jacket podcast and we will see you next time
thank you
