Healing, Hope, and Transformation: Life After Meth Addiction

Introduction to Rebuilding Life After Addiction

I got to teach challenge. Well Jessica, I'm excited to meet you and thank you so much for being willing to jump on the Rebuilding Life After Addiction podcast. As we were talking offline a little bit, our hope with this entire show is to just share the story. The story about overcoming, but really, get a real look at the work that goes in, right? To rebuilding life after addiction. For those of us who have been through residential programs and kind of done the rehab thing and all of that, like I think for Rob and I, Rob is my co-host. He's not on tonight, but for him and I talking about it, it's like, man, when we finally got on the other side of that recovery program, it was like, you know, life smacked you in the face. The hope here is just to provide some encouragement and stuff along the way. So you want to take a moment and introduce yourself and we'll just kind of roll from there.

Jessica's Journey into Addiction Recovery

Like you said, my name is Jessica. I am the program director for Save and Grace Women's Home. I've been here for three years in Texas. I come from Teen Challenge in California. I went through the program myself in 2014, and I stayed with them for six years before coming on to Save and Grace. Wow, fantastic. So 2014, what part of California? In the Bay Area. Bay Area, okay, awesome. Well, fantastic. So you did sit and serve at Teen Challenge for six years prior to coming to direct the program at Save and Grace. That's fantastic. So you've been around the ministry for a while.

Confronting Addiction and Finding Help

Yes. Yeah, good stuff. So tell us a little bit about your journey to all of that. Like this is a podcast about addiction. Did you go through Teen Challenge prior to becoming a staff member there? Yes, I did. I was just going to say, so what led you to Teen Challenge all those years ago? I obviously had a drug addiction. I struggled with meth since I was 13 years old. My addiction lasted for 15 years and ended up with me going to prison. When I went to prison, I had told myself that I didn't want to live that way anymore and that I was going to do everything that I could to try to change my life. From the guys that I dated to the neighborhoods that I hung out in. I took advantage of everything prison had to offer, classes, college, whatever I can do there to better myself. When I got out, I was living in a halfway house and met my husband, well, met my now husband, back in 2009. It's funny because I told one of my friends in prison that when I got out that I was going to meet a white guy and marry a white guy. She was like, "You're crazy." And of course, I met my husband, and he's a white guy. We were doing really well. I got my daughter back. We worked. We had an apartment. He taught me how to pay bills, be responsible, grocery shop. I never knew any of those things. I mean, I knew how to take care of myself, but not to the extent of having our own place and knowing how to take care of our own home.

Relapsing and the Loss of Family

We got my daughter back, and we were doing really well for about five years. We were both in recovery, and we ended up relapsing. In our relapse, we obviously lost our home. We had just gotten a house and lost it. We lost our cars, and we almost lost our marriage. We both parted ways during the relapse. I kind of did my own thing, and he was doing his own thing. I lost my grandma. In September 2014, I lost my grandma. During this time, I was living in Arizona. My family called me and said, “Your grandma's funeral's coming up.” They knew something was wrong because my husband was posting all over Facebook and calling my family, telling them that I was on drugs. Of course, they were asking me, and at that time, I was lying. When I lost my grandma, I finally got honest with them because I was going to go to the funeral, and they definitely would have known that something was wrong when I showed up. I flew back to California for the funeral, and my family only bought me a one-way ticket. I got there like on a Sunday, Monday was the wake, Tuesday was the funeral. Wednesday, my family literally sat me down and said, "Look, you need help. Either you can get the help, and we will support you along the way, or we can put you back on a plane back to Arizona, and we're just done." Of course, I chose to get help.

Turning to Teen Challenge

At that time, my husband and I were still trying to decide if we wanted to get a divorce or what we were going to do. I just remember telling him, "I have to go to a program." The options my family had given me were that I was choosing to go to a program. I said, "I'm going to find a program, and if by the time I'm done with it, if you haven't helped yourself, then we just can't be together." So was he still active in addiction during this period? Had he relapsed? Okay. I told him that we had to do something—either we were going to make it work or we weren't. He actually suggested Teen Challenge. He said, "Why don’t you see if there’s a Teen Challenge where you’re at?" Because I’m already back in California, and he’s still in Arizona. So I looked it up and found a Teen Challenge about an hour from my dad's house. My aunt actually made the call for me and got everything set up for me to go. When I did my interview with them, they said, "Hey, we have a family center here if your husband wants to come through the program with you." I remember telling my aunt that, and she was just kind of like, "Look, we’re just trying to get you right right now. If he wants to get help, he’ll go get the help." But I ended up telling him, and I said, "Look, if this is what you want to do, we have a family center where we can go to and be together." I checked in, and then five days later, my husband showed up.

Unpacking the Root Causes of Addiction

That's incredible. I'm curious. You mentioned addiction prior to prison, prior to jail, and then getting out and really doing well for a while. So prior to jail, have you unpacked what led to your use initially, dealing with methamphetamine? Is it just part of the environment, or was there anything that kind of spurred that on in your life way back when? Well, I grew up with deaf parents, and so life to me was already different than everybody else's. To me, my life was good growing up. My dad struggled with addiction my whole life, and I had no clue. I just remember my mom always being the nurturing mother, the mother that always went to school events, sports events. She did everything with me and my brothers. I went to the same school from kindergarten to sixth grade, and I think things started to change for me when I started to go into junior high because a lot of my friends from kindergarten to sixth grade started to move away. So I had to find a new set of friends, and I already kind of felt odd. I was the short fat kid that nobody really wanted to hang out with, so I had my little set of friends. When going into seventh grade, it was hard. I met new friends, and with those friends, I started smoking weed a little and drinking. Then my parents decided to split up after 19 years of marriage, and when that happened, that kind of just unraveled everything. I was 13 years old when my mom left my dad after 19 years and got with a 16-year-old boy. They were together for almost seven years, and when my mom moved us away with him, he introduced me to meth. It was the summer of seventh grade going into the eighth grade. From that point on, that first time I tried it, it was a wrap after that.

Encountering Jesus Through Recovery

Yeah, especially at that age. So that's about when I started in eighth grade as well. When I got into meth back in my life, and man, it was one time. Sometimes, I think sometimes younger folks, when you say that to them, they think you're messing with them. It's like, I promise, I am not hyping this up. It literally was the first hit. So then you mentioned the jail period in jail. You’ve started to put some of the pieces back in place. When did you meet Jesus on this journey? Was it prior to jail? Did you have a relationship with God prior to jail, or did that not happen until after jail? I remembered Jesus when I used to go to church with my grandma. My parents used to send me to AWANA when I was little, but I still don't think I really made a connection. I was really young in AWANA. It was just a place I would go and repeat the same Bible scripture every week and get a little prize for saying a scripture. I don't think I really understood it. Once I got out of prison and met my husband, he started taking me to church. That’s when I started to realize who God was, who Jesus was. I still, at that point, though, did not know about having a relationship with him until I got to Teen Challenge.

Struggles Leading to Relapse

That would be that part where you talked about knowing about Jesus, going to church, and what led up to the relapse for you guys. You said that things seemed to be going well. Life was moving in the right direction. You're married, and things were working, and then this relapse, and everything starts to unravel for you guys. Do you remember what led up to that? Yeah, just the small compromises. Thinking you can have a drink just on the weekends. It started with my husband at first, with him smoking weed. Then the crowd of people that we started to hang out with began to shift a little bit. Also, the place that I worked at for almost five years, we worked right next to a bar. That’s where a lot of people that I worked with would hang out. Of course, wanting to fit in, that’s where I hung out with them. So it started with drinking occasionally, and then it just kind of progressed from there. The little foxes really do spoil the vine, right? That started to fall apart, and you ended up in this family center. Tell us a little bit about your encounter, the pivotal moment when you made that distinction there between knowing about Jesus and entering into a relationship with him. What was different for you when you guys ended up at Teen Challenge, and how did you uncover that? The value and benefit of that relationship with Christ.

Discovering a Deeper Faith

The curriculum and the things that we learned there, and the different type of churches we went to out there, because when I was going to church with my husband, it was a Southern Baptist church. What I was exposed to at Teen Challenge was definitely extremely different than a Baptist church. A lot of the churches we went to were AG churches or Pentecostal churches. I was exposed to a lot of different things going through Teen Challenge and was taught differently. The curriculum and having to do Bible reading and all the stuff we had to do at the program also opened my eyes to saying, "Oh, okay, well, this goes deeper than just knowing him." That he is here for me and that I am chosen and I am loved. It went deeper than that. I started to go on that journey of knowing who I am in Him.

The Refinement Process of Recovery

You're hearing a lot of, and I just found it interesting here in your story. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there was this almost refining process that the Lord was taking you on. God was taking you on as He was disciplining you. You hear some people talk about these divine moments, revelatory moments, or it's just like, you know, Paul getting knocked off the horse, if you will. What I'm hearing from you is it's not necessarily the "I've been knocked off the horse" moment, but it was really God taking you in His hands and just starting to refine you and lead you into relationship. Is that a fair assessment? Yes, for sure. My grandmother prayed for me my whole entire life. When I look back at my life and where I've come from, or where I've been and the things that I've been through to where I am now, I definitely understand that that was the hand of God on me the whole entire time. There were many moments where I should have died or been killed or could have been killed or seriously injured, and I wasn't. There are lots of things too with my children that I didn't understand at the time. I felt like I had to fight these things, but even though I didn't know what was going on at the time, God did.

Motherhood and Recovery

Can I ask you about your kids? How many kids do you guys have, and what part does this journey play? Even do you mind bringing us in a little bit to where the children are during some of these events? I have two children, not with my husband. They're both from before I met him. I don't have any kids with my husband, but my daughter, I had at 21. My addiction meant more to me at that time than caring for her, so my mother took her and raised her. I had a son while I was in county jail. It's funny because I went to jail literally four days prior, and the judge let me out because I was pregnant and I was crying, saying, "Please, I can't have my baby here." Four days later, I got arrested again and the judge was like, "I'm not letting you out this time. It looks like you're having your baby here." I'll never forget that moment of going to the hospital, having this child being shackled by the ankle to the bed with the officer sitting outside of a glass window watching. Coming out of recovery after a cesarean and asking to see my child, I was told no. I never got to see my baby. That’s a whole other story in itself with what happened with my son. The family agreed to take him until I got out of jail. She only brought him to see me one time, but every week they were faithful with putting money on my books. We talked and agreed that when I got out, we were going to do visitation. She said I could stay with her temporarily until I could figure it out and what I was going to do. The day before the week I was about to get out, I called her and said, "Hey, I thought you were supposed to bring the baby today." She said, "Oh, he's sick, so we can't come." I said, "How about Thursday?" She said, "Well, I get out Thursday." She replied, "Oh, so soon?" That kind of took me back because you knew. We had talked about this. The day I got out, their number was disconnected, and that started a whole other journey of searching and looking and finally finding them when he was six years old.

Learning to Let Go

So do you have both your children now? No, the family that has my son, I allowed them to adopt him. That was a whole other journey when I found them at six years old. We started visitation. He has Down syndrome. He had Trisomy 9Q, where he was born with an extra chromosome. Not that I didn’t want to take care of him, but this family uprooted their whole entire life to care for him. They loved him so much, and when they asked me if they could adopt him, how was I going to deny them that? So they have him. He’s 17, and my daughter lives downtown. She's 21. I got her back when she was seven.

Finding Purpose in Ministry

That is phenomenal. The journey to serve in ministry, you went through this process at the family center, ended up staying on staff for Teen Challenge for six years. You mentioned you are now at Project Hope for three years. How did the Lord call you to ministry? I mean, out of all of this, I would love to hear that because I can see the smile, and I think there's a great story coming with this. Most people would think you’re insane, or think I'm insane. As soon as I heard about it, the internship with Teen Challenge, I was probably not even 30 days in, and I was like, "Oh, I’m doing an internship." Everybody was like, "Yeah, right." I remember telling my husband because he was at the men’s center. I said, "I'm going to stay and do an internship." He was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's slow down. Let’s do this year, and then let's figure it out." I was just adamant that when my year was done, I was going to stay and do an internship. I did. We stayed and did an internship, then I did my staff internship, and then I became staff. My husband decided to leave at some point in our program. I think we were like three or four years in. My husband was kind of like, "I’m done with ministry. I think it’s time to get back to real life." At that point, it was hard for me too because it’s like, "Do I follow my husband because he’s the head of the household? If he feels that it's time to go, do we go? Do I pack up myself, my daughter, and everybody and we leave?" I decided to stay. He left for about eight months and relapsed on heroin, never having done heroin a day in his life. He came back eight months later and did a restoration. During that time he was gone, I used to try to hit him below the belt every single time, just to make it so miserable for him because he left. One day, God was like, "Stop. You need to stop." I just said, "You know what, God, I’m sorry. I surrender him. I surrender this marriage. If we are meant to be together, you’ll bring him back. If not, I’m going to be okay." There was a point in time where I would say that I wouldn’t be able to live without him. In that time that he was gone, God showed me like, "Yes, you can live. You’re still breathing right now, and he’s gone." I learned a lot about myself at that time because God was showing me that I didn't give you a husband to put up here. I gave you a husband to be next to you to do things side by side. I’m supposed to be the one that’s up here. He taught me a lot in those eight months that I am strong and capable.

Understanding Identity Through Faith

Just hearing you say that and jumping back to you talking about your story in seventh and eighth grade—searching for that identity, right? That being the journey that began the addiction—all these years later, through everything you've walked through, God kind of giving you that revelation of identity while you’re on staff at Teen Challenge. I'm sure there have been some addressing of it prior because you do that at TC, but to kind of get that reassurance is profound. Is there anything more you've got to speak to that? I mean, in my way off base here? No, it’s good. You’re absolutely right. Because during my addiction in my younger years, I was like a chameleon. I adapted to the situation, or I changed who I was to be who I thought you wanted me to be, or I changed myself to be who I needed to be to get what I needed. I made sure I was able to adapt to every situation. So I was just out there never being me. During that time, I was just in tears all the time because God’s just so good. Like you said, we did learn these things. I did work through some stuff in Teen Challenge. I had a counselor, and I worked through stuff, but there were still just pieces that I felt like were missing. In that moment, I feel like God showed me and filled those pieces.

The Importance of Serving Others

Not to say I don’t still struggle today with insecurities or whatever the case may be, but it's just a powerful moment that I remember—knowing that God, you are real, and I know who I am now. Yeah, that’s so good. I was talking to somebody about this the other day. I’ll never forget when I met my now wife when we were first dating. She says that she didn’t say it exactly like this, but this was the context, and she almost said to the point where, like, we were trying to figure out this whole dating thing. I'm in recovery at this point, and she's a Bible school graduate—never types of drugs. I remember her saying something to the effect of, "I don’t need you to complete me." I’m like, “Wait.” I picked Jerry McGuire; you complete me, you know? I’m in our conversations. She was like, "No, we’re bringing our whole selves to this marriage. 100% of who we are." You know, God began to work with me on that, and I just find it interesting to hear that point about marriage, right? It’s that mutual submission to one another, that side by side versus, yeah, it’s so good.

Chapter of Life at Saving Grace

I think too, when he had to come back and do the restoration, that was a pivotal moment for him. When we went through the program together, we were constantly worried about each other, trying to fix each other, and carry each other's burdens. So there’s that moment that he had to come back and do a restoration. I felt like God did that for both of us. My husband and I decided to stay in it together, and we made a choice to love each other on purpose. So we can do the right thing and serve others. What does your role as Program Director look like now? I do a lot of administrative work, making sure schedules are running smoothly. I put the schedules together. I do a lot of things. I do a lot of their shopping for the house, grocery shopping, supply shopping, scheduling, the log, which is just keeping track of how many students we have and making sure that is sent out every week. I send out random emails. I do a lot of things. I work with the women. I love the women. I hang out with them all the time.

The Drive to Serve in Recovery

What’s your drive in doing it, right? You’ve shared your story, but is there a personal vision statement in regards to doing this work? Recovery ministry work is not easy, right? It’s not the easiest to do. That is, I absolutely love to serve. You will find me at events. You will find me jumping in anytime a hand is needed. I love to serve. I love to serve these women. I like to give them hope that if my marriage can be restored, if my child can be given back to me, if I can go through college at 30, almost 40 years old and get a degree, and my husband and I have made it to our first house—if I can do it and if God did it for me, He can do it for you. I love to give these women encouragement. I want them to see that it is possible, that they are not too far gone, that they can be chosen, loved, brought back, restored, redeemed—because I've been through a lot too, and I’m here. I’m still here.

The Differences in Ministry and Past Experiences

How has that contributed to your freedom this time around? The difference of serving in the internship and doing the ministry route, rather than going back out and trying to figure life out outside of? I mean, have you noticed the difference between this season and that season and how that’s helped? Yes. Ministry can be very overwhelming. When I was not in ministry, I was frustrated at times and just felt overwhelmed. There were days I wanted to give up—not that I don’t have those days now—but those days for some reason just feel a whole lot different. When I was out in the real world trying to make it, I wasn't plugged in. Now, I stay plugged in with life groups, obviously church. I do different things now, and so that’s how I feel my walk is different now compared to before.

Key to Sustained Energy in Ministry

There’s that dichotomy. I wrote a mini blog—most of my Facebook posts are like mini-blogs, and I don’t write a few words, so I don’t have Twitter—about the difference between being poured out and burnt out, right? That mindset of being connected to the source consistently. There’s always a flow. That’s what I hear you describing. I don’t mind being busy or running because I’ve got an endless source flowing through me through Jesus. So I am pouring myself out versus running at my wits’ end and feeling burnt out all the time.

Closing Thoughts on Reflecting Back

Let me ask you a question as we kind of come to an end. If you could go back to that season of life, I have behind me the light, that’s my DeLorean from Back to the Future, one of my favorite movie stories of all time. If you could hop into the DeLorean and go back to the past, to the season of life where you’re facing down, you know, you’ve just gone through this relapse, you’re facing down Teen Challenge. You've got all these insurmountable odds in front of you—marriage, kids, everything facing you down. If you could give Jessica just one piece of advice, having the experience you have now, what would that be all these years later? Do you know what that would be? Do you want to change anything?

The Value of Life's Journey

No, I wouldn't change anything. That one piece of advice could change the whole entire route that I was on. That one piece of advice could have led to a change, and I could have gone a totally different route. My aunt always says she wished she would have helped me; she knew what I was in. She knew that I was in a mess and wished she would have helped me back then. I told her, “I probably wouldn’t have wanted your help.” I was young and I was living life. To me, I was having a good time. For once, I probably wouldn’t have taken your help. If I would have allowed you to do that, I wouldn’t be who I am and where I am today. Any piece of advice I could have given myself back then could have changed my whole course of life, and I wouldn’t be—and it could have been better. I could be a millionaire living in some big house on a hill; who knows? But that's not the life I want. I absolutely love the life that I have right now. I don’t regret anything that I’ve gone through. Has bad things happened? Yes. Have I done bad things? Yes. But I still wouldn’t change it for anything because it brought me to where I am today. It brought me into a relationship with God. It brought me into a ministry that I love working at and serving at.

How to Connect for Support

So Jessica, if somebody is looking for help and there's a female that is reaching out and looking for help, how can they connect with you guys at Saving Grace to be able to get some help? They can find us on Facebook. It’s called Saving Grace. Let me look that up just to make sure. Sorry. It’s all good. We'll put the link in the description box below. Saving Grace - Texas is our Facebook. You can always go to our website. It’s www.savinggracewh.com. I think. The answer to this, but I enjoyed asking Jeff this question, and so I'm going to ask you the same thing because I'm assuming it's similar at Project Hope. How hard is it for me to get into the program there if I need help? It’s not hard at all. You just call and do an interview process and talk to our intake coordinator. The only thing that really turns someone away—which we don’t really often—is just certain types of medication that we don’t accept here. Other than that, we work with everybody the best that we can to get them in. We have five women’s homes now in three men’s locations. If we don’t have an open bed in Texas, we can definitely locate you at one of our other centers that do have an open bed, willing to go to a different state.

Final Thoughts on Recovery

Yeah, Project Hope and Saving Grace are doing phenomenal work. Great programs. If you need help, the comments in the description, I'll put both links to both the men’s and women’s center down in the description. Well, Jessica, thanks so much for jumping on. I think we froze up again, but that’s all right. I can add and clean some of this up at the end, but I appreciate you jumping on and chatting.