My name is Susie Silcox, and I’m proud to say that I’m a person in long-term recovery. What that means for me is that I have not had to put alcohol, drugs, or any mind-altering substances in my body since February 12, 2018. My road to recovery was not an easy one, mainly due to my stubbornness and ego, but I’m grateful for the trials and difficulties that brought me to this point. I no longer dwell in shame over my past but instead use my story in hopes that it may help others.
My mom was age 36 when I was born, and my dad was age 46. I was raised by two hard-working parents. My dad was a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Army and drove an 18-wheeler, being away from home for a week to two weeks. My mom was a Mortgage Loan Processor who took care of all the lawn work, home repairs and renovation, and plumbing. My mom and dad both had grown children from previous marriages, but I was their only child together, so they spoiled me. Both my parents were intelligent, especially my dad, who had a passion for reading and knowledge. They pushed me to excel in school, and from a young age, my self-worth was based on gifted programs, honor roll, and making the highest academic grades. I had was raised in a kind, loving, and secure middle-class family.
When I was 14, my dad was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. I was difficult to watch my 6’4” dad slowly wither away as he endured chemotherapy. He passed away only four months after being diagnosed. I did not tell any of my friends when he was diagnosed and did not tell anyone when he died. I didn’t know how to deal with the emotions and so I pushed the pain and grief down deep. The night of my dad’s funeral, I went to stay with a friend (who did not know my dad had just died). A few of us decided to get in my friend’s dad’s liquor. This was the first time I drank and coincidentally the first time I blacked out. Looking back, that should have been an indication that I wasn’t able to drink like the average drinker. I used whatever I could to try to numb my feelings. I drank alcohol, smoked weed, took benzodiazepines or anything else I could get my hands on, self-harmed by cutting, and binged and purged, anything to change the way I felt. My mom, who had just lost her husband, was scared she was losing me. She tapped my landline phone (I was spoiled and had my own phone line), got a security system so I couldn’t sneak out, made numerous trips to the school to try to prevent me from skipping, and even made me sleep in the same bed with her at times. It was a war zone in my house. Because my mom was scared to leave me alone, she forced me to go wherever she went. On a trip to visit my half-brother when he was having an episode, I discovered that he had what was finally diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder. Seeing a brother whom I loved when he was having an episode in which he lost contact with reality was difficult. He was evaluated and sent to Lakeshore Mental Health Institute, and my mom would make me go with her every day when she visited. I was angry over my dad’s death, I was angry at God for not answering my prayers to heal my dad, I was angry at my mom, I was angry at being forced to go to Lakeshore daily… I was just angry at the world. During this same six-month period, I found out that my half-sister had a drinking problem. During the same period of time, my grandmother was hospitalized, and my mom went to stay with her, so I bounced from relative to relative for short while. Just as suddenly as it began, I made a decision to stop drinking and using drugs. Looking back, I simply replaced the alcohol and drugs for others’ approval of me. In high school, I would be whomever you wanted me to be so that you liked me. I was Prom Queen, Class Officer, French Club Officer, Mock Trial Officer, Pep Club Officer, Beta Club Officer, Homecoming Court, ran track and cross country… I kept feeling as the awards and titles would fill the emptiness and make me feel worthy, but they never did.
When I went to college, I suddenly was painfully aware that I had no idea who I was. All the sudden I was shy, awkward, and uncomfortable in my own skin. I experienced anxiety, depression, and insomnia. So, I turned to what had worked to numb my feelings in the past. I began drinking again. When I started drinking, I could not stop until I blacked out. While in college, I also experimented with a new drug called OxyContin. The first time I used it, I felt as if that was what I had been missing all my life. It was as if a huge weight was lifted from me, and I could finally breathe. I was relaxed, comfortable in my own skin, outgoing, and able to shut off my worry and anxiety and sleep. It took me a year before I was physically dependent on Oxycontin. I was at Carson-Newman on a scholarship and made straight As in the Honors Program, even during most of my battle with opiates. I still had a drive to succeed and had enough credits to graduate in 3 years, but my ego told me I needed to stay my senior year to complete my Honor’s thesis so that I could graduate with honors and go on to law school. By my senior year, however, my addiction had progressed so that I wasn’t able to even go to class. I was given the opportunity to live in an Honors House for free on campus, but I rarely stayed there, because I’d make daily trips to my hometown to get more opiates. I got all incompletes my senior year. I knew I had a problem, but I didn’t know how to stop. I got the brilliant idea that I would confide in my mom about my opiate problem and give her a handful of OxyContin’s to ration out to me. I reasoned that I would have to really be hurting in order to ask my mom for drugs. That plan backfired. It just made me angry when I was sick, and she tried to make me wait longer before she gave me a pill. I went through a number of other unsuccessful attempts to quit. I tried skipping days, only using on weekends, asking people to hold on to them and ration them out, trying not to use in the mornings… I had a million ideas that seemed great, in theory, but they always failed. In 2003, my mom found out about a drug that was just approved by the FDA called Suboxone. I would do well for a while but always end up relapsing on opiates. I went to my first treatment center, Cornerstone of Recovery, when I was 21. During the first two weeks the only thing that kept me there was telling myself that when I got out, I’d finally be able to feel an opiate when I used it. Before going to treatment, the opiates had stopped making me feel high, they only kept me from feeling sick. Somewhere along the way, what the counselors were saying started to make sense. They planted a seed, and I really wanted to give sobriety a shot. When I completed treatment, I went to a 12-step meeting each night for a few days. On Day 4, I met my boyfriend, who had also completed treatment, in Knoxville to go to a NA meeting. We had been forging prescriptions for Oxycontin for eight months before we went to treatment. When I got in his car, the prescription opiates and Xanax were on the floorboard. We went to the mall to look around and I remember being able to think about nothing else but the prescription bottles waiting in his car. I kept telling myself I wasn’t going to use, but I only held out for a few hours before I decided that one wouldn’t hurt me. As soon as I put one into my body, the addiction picked back up. I began using IV opiates along with cocaine and later meth. When I was 23, my life was so uncontrollably miserable that I wanted to die by suicide. I stockpiled opiates and planned on intentionally overdosing, but someone stole some of my pills. I remember feeling like a failure thinking that I couldn’t even end my life successfully. I again tried Suboxone for probably the fifth time. This time I was able to use it successfully and not use opiates for nearly a year. I found out I was pregnant and got married. As soon as my daughter was born, trying to use just once started the cycle all over again. When my daughter was a year old, I was evicted from my apartment and my mom had to help care for my daughter. My pattern was that I would run off and live with a man, use drugs non-stop for months at a time until the shame got too great, then I’d call my mom and she’d pick me up and would help me get back on Suboxone. I terrorized my mom and used her unconditional love against her. I stole tens of thousands of dollars from her. My first arrest was in 2011 for a DUI. In 2012, I was arrested at Walmart twice in one day. The second arrest, they realized that I had my mom’s credit card. Although my mom would never press charges on me, she also would never lie for me. When an officer called her and asked her if I had permission to use her card, she answered honestly that I did not. I was arrested for a number of charges, 9 in total, the primary ones being two counts of forgery. The Judge felt that anyone who got arrested twice in the same place on the same day must have a pretty bad drug problem, so he offered me Drug Court, which I politely turned down. In turn, he sentenced me to 9 months and 9 days on a violation of probation for my previous DUI. Shortly before my arrest, I had woken up to a painful lump in my breast. I had tried twice to see a doctor, but once I didn’t have my ID on me and the other time, I didn’t have my insurance card. The longer I sat in the jail was the bigger the lump grew. I had been in jail about 4 months before I finally put in for a med request to see the doctor. I saw the doctor for a breast exam, the following week for a mammogram, the next week for a biopsy. The day before my mom’s birthday, the correctional officer called me into a room to speak with the doctor. He informed me that I had Stage III Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, but they would work on getting me out of jail to begin breast cancer treatments. I’ll never forgot the heart-wrenching, guttural cry of my mom when I called her from jail to tell her I had cancer. I was in jail another week or two before I got furloughed out. The mass in my breast had grown to 7.2cm, and the one in my lymph nodes was 1.8cm, so I was to begin treatments immediately. At that time, when faced with crises, my solution was always to use. A few days after I was released from jail, I overdosed for the first time. The night before I was scheduled for my first chemotherapy session, I stayed up the night before using IV meth. I rationalized my use, because now I had a reason. I would think, ‘If you had cancer, you’d use too.’ When they first put the chemo IV in me, my mom had tears streaming down her face. She got a call from her doctor, while I was still undergoing my first chemo session, telling her that her blood work came back abnormal. She didn’t bat an eye, because her focus was on me. I went through 8 rounds of chemotherapy, lost all my hair, my eyelashes, my eyebrows. It was rough, because the effects of chemo would mimic opiate withdrawal symptoms, at least in my mind. I had hot flashes, cold sweats, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, irritability, and insomnia. Several times I was hospitalized for a week or more at a time due to low white blood count and infections. The whole time I was fighting the cancer, I was also fighting the disease of addiction. For me, the disease of addiction was much harder to fight. I had my first moment of clarity when I wheeled my chemo IV in the bathroom to shoot up. I looked at myself in the mirror, bald and sickly with IVs coming out of the port in my chest, and a needle with meth and Roxicet hanging out of my arm. I kept thinking that as soon as I got through the cancer, then I could start working on my addiction. I used my cancer diagnosis as a manipulation tool. I used it to garner sympathy from others so that they would give me what I wanted. I used it to get morphine, Sudafed, and as a free pass to do what I wanted. Within a year, I was getting arrested again. The Judge, rightly so, felt that if I was well enough to commit crimes, I was well enough to serve my remaining time. I went to treatment for my 3rd time thinking that I just wanted to be detoxed before I went back to jail. I spent Easter weekend with my daughter and then turned myself in to serve my remaining 5 months. I figured that at least I could stay clean while I was in jail. It turns out that I couldn’t stay clean in jail, because I still used even in jail. Everywhere I went, I took myself with me. This time while in jail, I was the one who had to receive the gut-punching announcement of cancer. My mom had been diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. My very first chemo treatment, she had gotten the call about her abnormal blood work. They couldn’t ever find the cause until it was Stage IV. My mom was my whole world. She was an enabler, but she was also my best friend and biggest supporter. The news crushed me. I decided to go to a halfway house following jail and really try to make her proud. I did well in a halfway house for a few months. Looking back, I was still acting out on addict behavior such as snorting mental health medications. Non-addicts don’t do things like snort medications. I came back home to help take care of my mom. I stayed clean for a while and even went to AA and NA meetings, but I still felt empty. I began to use meth on occasion. The meth seemed easier to hide, because I appeared to be a functioning adult up and ready to work in the mornings. The meth eventually led me back to opiates, this time it was Opana. Before long, I was cooking meth in order to support my opiate addiction. I neglected my mom when she needed me. I would leave her and my daughter honestly telling myself that I’d get high, feel better, then come back and be the best daughter and mother in the world. Things never went according to plan. Either the meth cook would take too long, or the dealer would take too long or there would be some hiccup that would cause me to be gone for days. I can remember a few times where everything actually went according to plan, I left, got my drugs and was ready to come back home within an hour. Then there would be an opportunity to make more money or free drugs or whatever the case may be, and I had a choice to make. I never made the right one. I always chased the next high. In 2016, my mom died of lung cancer, and it had also spread to her brain. I watched her in the nursing home unable to communicate and it tore me apart inside. After my mom died, I spiraled quickly, not even realizing that the rock bottom just keeps getting deeper and deeper. I’ve overdosed eight times and six or seven of those times were in an 8-month span after my mom died. In one week, I overdosed in the same hotel room twice on heroin. This was my second moment of clarity. My ego told me that I had just died and been brought back by two shots of Narcan. I felt as if someone would be waiting for me at the hospital. The truth is that I made a dozen calls before I could even find anyone willing to pick me up and sign me out of the hospital. By this time, I was essentially homeless and hopeless. I was bouncing from trap house to trap house. We were cooking meth in houses without electricity or running water. I was staying in houses with bedbugs and rodents. It’s unbelievable how accustomed you can get to that way of life. My sole focus was on getting high to lessen the reality. If I wanted to get a shower, I would either go to the campgrounds or we would fill up a trash can with water from a local church’s spigot, heat the water over a wood-burning stove (because there wasn’t electricity), and fill up a portable bag intended for showers while you’re camping. Those 3–4-minute warm showers made me feel normal for just a brief moment. I went to inpatient treatment for my 4th time. This time I went to Intensive Outpatient therapy. I just couldn’t accept that I could not use drugs successfully. I tried to only use meth but, as always, it led me right back to opiates.
From 2011 to 2017, I was arrested around 18 separate times and charged with 68 different charges. Granted I was found not guilty of nearly half of those charges, which I later got expunged. Some of my charges included DUI, Public Intoxication, Schedule II Resale, Schedule III Resale, Schedule IV Resale, Schedule VI Resale, theft, forgery… the list goes on. My last arrest was on February 11, 2018. I don’t know what made this time different, but I was tired of being arrested and tired of living. The life I was living was exhausting. I couldn’t fall asleep around people without getting robbed. I was beaten in my sleep with a weapon. I was drugged and robbed. I had guns pulled on me. I couldn’t sit anything down without it being stolen. I couldn’t trust anyone and felt utterly alone. The kicker was that I was probably no better than the company I kept. I can remember telling people, “I’m broken.” There was no other way to describe how I felt. It was a loneliness and pain that I couldn’t put into words. Over the course of my 18-year addiction, I had overdosed 8 times, been arrested 18 times, had a boyfriend die of overdose, had a boyfriend die of sepsis, lost a close friend to murder during a drug-deal gone bad, and lost at least 15 friends to overdose. I knew that my only choice was to either get clean or die. I somehow felt that I didn’t have another overdose in me.
When I was arrested on February 11, 2018, I knew with everything in me that something had to change. I had always believed in a Higher Power that I chose to call God, but I honestly didn’t believe that anything was more powerful than the drugs and my addiction. Sitting in my jail pod, I had an aha moment. For me, it was realizing that I believe evil is real, I’ve seen it first-hand. If I believe that evil is real, and I believe there is a Higher Power that is good. Why can I not believe that good triumphs evil? It seems common-sense, but things began to change once I accepted that there was a Higher Power who could restore me to sanity. The next day I was offered drugs and turned them down. It wasn’t easy, especially in jail, but I finally accepted that one always takes me down a road of misery. This is where my life started to turn around. I was sentenced to a year to serve. The Judge had started a new pilot diversion program for women. I went before the Judge and told her why I would be a good fit. My mom would always tell me that if it took her giving her life for me to get clean, she would gladly do it. She’d lived a good life and was ready to go. All she wanted was for me to get clean. I told the Judge this, and that I wanted to make my mom proud. I was a handful of women chosen for this program. I was released a few weeks later and sent to treatment for the 5th time. I had doubts about treatment, because I had already tried it several times before. But all the sudden, my perspective had changed. I finally realized that my way never worked so I’d listen to the suggestions of others. I used to pick and choose which suggestions I wanted to follow. This time, I was willing to do whatever it took and whatever they suggested. When women would come and bring a meeting into the treatment center, I would nervously ask for their numbers. I had no idea how to have a conversation, because every conversation I had for years had revolved around drugs. Sober, I was again shy and awkward. I was determined to push past the discomfort. I got a 10-minute phone call each evening. I would call my daughter every other day and the women whose numbers I had gotten the remaining days. I wanted to get used to reaching out even though it was awkward. I knew that I couldn’t return home and stay sober. I tried over and over again, but it just never worked for me. I decided to go into a sober living home. I went to Oxford House in Knoxville. I rode TennCare transportation from Nashville to Knoxville and was offered opiates by another rider on the trip. Again, I turned them down- only the second time I’d been able to do that up until that point. When I got out of the van, I saw a familiar face. It was a female I had been in Intensive Outpatient with in 2016. It was suggested that I go to 90 meetings in 90 days, so I went to 120. I kept running into this same female at meetings and eventually asked her to be my sponsor. My first job was making biscuits at 4AM in the morning. I had to pay someone $10 to take me there and ride the bus home, so I was barely making enough to pay for rent, but I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. The store ended up closing, but the next day, at the first place I went, I got a better job. I was able to save up enough to buy a car and SR-22 insurance. The office where I was working shut down, but I had faith things would work out. I was offered a job as a receptionist at Cornerstone of Recovery. There are themes in my life, and one of them is that things tend to come full circle. I began working at the very place where I first went to treatment. My sponsor, who guided me through the 12 steps, was a person I had known in 2016, the very first face I had seen when I arrived in Knoxville out of treatment, who I kept running into at meetings. I became President of my Oxford House and Oxford Chapter Treasurer. I wanted to be of service even more than that, so I became a Certified Peer Recovery Specialist. After a year at Cornerstone, I began working as an Admissions Counselor. I began to repair the wreckage of my past and make amends to those I’ve harmed. I began paying back all those who I owed, including creditors. I began working on my credit, opened up a savings account and a checking account. I got a secured credit card. When creditors trusted me enough, I eventually got an unsecured credit card. I saved up and got my own apartment. I finally filed for divorce and got full custody of my daughter. My daughter had spent weekends and breaks with me while I was at Oxford House, but we have now been living on our own for over 2 years. I became a Recovery Coach Professional. There were some changes at work so that I had to find a different position. It made me anxious, but I knew from past experience that God would make it so that I had to grow. I’m loyal, so I would only leave an employer when the office would shut down or the position was no longer needed. I would grow when I had no other option that to grow with the changes. I went to work as a Newcomers Counselor. Shortly after that, I was offered a position as a Care Coordinator for Business Development. I was able to buy a used car and a bank trust that I would make payments on it. I had never financed a car before. I completed all the requirements and turned in my application to become a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor. I recently applied for a Master’s Program in Social Work. I am still waiting to hear whether I got accepted, because my criminal background is something that I have to explain often in instances such as that. My credit is good enough to buy a house, so I’m house-hunting (yes, not the best time to purchase a home, I know.) The absolute best blessings of recovery for me, beyond anything that I just listed, is that I get to take my daughter to school and pick her up from basketball practice. I’m present at all her games. I’m a kind, loving, and dependable mother who is able to financially and emotionally support her child. I get to sponsor other beautiful women and help guide them through the 12 steps. For the last year, I’ve brought a meeting into Stepping Stone to Recovery every week, because I know how important that is. There were women who came and did that for us while we were in treatment, and I want to pay it forward. I’ve spoken a lot about my mom. She was a huge part of my life, and I miss her daily. I got a message from a relative about 7 months ago telling me that she spoke with my mom toward the end of her life. My mom told her that God had shown her that I would get clean and help others… and when that day came, she wanted me to know that she loved me and was proud of me. That’s the power of recovery and faith. The fact that I could get a message from my mom after several years clean is beyond words. Through working the 12 steps and applying them to my daily life, I have a recreated life. I don’t necessarily like sharing all the details of my past, but it no longer fills me with shame. I wholeheartedly know that I’m not the same person. I had a spiritual awakening as the result of working the 12 steps. I have people in my life who love me for me, not what I can do for them. More importantly, I love people for who they are, not for what they can do for me. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I was in jail when I was diagnosed with cancer and again when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I don’t know how I would have reacted had I not been in jail, but I suspect my impulse would have been to do as many opiates as I could to cope. I can look back on my life and see the benefits of all my circumstances. I have made a million mistakes while in recovery. The beauty is that today I learn from them so that I don’t have to continue to repeat them. The one thing I did perfectly was that I didn’t pick up and use. I share my story in hopes that others can see that recovery is possible. My life isn’t perfect, but I have serenity and joy today. I’m grateful for each day, and I hope that I can continue to be of service to others.