OCTOBER 9, 2018

From Crisis to Career: Christina Dick’s Story…

This series is a collaboration between the Leviza Lazer and Addiction Recovery Care to profile men and women’s struggles as they went from active to addiction to abundant recovery.  With half of its 400+ employees in recovery from substance use disorder, Addiction Recovery Care (ARC) is leading the way in all of Appalachia when it comes to combining drug treatment vocational training resulting in second chance employment. One third of ARC employees are graduates of an ARC treatment program. ARC believes that the solution to the nation’s workforce issues is lying dormant in the lives of those who are struggling with addiction or alcoholism.

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Christina Dick is an all American girl.  She has poise and grace.  She had a great family upbringing.  She was a cheerleader.  A sorority girl.  She traveled and studied abroad.  She also had an addiction, and it very nearly killed her.

Addiction doesn’t usually exist in a vacuum.  It likes to feed on issues like poverty and helplessness, but the truth is it can happen to anyone.  If it can bring down the King of Pop and the Queen of Soul, we shouldn’t be surprised that it can reach into a family like Christina’s.

Christina is 26 years old and is finishing up a one year stint at Beth’s Blessing, a faith-based, science-grounded women’s rehab campus in Jackson County operated by Addiction Recovery Care, Inc. in Louisa. 

Geographically, it’s a short drive to Lexington; culturally, it’s a long haul from the Catholic school where Christina spent her formative teenage years. 

Christina’s path to addiction seemed to begin innocently.  Adderall was her gateway, and for a long time her mainstay.  It’s used to treat ADHD among children and adults, and it’s a stimulant.  It’s also addictive and withdrawal is hard.  Christina started using Adderall when she was 15..   

She wasn’t prescribed it and didn’t take it the way it was intended. She was a perfectionist and had heard that it was a shortcut to keeping you on top of your game.  Cheerleading, academics and socializing required perfection:  “I was trying to be perfect.  I saw this person I was trying to be.  She looked like me, but she was prettier, and smarter.  I felt like I had expectations on me.  The first time I tried it, I felt like I was on top of the world.”

It didn’t stop there.  By the time she entered high school, Christina was the belle of the ball.  She began smoking marijuana, and drinking at parties.  Life was fun. “Everything I took or did, I did it to the fullest.”

How many of us have been there?  We sow our wild oats in a fit of rebellion or just plain old fun.  It lasts for a season or two.  We skate by without suffering much more than a few really intense hangovers and some unpleasant memories- moderated, of course, by the comic side of the situation.

For Christina, however, the partying didn’t end.  By the time she got to college, it had gotten worse.  She was at Western Kentucky University studying Business Marketing.  She was running 5 miles daily.  She was in a Sorority.  The Adderall helped her party all night!  She had tons of energy; maybe a little too much energy, in fact.   Eventually, she started having trouble sleeping.  No problem: she took Xanax to wind down. 

People in addiction will tell you they set themselves these imaginary red lines in the sand, beyond which they just won’t cross: ‘I may do X, but I would NEVER do Y’, they tell themselves.  Yet somewhere along the way, Christina crossed that line and began experimenting with heroin and fentanyl. She didn’t know it at the time, but she’d had crossed a point of no return.  On the surface, however, her perfect life continued.  She was able to study abroad in France- of course only after making sure she had mailed herself a shipment of Adderall in advance. 

Christina’s life may have looked perfect on the outside, but on the inside, she was in turmoil.  “In addiction, I felt completely hopeless, full of shame, self-hatred and guilt. I had decided that a fulfilling and happy life was not for me and that I was destined to die of an overdose. I welcomed the thought of being taken out of this world because of who I had become.”

Eventually, the addiction began taking a toll on Christina’s relationships.  “I felt like I had no one. My family wanted nothing to do with me until I was ready to get help. I had turned my back on God and had no friends. I lost every possession and I didn’t have a dollar to my name.”

The hits kept coming.  “I lost my car, apartment, license, self-respect, and humanity. I also had active warrants out for my arrest.  I had become a shell of a person who was miserable and with no way out. I was constantly hiding from my family, the law, God, and myself.” 

Coming out of active addiction is a lot like crash landing a moving car with no brakes.  The inertia is carrying you forward so fast that you know it’s going to hurt when you stop, and the only real question is how much damage you will do before the vehicle comes to a halt.

“I was starting to run out of options.  I had no contact with my family.  I had totaled my car; the second car I’d totaled.  My parents had cut me off.” 

Then, the friend she’d been using with was forced to rehab.  That cut off her supply of drugs, and gave her family an opening.  It was the bottom they’d been looking for.  “I thought everyone had given up on me, but really they were just waiting for me to get help.  They had been researching several different facilities.”  Christina’s family stumbled on information about Addiction Recovery Care.  They learned that the company has a four part focus on recovery: clinical, medical, spiritual, and vocation.  They appreciate the fact that it was spiritual but not in an overly religious way: “They liked the faith based approach, but also the love and nurturing.  They liked the clinical, because I was so sick.” 

Christina entered treatment on October 15th 2017 at Beth’s Blessing.  She had been humbled and was just grateful to be alive.  And he was slowly undergoing a religious awakening.  “The whole personal relationship with God, I never understood that.  I knew about religion.  All the religious practices… but I never talked to Him.” 

Addiction Recovery Care works hard to NOT push religion on anyone.  It believes there are many pathways to recovery, and that “a higher power”, to use the classic phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous, is critical, but it has to happen, if it happens, at the time of the patient’s choosing.  “Nobody pushed it on me.  [At first], When everyone was praising God, I was the one looking up.  I was weirded out.  But they let me come to my own understanding of what it’s like to have a personal relationship with God.”

Recovery has reoriented Christina’s perspective.  She could go anywhere, but wants to stay in Jackson County with her sisters in recovery.  “In the next month I plan on graduating the [ARC] Peer Support Academy. After that I would like to finish my last year of college while working at Beth’s Blessing. After obtaining my bachelor’s degree, I would like to continue helping people recover and become either a licensed alcohol and drug counselor or a certified alcohol and drug counselor.”

Christina is taking full advantage of the company’s vocational training program.  She’s gaining professional certifications and interning at the center that helped saved her life.  She’s thriving and she’s grateful.  “The opportunity to intern for this company has been the biggest blessing of my life. It has given me the chance to stop being served and to start serving others, and in that, finding true happiness and peace from God.”

 Christina knows she had many blessings growing up, but she also understands that addiction doesn’t care.  It can go after anyone.  “I had a really good childhood.  I had everything I could ask for.  Throughout my addiction, I hid from everyone.  That kept me sick for a long time.”

“I just enjoy helping people”, she says, before summarizing her journey in a way that sounds as if she might be auditioning for that future job as a counselor: “addiction does not discriminate, but neither does recovery. If you think there isn’t any hope because you are too far gone, that simply isn’t true. Many addicts, like myself, have felt completely hopeless at one point and time in their addiction, but through the grace of God we have realized it is a spiritual problem that can be fixed by turning back to God. ARC has shown me a better way of life, and I thank God every day for everything this program has given me.”

Addiction Recovery Care’s motto is simple: From Crisis to Career. #FromCrisistoCareer

ARC is a substance use disorder treatment company based in Louisa. It has outpatient and in-patient facilities around Kentucky. It gives select clients with 60 days of residential treatment the option to become an intern and to simultaneously continue with their treatment and learn the ins and outs of operating a treatment center.  Once an intern successfully completes 12 months of treatment, they are guaranteed a job with the company. 

ARC  believes a sense of purpose combined with employment is a critical factor in long-term recovery and it prides itself on helping clients first achieve sobriety and then helping them discover their God-given destiny. 

If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, please call Addiction Recovery Care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 606.638.0938 or visit them on the web at www.arccenters.com.