I started smoking pot and drinking with some friends. I went from an A/B student to doing just enough to get by. Drug use became my new identity. My new life. It did “it” for me. I had always felt just slightly different, as if I never fit in with anyone fully. When I used, that feeling was gone.

My first alcohol and drug use started when I was 14 years old. Why did it start then: disconnection from family, wanted to connect with friends and others, curiosity and searching for something to make me feel valuable and complete.

I always felt hopeless, depressed, and like I didn’t matter in life. I thought that nobody cared about me. I was emotionally shut down. I had given up on life and didn’t really care if I lived or died.

I am very grateful for all the people that stood by my side through all the ups and downs of my addiction.

Kentucky residents earning less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level annually, which is approximately $18,000, and are seeking residential treatment for an opioid use disorder qualify to have the cost of 30 days of residential treatment covered by KORE funds.

When a counselor told me that unforgiveness is like you are drinking the poison and expecting the other person to die. When I forgave myself and others it was like a very big load was removed from my shoulders. I had been packing that load since 2001. It had been so heavy.

I was on house arrest and waiting to go into treatment the next day, I had decided to cut my bracelet off and go on the run.

My freshman year of high school is when I tried almost everything for the first time. I looked for anything that would change how I felt, no matter how long it lasted or didn’t last.

I was deeply depressed. I woke up every single day with the image of a gun in my mouth. I would go five or six days at a time being too depressed to shower.

I hated the man I was on the inside but on the outside I felt like the most important person in the world.