“I didn’t have a traumatic childhood that could explain the direction my life would go. My mom and dad lived in California but divorced when I was a baby. Mom went back to school and sent me to live with my grandmother in Prichard. I grew up there and went to California for vacation every summer.  I was 16 when I graduated from Blount High School. 

After graduating from high school, I moved to Los Angeles and lived with my mom because my grandmother was strict and Dad promised me a car. I graduated from junior college and went to California State University, Fullerton. 

I did well until I started going to the clubs. I was too young to drink, but I did it anyway. I went with friends to dinner on my twenty-first birthday and got so drunk that I threw up. That should have been one of the first signs that I had a problem, but I thought I was young and enjoying life. I quit school and started working full-time at a bank.

Then I met a guy. 

I was out with my girlfriends and a handsome guy was looking at me. We started talking over the phone. The first red flag should have been that he didn’t have a car. 

I went to visit him, and he left me in the front room while people came in and out of a room in the back. I am nosy, so I opened the door and smoke came out. I told him that I smoke a little weed. It wasn’t weed—they were freebasing cocaine. I had no idea what that was, but I later tried it with a  friend. It was great, but I thought I would never spend my money on it.

I got my first paycheck from the bank and spent the whole thing in one night freebasing cocaine.  I felt horrible and was broke. I didn’t even have money for gas or to make a call from the payphone.

I kept using. I worked at a bank, so I took money from the drawer and replaced it when I got paid. My addiction progressed to the point I wasn’t going to work. While I was out, they did a surprise cash count on my drawer. They asked me to resign or they would press charges.

I was smoking crack and in full-blown addiction. I would stop for a while and get a good job, but that never lasted long. 

I got pregnant and had my son. I moved to another city and straightened up for a while. I never thought about being an addict and didn’t know about recovery.  While washing clothes at the laundromat, I saw a transaction taking place. As an addict, I knew what that was and discovered where to get the drugs. I was off to the races. 

My mom realized I was using again, and my dad came and got my son and raised him. I am glad he did. I lost the apartment and ended up in the streets in a part of LA called ‘The Jungle.’ I met some Bloods, gang bangers who were drug dealers, and offered to clean their apartments for crack. They started trusting me and would leave me alone with their drugs and money.

I had been up for days and started hallucinating. I thought people were coming to get me. I took some drugs and money, then paged my boyfriend to come get me. I needed to get away and get some rest. I had every intention of returning the money and drugs. 

I didn’t make it back. 

Days later, I was in a liquor store. LA is a big city, but at that moment some of the dealers and gang members walked in. They saw me and said, ‘Look who we’ve got here,’ and asked for the gun and the money. The liquor store owner made us go outside. They held a nine mm pistol to my head. I was small, because I was on drugs, but I tussled with them. They threw me on the floorboard of their car and said they were going to kill me.

They took me inside the drug house and started beating me. Other members came in and gang raped me. They fractured my ribs and hit my head with a gun, busting open my skull. Blood was gushing, and I couldn’t see. 

They kept me on a mattress in the living room with no clothes on, kicking me as they walked by. This went on for a few days with no food or water. They told me over and over that I would die there.

They made the mistake of letting another girl into the drug house. We had hung out once before. She told my boyfriend she saw me and he went to the police. The cops came, but they went to the wrong apartment.

They finally found me and took me to the hospital. I had been there before and they pulled my records with my mom’s contact information. I hadn’t called her in a year, but she came as soon as the hospital called. She walked into the room and I was unrecognizable. 

One of the gang members called my room, threatening to kill me if I said anything. I told the police, and they put out that I was deceased and listed me as a Jane Doe. I stayed in the hospital for a month and could only see out of one eye when I left.

My hair still covers the scar on my face from what they did to me. 

I worked with the police and moved to another city for my safety. What I did was bad, but I didn’t deserve the treatment I got. I didn’t want them to get away with it.

I started missing my boyfriend in LA, so he came to get me. I had the brilliant idea that God spared my life, and I wanted to have another baby. I was seven months pregnant with my daughter when they made the first arrest of the gang members. It was now more dangerous for me. The detective gave me three options for how I could leave the area. 

I wanted to go home. My boyfriend had family in New Orleans, so he put me on the bus at seven months pregnant and sent me to stay with them. His friend was supposed to meet me at the bus station. I knew nothing about the friend, or New Orleans, but I saw the projects across the street from the bus station and knew they would have drugs. I found some crack and finally got to my baby’s father’s cousin’s house. They used drugs, but my boyfriend told them not to give me anything. They didn’t have any food in the house, and I didn’t have any money.

I called my grandfather in Prichard, and he sent me a bus ticket to Mobile. 

I was still using, and my daughter tested positive for cocaine when she was born. Surprisingly, they gave me a chance and didn’t take her from me.

I got an apartment in midtown Mobile where it was the wild, wild west. I let the drug dealers take it, and once again my family took my child. Once again, that was best.

I was supposed to testify at the dealer’s trial in LA. The government prosecutors found me in the Metro Jail. I had a problem with putting my hands on things that didn’t belong to me. They got me out of jail and  flew me to California for the trial. 

I came back to Mobile, and the drug dealers had ransacked my apartment. I was homeless and not allowed to come close to my daughter. I wanted to die, but I didn’t have enough courage to commit suicide.

I ended up back in jail one more time with a felony.  They offered me drug court or prison. I plead into Mobile Drug Court in February 1998. By March, I was awol because I didn’t stop using. They put me back in jail for 40 days, but Judge Michael McMaken would become my saving grace. 

They let me out of jail and one Friday night 80 days later a drug dealer gave me free dope. That never happens. I made the decision to use again,even afterI had just left a 12-step recovery meeting and  stopping at a phone booth to call my 12-step sponsor.

I tested positive for drugs on Monday. My counselor at the drug court program at 111 Canal Street, where my office is today, told me to sit down and think about what I had done. At that point, I finally told myself, ‘I have a problem. I can either do it their way or I am going to prison.’ I broke down and surrendered. I was going to give this a year. Once the year was over, I could do what I wanted to do. 

I started working the 12-Step program of NA (Narcotics Anonymous) and did community service at drug court to help pay my fees. I cleaned toilets and emptied trash at the Community Correction Center where Mobile Drug Court is located. The light bulb finally went off and I started feeling like Joyce again. I hadn’t always been a drug addict. At one point in my life I was a productive responsible member of society.

They say go after recovery like you went after drugs. I got high every day, so I set a goal of 365 meetings in 365 days. I went to a meeting a day. In the beginning, I went to two meetings a day.

I kept going beyond my community service and volunteered at the front desk at community corrections, treating it like a job. At graduation they hired me part-time in the community service program.  This was done after conversations between Judge McMaken, Judge Kendall and the Mobile County Commissions.   That was the beginning of my professional career. 

I wasn’t getting some positions because I didn’t have a college degree, so I went back to school and got my bachelors degree in psychology, sociology and criminal justice. Then I went back for my master’s in rehab counseling while I was still working. 

I was hired to work as a counselor in drug court. I also got my daughter back and was raising her in the house I bought. I also have a great relationship with my family.

I became addicted to school. I got a second master’s in public administration. I went for my PhD in human services and did all of the coursework. By the time I got to the dissertation, I had been going to school for 20 years.  I was burned out so I quit. 

Becoming a counselor in drug court was never on my list of career choices. I never even knew this help was available. Everything that I went through, and that I am still alive, God was preparing me for where he wanted me to be.  

Getting help is still a problem, especially for women. We have a lot of excuses. We have kids and can’t leave them. We have jobs and family all around to care for. It also  seems a lot harder for us to get clean and stay clean versus men. I tell them I am in recovery and a graduate of the Mobile Drug Court Program. I have 24 years of drug and alcohol free, since June 13,1998. If I can do it, they can do it, too.  

People see me and tell me I look good. I always think If I look like what I have been through, it wouldn’t be good. Thank God there is a better way.”

Joyce

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September is National Recovery Month. We have so much to learn from people in recovery or family or friends who lost a loved one to a drug overdose, so I am sharing some of these stories throughout the month.