Last night my friend and I went to a party to celebrate our friend’s tenth anniversary in recovery. She got clean when she was fifteen in adolescent outpatient in Newport Beach and has stayed clean since. It is really inspiring to see someone get clean at the age that we did and to actually stay clean. Sometimes it is easy for me to tell myself that I was just going through a phase and that I was as an adolescent too young to be an addict or alcoholic, but I think that since I needed all of that help at such a young age, it’s not likely that my life would have gotten better if I hadn’t gotten clean.
Getting clean young can seem like a death sentence, but seeing people who have stayed clean and had their lives improve helps me maintain hope. Sometimes people in 12 step meetings or my old friends made me feel uncomfortable about how young I was when I got clean, but since I was there to save my life, it didn’t matter what they thought. Having a strong support group and recovering friends in my age group really helped me feel like I wasn’t alone and that I was doing the right thing.
Watching my friend celebrate her tenth anniversary clean and sober reminded me of my own commitment to recovery after adolescent drug treatment. I was definitely reluctant at first, but in teen outpatient treatment in Newport Beach, I was introduced to other young people trying to turn their lives around and it started to seem like a doable thing. I love my life in sobriety today, and no one can take it away from me. I feel lucky that I got clean so young, and that I didn’t have to waste half of my life in active addiction. I have a fresh start, and a chance to tackle life with some really useful tools.
Originally posted on July 19, 2009 @ 4:27 pm
