Hi!  My name is Artema and I am a recovering drug addict, Meth addict to be exact.  On July 29th, 2005 I graduated from the Stephen Center HERO Program and on Oct 13th, 2005 I celebrated 6-months of sobriety.  I am 27 years old and the second to youngest of 6 kids.  I am a college graduate with 2 Associate of Applied Science Degrees-1 in Accounting and 1 in Business Administration.  I didn’t grow up aspiring to be a Meth addict, and still to this day I can’t believe that it happened to me.  My childhood was anything but normal and my family gave true meaning to the term dysfunctional.  Addiction and alcoholism run deep on my mother’s side of the family.  Growing up I experimented with alcohol, marijuana, crack and crank, but it wasn’t until the age of 26 that I became a Meth addict. I started dating Doug when I was 26 and everything in my life started a downward spiral.  Shortly after Doug and I started dating, we started doing Meth together.  At first, we only did it on the weekends, but that only lasted a couple of months.  We got an apartment together and shortly thereafter, we started doing it all the time and then we started dealing it.  This was so far out of character for me!  If you had told me 5 years ago that I would become a drug dealing Meth addict, I would never have believed you, and neither would my family.  When I was growing up I dreamed of going to Harvard Law School and becoming a lawyer.  I dreamed of marriage, children and a house with a white picket fence!
          Before coming to the Stephen Center, I had hit rock bottom – hard.  Doug and I had broke up, I had lost my job and hadn’t worked in over a month, I hadn’t paid rent or any of my bills in almost 2 months, and I had pretty much severed all ties with my family.  I hadn’t left my apartment in probably two weeks, hadn’t showered in at least one week and I was living on Twix Peanut Butter candy bars, Wavy Lays potato chips and Dr. Pepper.  I slept, watched television, did Meth and felt sorry for myself.  On April 16th, 2005 I decided that I was sick and tired of feeling sorry for myself.  I got up, took a shower, put on some clean clothes and went to my mom and     dad’s.  From there I called my older sister, whom I had always been close to until I started using.  I asked my sister if I could come over to her house because I didn’t want to go back to my apartment.  I knew that if I went back, things would be the same and I didn’t want that, but I didn’t want to ask for help either.  My sister must have known this because she told me to come over.  I spent most of the day sleeping at her house.  On Sunday April 17th, my sister and mother confronted me about my drug use.  This was not the first time they had voiced their concerns about me.  At first I denied it like I had all the other times, but I knew I had a problem and I was tired of lying.  I was tired of running away from my problems and I was sick of hiding from everyone that I cared about.  I was finally ready to be honest – not just with myself, but with my family as well.  After I came to terms with the fact that I was indeed addicted to Meth, I saw my reflection in a full-length mirror and it scared the hell out of me.  I could not believe that the person staring back at me - was me!  For the first time in a year and half I saw what everyone else had been seeing.  My skin had a grayish tint to it, my face was thin and sunk in, my arms and legs were like toothpicks, you could see my ribs and the bones in my back through my skin – it was disgusting!  Mike Johnson, my Stephen Center counselor, said it best when he said that I looked like I had just come out of a Nazi Concentration Camp.
          That Sunday my sister and I happened to run into an old family friend who gave us the number for the Hero Program.  We called Mike Johnson on Monday, on Thursday my sister dropped me off at the Stephen Center, and my life has not been the same since!  I remember crying and begging my sister not to leave me there, but I am so glad she did.  The Stephen Center changed my life and has made me a better person than I every thought I could be!  I now have my family back in my life and we get along better than we ever have.  My family and I are grateful for the Stephen Center and what they have done for me.  I have a job that I absolutely love and I am currently living in one of the center’s Transitional Living houses.  I take life one day at a time, and it seems that the rewards of sobriety are never ending.
THANK YOU TO THE STEPHEN CENTER, THE HERO PROGRAM, EVERYONE AT THE CENTER AND EVERYONE WHO MAKES THE STEPHEN CENTER AND HERO PROGRAM POSSIBLE!
And with that, I will take another 24!

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