I was ready for a change when I got arrested the last time. I was non-bondable I don’t think I could have been happier. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for a while and I prayed for god to give me a second chance, a chance to change. He did and I was sent to the best drug\homeless shelter any one could ask for. I went to the Changing Lives Center, part of the Phoenix Rescue Mission for woman and children. I did weekly counseling sessions, group therapy, went to church, and did work therapy. I worked out, baked cookies for the cookie project and absolutely loved it. Not everyday was rainbows and butterflies, as some were full of heartache and tears. However I was able to work through the difficulties of my childhood and everything I was running from. I learned to face it all directly and no longer felt I had an excuse to go get high. I no longer have to be an addict chained to drugs. I choose more for myself and today I can happily say I have been clean and sober for 3 years and I am happily married with our four month old son. I couldn’t have asked god for anything more.

     There is so much more to life than being a hopeless dope addict!     

Nicole’s story on addiction

            For ten years I was a prisoner to my addiction. I was it’s slave and it wiped me up. It was a daily struggle to stay high and when I was high, the high never seemed to be enough. Looking back on ten years of meth abuse is blurry yet so painful, I try to this day just to block out some of the long days and nights that still haunt me.
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My drug addiction started when I was 14 years old. I used meth to escape the pain of my past, what ever it was, was just too much for me to handle. I smoked it away in a pipe and when I was high every day nothing really mattered, not even the ones I loved most.

       My addiction was like a monster living within me. I couldn’t escape it and I couldn’t beat it. I often tried but I wasn’t successful. For many years I was my own worst enemy and a nuisance to everyone around me. There came a day when I didn’t recognize myself I didn’t know the person staring back at me. I abandoned everything I loved for drugs. I didn’t know how to stop and ask for help, I couldn’t look in the mirror because if I did, I cried. I lost my kids to my addiction and still couldn’t stop getting high there was honestly so much pain, frustration, and just plain anger. I felt like a yo-yo going nowhere. I wanted so badly to do right and yetI didn’t know how.

      As a clean and sober individual today, I honestly never meant to let my addiction take control. I never meant to lose custody of my kids as they meant everything to me. It was so hard to come home to them knowing I couldn’t provide for them. I was struggling more than I let on and although I was falling apart, I don’t think anybody saw it tell I was at my worst. I realize today that all my kids wanted was my love, my time, and  for me to be there to cook, play games, watch movies and enjoy all the things I took for granted. Things like washing their toes, chasing them around the house, wiping their tears and hearing their laughter eco the halls.

      As I became weaker towards my addiction, the monster had to be fed. There wasn’t anything I wasn’t doing to stay high because reality was something I couldn’t bare to face. I was hanging out with gang affiliated people, robbing people, selling drugs, hanging out at random houses with no real place to call home. I just wandered from place to place and often had no place to go. I often stayed at one of my uncles properties that I had once rented, that looked liked it had been abandoned. it was awful there with no electricity, no water and it was very freaky at night. I eventually got a generator to have power in the house at night, and then all then druggies came to where I was. Come to think about it, being a drug addict is much harder than it is to be sober. While I was on drugs, I was arrested five times. Three of the five arrests were all by the same cop, and if it wasn’t for him seeing something in me, I would probably still be out there on drugs. I was desperately ready to change the last time I was arrested.  I was sick of running the streets, experiencing its hard life. You are never happy and you are miserable and alone all the time.

     

Nicole Kirk, November 28th, 2012

​4th Avenue Jail

Nicole Kirk (2015)

​Volunteer Coordinator, Bare Necessities 4 Teens