Kicking off our September series, “Teen Recovery,” is the extraordinary journey of Katherine—a young woman who made the courageous decision to stop using before addiction could take her as a teenager. Her story is raw, unflinching, and filled with hope for young people trapped in the grip of the disease.From childhood, alcohol was a cultural norm at the dinner table. But by age twelve, Katherine’s relationship with alcohol had already revealed itself—she drank to excess, whenever she obtained alcohol, no matter how sick it made her. What started with occasional wine at family meals quickly escalated to harder drugs as she navigated junior high and high school.Her grades plummeted, her behavior worsened, and though she tried to hide it, the truth was visible to teachers, administrators, and her parents. The breaking point came at the age of just sixteen, when her normally calm father called her in anger, demanding she come home immediately. Instead, Katherine disappeared. For days, she was missing, while raging forward in full-blown addiction. Blackouts left her waking in strange places with people she didn’t know, until one day, the police knocked at the door in a moment that would change everything. As her so-called friends scattered to avoid accountability, Katherine was left to face the officers alone. She was offered a choice: the easy way or the hard way. Behind them, she noticed the light of day breaking through—symbolizing a dawn after the long darkness of her disease. In that moment, she chose life.Returning home, she found her parents surrounded by family and loved ones who had spent days languishing over her disappearance. For the first time in years, Katherine was honest with her parents, telling them everything. Though it shocked and devastated them, she knew she was “sick and tired of being tired and sick.” That admission became her turning point.In treatment, she heard those same exact words echoed by members of H&I and knew she was finally in the right place. With new tools and support, she began the process of recovery. Even after changing schools, Katherine realized her environment was filled with the same characters, the same temptations—but this time she had new tools. Recovery and therapy equipped her to stay clean in the midst of using peers. While others were getting drunk and high at parties, she spent days and nights at meetings with her fellow addicts.Her parents shuttled her to meetings before she could drive, often sleeping in the car outside just to help their daughter stay clean. Inside those rooms, Katherine often felt out of place—surrounded by addicts with mortgages, marriages, and full-time jobs she couldn’t yet imagine—but she kept coming back. She also saw what could have been her future: peers her own age who went out on their 21st birthdays for a legal drink, many of whom never returned to recovery.Her high school years and college years unfolded in a completely different way. Though she stumbled early on by not fully “doing the work,” she eventually realized that working the program was essential to long-term recovery. By her 21st birthday, she surrounded herself with friends who respected her sobriety, and she celebrated not with alcohol, but with joy—dancing the night away, just another day clean.Katherine went on to finish college and, determined to deepen her purpose, returned to graduate school, and earned her master’s degree. Today, she is a therapist working in the field of mental health. She sponsors others, continues to work with her sponsor, and engages in service throughout the fellowship.

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