Nadine’s Addiction Recovery Story: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Article Summary

This addiction recovery story follows Nadine’s lifelong exposure to substance use, early trauma, and cycles of addiction, ultimately leading to lasting sobriety through personalized, non-12-step treatment at OneEighty. Her journey highlights the importance of individualized recovery paths, continuum of care, and peer support in overcoming alcohol and drug addiction. For individuals searching for real-life recovery stories, alternative recovery programs, or how to get sober, this story demonstrates that sustainable healing is possible with the right support system.

Early Exposure to Alcohol: How Addiction Began

Nadine’s addiction recovery story began long before adulthood, shaped by early exposure to alcohol and instability at home in Ohio. Like many substance abuse recovery stories, her experience shows how trauma, environment, and early access can influence the path to addiction. Understanding where her journey started provides important context for her eventual path to sobriety and the role of personalized addiction treatment in lasting recovery.

“I’ve dealt with the consequences of addiction every single day of my life because I grew up with a mother who was an alcoholic,” Nadine said, reflecting on her childhood.

The youngest of three girls, she credits her middle sister as the one who raised her while her dad worked nights. Her parents divorced when she was five. Mom remarried within 2 months of the divorce, but she didn’t realize that he already had medical problems related to alcoholism.

“My stepfather died when I was 5 years old. After his death, my mom pulled out a bottle of beer and three glasses. She split the beer up for us and said, ‘This is how he would want you to remember him.”

The girls stayed with their mom who was spending more time at the bar than at home. After two years, Dad got custody. The girls split their time between their parents. Every other weekend, Nadine would go with her mom from bar to bar, drinking and playing darts. They then would rent a video, make pizza, and go home where mom would finish drinking until she passed out.

First High: The Start of a Lifelong Substance Abuse Cycle

While her exposure to alcohol happened early on, it wasn’t until she was 11 years old that she first got drunk. At that time, the girls were living with their father who was still working nights.  Her sister threw a party with her friends. Once her sister got sick from drinking too much, Nadine was left unsupervised with no one monitoring her intake.

“It was that night that I decided I really liked how I felt when I was drunk,” Nadine said. “After that night, I started stealing beer from friends’ parents, hanging out with an older crowd, and smoking pot and drinking on the weekends. Then, at 14, I found myself pregnant. I cleaned up my act while I was pregnant. I had custody of my daughter for 10 months. However, when I got my first night out after she was born, I returned to partying, drinking and drugging.”

Becoming a Young Mother While Battling Addiction

Nadine and the baby’s father did not have a healthy relationship. Too young to handle the pressures and responsibilities of raising a child, Nadine knew she didn’t want to have her daughter raised in a home that mirrored her childhood. Together, they made the decision to give custody of their daughter to the baby’s fraternal grandmother. She remembers it as the hardest decision she ever had to make in her life.

At 16, Nadine left her father’s home, spending time couch surfing before moving in with two older roommates whose lifestyle centered around constant partying. Eventually, she moved out and ended up in a house divided into apartments, taking one directly across the hall from her mother.

“Feeling that I had no real employment options, I decided to tend bar,” she recalled. “After 2 months, I met my first husband and was introduced to new methods of getting high. By this time, I found myself in yet another long stream of horrible relationships filled with drinking, drugging and fighting.”

After seven months, she left him and soon met a man 17 years her senior. She traded one bad relationship for another, and her life continued to revolve around alcohol, drugs, and conflict. During that period, she found the strength to secure her own apartment and get her driver’s license independently. She eventually left him, too. Not knowing how to be alone, she quickly entered yet another relationship, again with an older man.

New Highs and New Lows

During the next five years, Nadine’s addiction recovery story took a turn. While in that relationship with the older man, she bought a home, began selling drugs, and started using stimulants so heavily that her weight dropped to just 90 pounds. Emotionally and mentally controlled both by him and by the constant cycle of drug binges, she finally found the resolve to throw him out of the house and change her life in October, 2014.

“I knew I wanted to get sober, and I believed I could get and stay clean on my own. However, I was still working in bars. Then in June, 2015, I was told my childhood friend had overdosed and died. Even though we hadn’t been close for a long time, I managed to pull myself together and quit doing stimulants for the next 60 days. I did not quit drinking.”

She decided to take the next step towards sobriety. Her mother agreed to take Nadine to her first Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting in August, 2015.

She attended meetings for four months and managed to stay off stimulants for 204 days and alcohol-free for 144 days, though she continued to smoke marijuana occasionally. Eventually, she realized that the 12-step program didn’t fully align with her personal beliefs. She continued working in bars, still drinking and using stimulants—until the morning she woke up in her own bed with no memory of the previous 18 hours of her life.

Hitting Rock Bottom: Addiction, Loss, and Wake-Up Calls

“I had been drugged and robbed of $150 out of my cash drawer,” she recounted. “It scared the hell out of me. It was then that I found LifeRing, a secular recovery program meeting in Akron, in 2017. They focused on my personal power and self–direction which resonated more with me. I was able to stop stimulants but was still struggling with alcohol.”

In 2019, she thought quitting the bars would help her maintain sobriety, so she began working at a pizza shop. By 2020, her mother’s health was failing, and she was told that if she didn’t change her lifestyle, she would be dead of kidney failure in 4 to 6 months. Not willing to change her behavior, mom continued to spend her time where she always had – bar hopping. If Nadine wanted to spend time with her mother, she had to spend time with her in the bars. Once again, her drinking ramped up.

On New Year’s Eve, Nadine, who was caring for her mother, went to pick up groceries for both of them. She returned to pick her mom up at a bar to go home. When she walked in, her mom moved over a seat and encouraged Nadine to sit down next to her. It was then that Nadine met and began talking to a man named Rob, a man who eventually would become her second husband.

“I proposed to Rob later that year on the day that we were told my mom needed palliative care and my sister’s cancer was back. I felt like we just needed a win that day,’ Nadine said.

One month after the proposal, Rob had health complications that almost took his life. The day after he came home, Nadine’s mom returned to the hospital. Her daily routine included going to the hospital, the bar, and home. She couldn’t handle the stress and became completely dependent on alcohol, drinking first thing every day just to feel normal.

Finding the Right Fit: A Personalized Addiction Recovery Program at OneEighty

About 6 weeks after her mom died, she woke up one morning with her heart racing. She felt the reality of death. She called Rob to take her to detox. This cycle would repeat itself multiple times until June of 2023, where she again recognized she was killing herself.

“I entered a medical detox inpatient program in Youngstown on July 26, 2023, a date which she now recognizes as her sober date. While I won’t say their program was bad, it utilized the AA 12-step program, which still didn’t resonate with me,” she said. “I knew I had to find somewhere that honored multiple pathways to sobriety. At the ADM Crisis Center in Akron, they told me about OneEighty.”

Nadine entered the OneEighty Women’s Residential Treatment Center (WRTC).

“I was up front with the staff about my concerns with the 12-step program. At first, they encouraged me to try it again. But the LifeRing program, a program that had continued to support me throughout my ups and downs, really was important to me in my recovery journey,” she explained. “I asked if I could participate in LifeRing on-line at least once a week. Not only did they eventually permit this, but Tina, a peer support mentor, saw to it that all house residents had an opportunity to experience it. Later my own peer support mentor, Michelle Graves, gave me the gift of making sure I was able to go in person at least once a week along with my on-line sessions.”

The first time Nadine had a pass to go home, it hit her that so many of the women who came into the WRTC program came with nothing but the clothes on their back. Nadine began assembling ‘welcome bags’ filled with small sizes of personal hygiene products which, upon returning to the home, she shared with the staff so they could present them to new, incoming women.

Continuing her substance abuse recovery journey, she left the residential program after 53 days but continued on in the (PHP) Partial Hospitalization Program, the (IOP) Intensive Outpatient Program, and other supportive resources at OneEighty which she attributes to helping her regulate and process her emotions and continue on the road to recovery.

You Are Worth It: Hope for Anyone Struggling with Addiction

“I will be forever grateful for the safety, stability, and education I gained through the people and the intensive programs offered at OneEighty. If I were talking to someone who was trying to rebuild their life, I would tell them, ‘You Are Worth It,’ and they should try OneEighty where the staff understands that ‘one size does not fit all,’” Nadine said. “It’s the continuum of care, knowing that they are always willing to walk alongside us on this journey.”

But Nadine’s story does not end here. As she likes to say, “It’s in the struggle that folks find their true calling.” She has expanded her original idea of ‘welcome bags’ into a non-profit organization known as “Welcome To Recovery Project.” As founder of the organization, other women who have walked this path now join her in creating personalized gift bags for residential treatment facilities. In addition to hygiene products and small things like notebooks and coloring pens, she always makes sure each welcome bag has a hand-written, positive affirmation card with a message of encouragement – like those that she found so vital.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON NADINE’S ORGANIZATION:

VISIT WTRPROJECT.ORG