This Suboxone Story of Hope follows Kari, now an Ideal Option patient in recovery, who fell into addiction after an emergency surgery.
Kari first tried opioids in high school, swiping pills prescribed for her dad after he broke his leg in a motorcycle accident.
But it was during her freshman year in college, following surgery for an ectopic pregnancy, that she became addicted.
“If I’d gotten to the hospital an hour later, I would have died,” remembers Kari, now 34 and an Ideal Option patient with 6 years in recovery. “That messed with my head. I thought, I really have to live my life to the fullest. For me, that meant partying hard.”
Kari began drinking heavily and snorting pills. “Eventually, I turned to heroin and could not stop.”
She constantly asked her parents for money, inflating her grocery expenses and utility bills.
When her dad would slip her extra cash, she remembers, “I’d take it straight to my heroin dealer.”
Her grades plummeted, and Kari dropped out of college a semester before graduation, rationalizing that “a diploma is just a piece of paper.”
She moved into a cheap apartment near a dive bar and a ski mountain. “Every day, I’d go to the bar and drink whisky and ski,” she says. “I was just a bum.”
Every so often, Kari would have a flash of recognition, thinking, This is completely not who I am. But then she’d get high, and the thoughts would vanish.
Kari’s father, who got sober when Kari was 8, tried to talk to her about her addiction, but she wasn’t ready to hear it. After her boss at a restaurant job sent her home for being high, Kari stopped showing up altogether.
Kari hit a low point when she broke into a neighbor’s house. The neighbor found her sitting on his couch drinking his whisky and called the cops.
“I was like, What are you doing? Breaking and entering? That’s not me at all.”
At age 23, tired of “that crazy life,” Kari entered a 3-month inpatient treatment program.
But the program did not offer MAT (medication assisted treatment), and Kari had only just started to work the 12 steps.
When she left rehab, her sponsor warned that she wasn’t equipped to handle the outside world.
Her sponsor was right.
“As soon as I got back to my old environment, I didn’t know what to do with my time,” Kari recalls. “It was like I had never left — same place, same people. I tried doing the sobriety thing for a couple weeks, and then I thought, Well, it’s not going to throw off my whole recovery if I just do it once .I’ll make it the last time and really enjoy it.”
For the next several years, Kari bounced in and out of inpatient treatment programs, a half-dozen in all. Once, feeling sick from withdrawal, she summoned her dealer to her treatment center and then got kicked out of the program.
“After that, I went back to my non-life,” Kari remembers. “I hung out at my dealer’s place every day, watching HSN and getting high.”
The only treatment center that prescribed Suboxone required patients to taper off the medication after one month, a recipe for relapse.
“It’s hard to stay away from drugs once you get out of a supportive environment,” Kari says. “One hard day is enough to put you over the edge. You go back to what you know.”
What turned Kari around for good was getting pregnant. She told herself, I’m responsible for another life now, and enrolled in an inpatient program that provided medical detox and Suboxone.
Though the program felt like jail, Kari says, “I knew I had to stay. This time, I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to be the person I had turned into.”
After a month in treatment, she found supportive housing for pregnant women. She stayed there during her son’s month in the NICU. Visiting her “little miracle” at the hospital solidified Kari’s commitment to recovery.
“I was thrilled to see him every day, but it was hard to watch. His face was all red, and he’d seem like he was struggling, or the heart monitor would show his heart beating faster. I’d feel: Here’s this innocent, little individual. This is what my addiction has done. Watching him suffer was eye-opening for me.”
Today, Kari’s son is 5 and thriving. Kari is married to the boy’s father, and they own a home together.
Kari works as a coordinator in hospitality sales, an industry she loves, and she aspires to rise into management.
“The job requires 100% of my focus,” she says. “I’m always multitasking like crazy. I could never do this job if I was still getting high. I’d be fired in a second.”
Kari is often reminded that her life might have turned out differently.
Working in the hotel industry, she has witnessed late-night criminal behavior and drug-fueled fights. “I’m so glad I’m not that person who’s trying to drive drunk or the person the cops are trying to tase,” she says.
When a neighbor fostered children whose mom was mired in addiction, Kari felt a pang of recognition.
“That side of things is a hard thing to see. It’s so great knowing my son doesn’t have to see me drunk or nodding out.”
Kari feels lucky she got sober before fentanyl flooded the drug supply. She and her husband, who’s also in recovery, know more than 30 people who have died from overdoses.
Kari says Suboxone played a huge role in getting her new life off the ground. “It helps block out those intrusive thoughts,” she says. “When I tried to get sober without the medication, I was always failing, even if I was trying to work a thorough program.”
Today, Kari feels solid in her recovery and appreciates the life she has built with her family.
“I love going to the playground with my son and playing games at home and coloring together. He’s learning 3-letter words now, and it’s just amazing watching him learn to read.”
Kari says she loves taking her son to see Santa at Christmas and celebrating holidays and birthdays. “We get to make things special and create all those memories.”
Specializing in addiction medicine since 2012, Ideal Option has helped tens of thousands of people just like Kari get started in recovery. Click here to make an appointment at Ideal Option today!
Next up: “I have my life back. But better.” — Jaime’s Story of Hope