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Recovery in the News
Former meth addict says hope exists for recovery
September 9, 2008
WHITE OAK — Some days are a challenge for Jessica Brown.
"It's still hard," admits Brown, 25, who has been a recovering addict for the past two and a half years.
A single mother of two young girls, she has had to work steadily at staying sober. Kicking a methamphetamine habit wasn't easy. But she says it can be done.
Brown will share her story Sept. 18 at the East Texas Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse annual dinner. Her hope is to make a positive impact on other people, both by discouraging non-abusers from ever turning to drugs and by providing encouragement for people who are combating an addiction.
Brown graduated from Pine Tree High School in 2001 before heading to Tyler Junior College on a music scholarship. The singer traces the beginning of her meth habit to her second year at the college.
"At first it started out as an occasional thing, just on the weekends," said Brown, who was introduced to the drug at a party. "Then it turned into a daily habit."
It seemed like meth could let her be who she wanted to be, she said.
"I felt like I was on cloud nine. In the midst of dealing with all this emotional baggage, or not dealing, that's how it made me feel — like I could be myself."
Not long after getting into the meth scene, Brown met the father of her girls. The couple spent the next year bouncing around, much of their time consumed with drugs.
Neither had steady jobs, Brown said, and supported their habit by doing odd jobs. The people they kept company with were a rough bunch.
"It was just such a fast life," she said, looking back on her past with a kind of disbelief. "There are so many times we could have been killed."
A few events, including a stint in jail, prompted Brown to try to give up meth, but her efforts to quit never seemed to stick.
Then, after finding out she was to have a second daughter, Brown tried again.
She didn't seek help in getting sober right away. In May 2006 she began her personal effort to quit, but it wasn't until that August that she took advice from her parents and started attending Celebrate Recovery, a support group at her church. Since then, she's attended weekly meetings, rarely missing one. And she hasn't touched meth.
"I have to give God all of the credit in my recovery," Brown said.
Since getting on her feet, she has started a different lifestyle for herself and her family. She has a full-time job as an insurance agent and a home in White Oak. She's enrolled her oldest child, 3-year-old Peyton, in dance classes, as her mother did for her when she was a kid. She has busied herself with trying to do the best for her daughters.
In between time spent juggling a full home and work schedule, Brown has found time to enjoy new adventures. In August 2007 she tried out for American Idol and qualified to a trip to Hollywood, where she competed in the semi-finals.
In all, she is not the Jessica Brown who five years ago would stay up all night smoking meth.
That person wasn't really who she was, either. Brown said nobody who knew her in high school would have expected her to become wrapped up in a world of drugs, or thought that she'd wind up in jail after failing a drug test while on probation.
People who meet her now also would be surprised to learn about her previous addiction, said Susan Erwin, executive director of the East Texas Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. That's one thing that makes Brown's story stand out.
After seeing Brown's interview on American Idol, Erwin invited her to speak and perform at the ETCADA dinner.
The event is meant in part to highlight September as being National Recovery Month. For the past five or six years ETCADA has tried to bring in speakers who can personally attest to addiction, Erwin said. Brown will be the youngest such guest yet.
"She's just really going to speak to a lot of people because ... what she says is right from her heart," Erwin said. "And you look at her and say, 'This could be my daughter, or my daughter's friend.'"
The chance to reach people means a lot to Brown.
"I'm surprised that I made it and that it didn't take long to get here," Brown said. She added that it is worth sharing her life experience if she can help just one person with a substance abuse problem.
"Those people that are hopeless and think that's their only way through life," Brown said, "I want to be a witness to them."