My name is Roxie Landon. I have been sober and in recovery since December 20, 2011. Today, I love my life! Before December 20, 2011, however, I was completely hopeless. I thought my life would never change. I believed the lie I told myself, I wasn’t good enough. I graduated high school at the top of my class, and I could have gone to college and had a promising future. I chose a life of drugs and alcohol instead. During my addiction, I had two beautiful children, I didn’t use drugs while I was pregnant, but the moment I had each of them, I continued to party. I have used every drug you could possibly think of, but in the end I became an IV drug user; a trip that lasted for ten long years. I walked away from my kids. I said they were better off without me, but the truth was I thought I was better off without them. My family did not want anything to do with me. I lived a life of drugs and crime. Heroin and meth became most important to me. I have been to jail, a couple of treatment centers, and then finally NEOCAP, which is a prison alternative, a court ordered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, locked down, treatment facility. At NEOCAP I finally surrendered!
When I left NEOCAP in June, 2012, I got busy working a 12-step program, and I stayed sober. In May, 2013 I was involved in a near fatal car accident. I was in a coma for three weeks, I had five traumatic brain injuries, and I was in the hospital for two months. I got out of the hospital July 24, 2013, in a wheelchair. On September 19, 2013, my boyfriend, whom I was in the accident with, died on a motorcycle. While I was in the hospital I accepted God in my heart. I believe it was then that it finally happened because He knew what was to come. Without God in my life I do not think I would have made it through that year sober. People say “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” I think God does give us more than we can handle, on our own, so that we learn to depend on Him and the people He places in our lives.
I also believe there is a positive to every negative that we experience. When I came home from the hospital my daughter came to live with me at my mom’s house, for the first time in five years. Three months after my boyfriend died I got to see and talk to my son for the first time in five years. I have been unable to work or drive since the accident, but I have never gone without. I have my family back in my life. I am again part of my children’s lives, and I have a God of my own understanding. I never imagined saying this, but I would not change a thing!
Today, I have been sober for five years, and I am engaged to a wonderful man that I believe God put in my life. I was baptized in September, 2016 and I am enrolled in an online degree program at Ohio Christian University. It is my hope to become either a Chemical Dependency Counselor, or if it is God’s will, a Probation Officer. I want to serve those who are going through the same things I have experienced. There is so much death occurring because of drug overdoses. I know how it feels to be hopeless, and I want others to know there is a better way. Like I said, from an IV, hapless meth and heroin addict to a sober woman living happy and free.