MADISON, Ala. (WHNT) — When you think of an anniversary, a birthday or a wedding may come to mind. But what about marking your freedom from addiction?
Today, a North Alabama woman is celebrating her biggest and most important anniversary yet: one year sober.
“There’s nobody that can push you to get clean,” said Megan Kuske. “There’s nobody that can push you to get out of this lifestyle unless you want to.”
For Megan, that was a lifestyle full of the darkest roads she’d ever been down.
“I had lost literally everything,” she said. “At one point, I had nothing in my trailer except for some clothes, a refrigerator and a love seat. I had sold everything, and that is what it does to you, it does not care, it does not discriminate.”
She grew up in Indiana and said her journey with drugs started as early as 15.
“Being in middle school and just wanting to fit in, trying to find my place and trying to find my footing and find kind of a click that I belong to.. and I couldn’t find that,” she said. “And so, you know, wanting to fit in, I started experimenting with drugs.”
What started with pills quickly turned to heroin.
“It didn’t hit me until I was like in my early 20s that, like, wow, I have a problem,” said Megan.
She said she tried four different rehab facilities and was back to using less than a week after every time.
“None of them worked,” she said. “Not because they are bad places. They didn’t work because I wasn’t ready to get the help that I needed.”
Like many addicts, she tried to run from the problem, deciding to move to Alabama.
“I had a little bit of clean time when I moved here, and then you know, I quickly got back home with the wrong crowd and just kind of stumbled right back into that cycle,” she said.
She ended up stumbling across methamphetamine.
“I told myself just one time, just one time, and that’s the thing about addiction… is that it is a liar, and it’s not going to be just one time, she said.”
Covid-19 hit, and in the peak of the pandemic, Megan said she was at her worst. November 13, 2021, was supposed to be a morning spent with her father, but it quickly turned for the worse.
“I remember doing a small amount before he got there,” she said. “I remember getting in his truck, and the next thing I remember is I was woke up in the back of an ambulance.”
She had overdosed on fentanyl.
“I barely had a pulse,” she said. “I was essentially dead. They gave me Narcan.”
Even at rock bottom, she couldn’t pull herself out.
“The moment that I got home, I was doing drugs again,” she said.
Megan describes a vicious cycle of picking up clean time, using, overdosing, and then all over again.
In October 2024, she was arrested and spent 22 weeks in jail, and it was then that her turning point finally came.
“My sister in law said, you know, ‘I found this program if you if you’re really ready to do this, this is your opportunity,’ and um, thankfully I found Prodigal Home,” she said.
Megan said it’s the women who fill the home that make all the difference.
“I have never been surrounded by sober people and empowering women,” she said. “I surrounded myself with people who were addicts.”
While the journey has been far from easy, Megan now stands one year sober.
“I’m so proud and so incredibly grateful that people saw in me what I couldn’t see in myself at first, you know, and people gave me a chance,” she said.
Although this is a huge milestone, she knows this is not the finish line.
“My work isn’t done and my work will never be done,” she said. “Once you get a just a taste of what this life is like, recovery in itself almost becomes addicting.”
She knows that work also includes pulling others up who are fighting right there with her.
“My goal in life is I want to help other addicts,” she said. “I want to help other people who have been down the same path that I have.”
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, you are encouraged to call 988.
There are also rehab centers across North Alabama.
The post ‘I had lost literally everything’: Woman shares journey with addiction after one year sober appeared first on WHNT.
