In 2016, Neil Scott, the producer and host of RECOVERY – Coast to Coast visited our beautiful campus and interviewed some of our team members along with care partners and alumnae. His radio show is a two hour nightly national radio talk show dealing exclusively with addiction, with a focus on recovery. In addition, he has been a keynote speaker at numerous national, state and local events and has lectured at America’s leading schools of alcohol and drug studies, including Rutgers University. We are grateful we had the opportunity to get to know him and share all the wonderful life-changing work that we are doing at New Directions for Women. In this segment, he is interviewing, Miranda B, Alumnae at New Directions.
Neil Scott:
Joining us in this segment is a miracle, and we love to talk to miracles. Miranda B. is a woman in long-term recovery and she came through the treatment here at New Directions. She is from, actually, where I grew up, my neck of the woods in Southern New England in Quincy, Massachusetts just outside of Boston. Miranda B. is joining us tonight on Recovery Coast to Coast, welcome to the program and you have had quite the journey, have you not?
Miranda B:
I have, yeah.
Neil Scott:
Holy smokes. How did you wind up getting from Boston all the way to Southern, California? You came out for a reason, right?
Miranda B:
I did. I came out here for treatment.
Neil Scott:
And you selected New Directions for Women?
Miranda B:
My family really did most of the selecting, I just –
Neil Scott:
Yeah, most of the encouragement, right? You will go Miranda and you will like it. And even if you don’t like it you still will go.
Miranda B:
Yeah. It wasn’t really more of a – it wasn’t a question of –
Neil Scott:
There was no choice. You know a lot of people go into treatment centers kicking and screaming. The last thing they want to do on a bright sunshiny day is do something about their drug use. You know, but once you get a part of the process and you go through treatment and then suddenly it’s time to leave and you realize you have made a new family and its often times difficult to go back into the real world once you leave treatment. So tell me about your experiences here at New Directions for Women. What was it like the first 24, 48 hours?
Miranda B:
Oh my goodness, I actually have journal entry from my first 24 hours at New Directions and it was, you know, a lot of bad language and I don’t want to be here and I didn’t have my son there with me at that point and I really didn’t know if I should bring him. I was in pretty rough shape physically and emotionally –
Neil Scott:
Did you need detox?
Miranda B:
I did, I detoxed before I got to New Directions, but I was still feeling physically and emotionally just run down.
Neil Scott:
You had a young son, how old?
Miranda B:
He was 5 at the time. So the plan was for him to come, but I was apprehensive about whether or not I should bring him there – I mean, I was just so miserable being there at that point I didn’t know if I should bring him.
Neil Scott:
And when did you make the decision?
Miranda B:
It wasn’t that much longer – it was really only about a week. So I think once the fog started to clear a little bit and I got used to my surrounding and met some of the women, started going to come of the groups –
Neil Scott:
You felt safe.
Miranda B:
I did. I felt safe and the women in the house that I lived in – there were different houses and I lived in the house with other mothers and their children. And they were so encouraging and so loving and I thought, you know, how this can be bad to have him here with these other women that were just so beautiful and welcomed me with open arms.
Neil Scott:
Yeah, so you’re here for about a week or so, you make the decision. What about if your son was telling the story? How was it for him to get on a plane and fly to California and into this treatment center or whatever the hell that is, not know?
Miranda B:
I’m lucky because I have family in Santa Barbra so he went to stay with them for a couple of weeks. So that was not so difficult. Then coming to New Directions, I think he was confused. I dragged him around with me a lot before we came out here so he was kind of used to meeting new people and just going where mom takes him.
This was definitely a more positive experience than that and I thinkthat he was really open to it. He was scared of the new people at first but people were just – the staff and the other women that lived there just immediately loved him. And so the transition for him was pretty quick. He had free run of that place. Every woman there showered him with so much love.
Neil Scott:
Miranda B. is joining us tonight on Recovery Coast to Coast. What life like for you Miranda before you came here and you hit your bottom or when you hit your beginning I guess and the beginning being New Directions for Women? Talk about the last six months and how rough that was for you.
Miranda B:
I mean I can’t even call it life it just kind of existed. It was awful.
Neil Scott:
Addiction out of control.
Miranda B:
Completely out of control. So I had stopped working because I couldn’t work with and maintain my addition. I’m a nurse and I couldn’t go to work in the condition I was in so I wasn’t working anymore.
Neil Scott:
An addiction is a full-time job.
Miranda B:
It absolutely is. So then my full-time job became how to make enough money to support my addiction and do the best I could to take care of my son at that time.
Neil Scott:
Your parents played a significant role in you getting into treatment.
Miranda B:
They certainly did, yes. My parents and my sisters.
Neil Scott:
And were you resistant to that originally? Or did you know it’s time?
Miranda B:
Yeah, I was ready. I had gotten into some pretty serious trouble. It was sort of the end of the road for me. It was like – you know; I didn’t have a place to live anymore. I was staying at my dad’s house for a couple weeks before I came out here. So I didn’t have a place. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a car. I was faced with losing custody of my youngest child if I didn’t do something to change my situation and I was tired. I was tired of doing what I was doing.
Neil Scott:
How long were you here at New Directions for Women?
Miranda B:
I was at New Directions for 90 days.
Neil Scott:
During that time, I mean after the first week you had your son here. That certainly, I’m sure, changed your attitude and made you a happier mom obviously with your son here. But what about the struggles in getting through to that 90-day point?
Miranda B:
There were a lot of struggles. I mean, first of all, I will say that for sure having my son there was a huge motivating factor. I’m not sure that I would have been able to do it without him. I mean, I’m not sure that I would have stayed. He was a daily reminder of why I was doing what I was doing. You know, to be able to have him there with me was just such an amazing blessing. I mean, there were struggles in the beginning even just physically. I was so tired and so run-down. And then you know you go to these groups during the day and its heart wrenching. I mean the stuff that you’re talking about and dealing with and facing, stuff that I haven’t faced my entire life. I was very nervous – you know when I thought about whether or not I should bring him one of the issues was how am I going to do the work that I need to do and then pick him up from daycare at the end of the day and put a smile on my face. And actually that wasn’t a problem. It was like, you know, I’m going to talk about the things and let my mind go to these places that I’ve never allowed them to because they are so painful. And then I get to pick up my son and I look at his face and it’s just – this is why I’m doing this. It just turned it all – it turned it around for me and it made it possible. It made it possible for me to go to those places in myself that I needed to visit to be able to pick him up at the end of the day.
Neil Scott:
At the end of 90 days and you transition out of New Directions for Women, what was that like?
Miranda B:
It was a little bit scary. I mean I think that I was ready. I was ready not to be in residential treatment I will say that I wish that I could have done sober-living, but it just wasn’t financially a possibility for me to stay in residential treatment any longer. And there isn’t sober living for moms with kids. It just wasn’t a financial possibility for my family. So I moved into an apartment with a roommate. A sober roommate.
Neil Scott:
What is sober roommate? Is that a service?
Miranda B:
She was just a sober – a sober person.
Neil Scott:
How did you find her?
Miranda B:
I met her when I was in detox. She was in treatment. So she was like finishing up her 90 days in treatment when I went to New Directions and we kept in contact. And she has young children about the same age as my son. So it worked out well. I mean it was scary because all of a sudden I went from having all this oversight in every aspect of my life to –
Neil Scott:
Accountability.
Miranda B:
Yeah. To being totally on my own. And it was like, well I can do whatever I want and no one would ever know. I’ve had to be really careful and really diligent about talking to my sponsor every single day and going to the meetings that I go to and staying in contact with the other sober people that I know. And a lot of those include a lot of the women from New Directions.
Neil Scott:
So the only thing you had to change was everything.
Miranda B:
Everything.
Neil Scott:
What did New Directions for Women give to you, Miranda?
Miranda B:
I mean first and foremost it gave me my life back and my son. You know, I’m able to be the mother that I am to him because I went through that program and I can’t give all the credit just to the program, but the women there. The staff, the women that I went through treatment with. I mean, I think it’s just such a unique thing because I’ve never been so close – I’ve never in my life, I’m 35, and I have never in my life had such amazing friendships with women and so many women. So to be able to be in a place all together and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. I mean, this group of women I mean we’re tough women. We have been through a lot of crap in our lives and we were vulnerable with each other and held each other up in time when we couldn’t do it for ourselves –
Neil Scott:
And took a lot of risk.
Miranda B:
And took a lot of risks. And in turn became unbreakably close. You know, the friendships that I have with those women are amazing and that has been such a gift.
Neil Scott:
Miranda B. joining us tonight on Recovery Coast to Coast sharing a little bit about her story coming from East Coast sight unseen into New Directions for Women. Reuniting with her son five days into treatment. Her son lived at the treatment center with her. And today life is good for Miranda, isn’t it?
Miranda B:
It is. Life is good, yeah.
Neil Scott:
And each day gets better.
Miranda B:
It does. I mean, you know, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
Neil Scott:
No there’s a lot of crap.
Miranda B:
Every single day.
Neil Scott:
You know but you got to deal with it. You deal with it sober. You deal with it in a different way.
Miranda B:
I do and I have – I mean, for the first time in my life I feel like I have tools to deal with it that I didn’t know existed before. Life used to just be a struggle. I think that’s – that’s what ended me up where I ended up. Was just that I felt like my whole life was a struggle. Everything was so hard and I didn’t know how to deal with. I didn’t have any tools for that.
Neil Scott:
I appreciate you taking the time to share your story with our listeners.
Miranda B:
Thank you, thank you for having me.
