(Solemn piano music)
Treatment with medication has helped countless West Virginians struggling with opioid use disorder get back to life. 
This is Bailey's story 
(Bailey sitting and telling her story) 

I'm a mom. I'm a general manager for a restaurant. I work 60 hours a week. The medicine's really just kind of like a tool that keeps me normal, and then it gives me the opportunity to be able to learn how to be a person, because most of us stopped learning. Whatever age we started picking up at is what age we stopped maturing at, and that's really true because a lot of us have decision making skills of, let's just say mine was 14, pretty much. I had decision making skills of a 14 year old. It lets you think clearly. It lets you learn, be able to learn. It opens you up to growth.

Replacing one drug for another means that you're like substitute addiction. You would be trading opiates for alcohol, or opiates for benzos, or something like that where you're still acting the same way, doing the same things, hanging with the same people. When you start taking Suboxone, you change your whole life when you do things the right way. The medicine just lets you think right, and then you make the life changes that are necessary.

Those life changes come after you become normal, and a lot of people don't understand that. They think that we just automatically are like that, but that's not true. We have to relearn how to be like that because we've never been normal, we've never thought normal. This is actually about recovery. This is not just a come get your medicine, get your papers signed, return your papers and go home. They care about you. They want you to do good. Your success means something to them, they genuinely care about you. This program is an extension of their family, and most of us don't have that. But, it's rigorous and it's intense, and it's for a good reason, because in the beginning we have to be held accountable for our actions because we have to relearn everything.

We have to relearn not to lie and be deceitful, and be honest and upfront and transparent, and learn how to be held accountable for our actions. And learn how to be responsible and trustworthy, and then productive and dependable. Most people take it for granted, I would assume, those traits, but we have to relearn all those things. And you would be shocked, I think, at the amount of people that have never had to be any of those things in their whole life.

Their parents never were, their brothers and sisters never were, and they weren't either, and they have to learn those things. And this program will give that to you. If you follow it the right way and you do everything they need you to do the way they need you to do it, you will grow the right way. I have a particular lady's phone number here. I could call her at three o'clock in the morning and she would answer the phone, and drive to wherever I was at if I needed her, and help me. If it wasn't for her support I wouldn't be here. Because, there's been plenty of times I just wanted to give up, and she kept pushing me and pushing me, pushing me. And thank God for that, because she was right.

The biggest thing that I've learned in my recovery is that everything I've done, the good, the bad, the ugly and the in-between, has got me where I'm at right now. I didn't see things like that then because I had nothing good to look up to, and I probably wouldn't have looked at it like that then either. But it's not always going to be bad. And if you want something bad enough, then you can take it. And once you make that decision that, that's what you want, you won't let anything stop you from achieving it.

Back to Life 
Find help now at 
1-844-HELP4WV