MANSFIELD, Ohio – Looking back to a time in her life when she was controlled by her addiction to pills, Courtney Cole describes it as being dead for two years.
“That’s the best way I can even explain it – it’s like you’re a robot. You don’t function,” she said.
Now many years beyond her addiction, 23-year-old Courtney is leading a brand-new life as she works to put her past behind her.
“It feels like it was a bad dream,” said Courtney. “Like it never really happened.”
Addiction begins
Courtney’s nightmare began at age 17, when her boyfriend of four years overdosed on heroin. At the time only a junior in high school, Courtney remembers him as moody – she knew he smoked weed and she reported his cocaine habit to his parents, who sent him to rehab twice in response. But she never knew the extent of his drug use.
“Rehab doesn’t work for everybody I guess,” said Courtney. “He ended up passing away from an overdose one night – I don’t really know what happened, I just know that he choked on his own vomit and that was the actual cause of death.”
Her boyfriend’s death was part of a difficult home life for Courtney; her parents had a troubled relationship before they separated and eventually divorced when Courtney was 14 years old. This led both of her parents to issues with alcohol abuse for almost five years, forcing her to become caretaker to a brother three years her junior.
“We were kind of ripped into a thousand different places at once,” said Courtney. “I was basically an adult at the age of 12; I had to get a job at age 15 and I worked three jobs throughout high school and college. It’s not a terrible childhood I guess…there were some good memories, but for the most part they were a little rough.”
Courtney graduated from Galion High School in 2009 and started studying zoology in college. It was right before starting college that she first noticed she had a problem.
“I had back problems so there were Percocets – I started off on 5 milligrams and at that point I only took half of it, 2.5 milligrams,” said Courtney. “A lot of people I know get sick from that kind of medication, but it had an opposite effect on me – it took away my shyness, it took away all the bad things. It made me feel like I was on top of the world.”
It didn’t take long for Courtney’s dosage to increase. Not long after that, when the high from taking the pills wore off, she started snorting them. She was addicted before she realized what was happening.
“One of my friends came over and he tried to take the pill bottle from me, and I started to cry,” said Courtney. “And I’m like, I’m crying right now because he just took my pills. There’s a problem with that. But at that point there was really no turning back for me – I was addicted and I didn’t want to stop.”
Dreams dwindling
In the thick of her addiction, college was not an option anymore for Courtney. Neither was working – not when she couldn’t get out of bed without having a pill.
“Once I realized it was a problem, everything goes out the window, any kind of dreams and hopes that you have just kind of dwindles away,” she said.
Courtney eventually lost contact with her family and friends. She remembers heated arguments with her mother when she was out of a job and wanted money.
“She kind of knew where the money was going and she didn’t want to do that, so she would offer to buy me groceries every now and again and I would get mad at her for not trusting me,” said Courtney. “We got into some horrible fights, and there were things I said…I was just a completely different person.”
She was living with a man who had access to Percocets through his parents and uncle, who would steal pills from his family members when they didn’t have the money to buy any. Sometimes his uncle would join them in using pills.
“The glue to our relationship was the pills – and I think part of the addiction was us doing it together. It’s hard to explain,” said Courtney. “There were times when I would get away from it and I would try to quit and move in with a friend or something just to get away from it. I had relapsed at one point and I did pills without him, and it wasn’t the same.”
At her worst, Courtney was snorting five or six 30 milligram Percocets at a time, multiple times a day. She tried cocaine once, simply because she was out of pills. If there weren’t any drugs to be had, she would experience withdrawal so severely she would punch holes in the walls.
“There’s a reason why I’m still here because I don’t know how it’s humanly possible for someone to take that amount of a pill and not die from it,” said Courtney. “I remember nights where I would do so much and I knew there was a possibility I could die, but I didn’t care. The high at that point is the only thing that matters.
“There were nights I would be just…drooling on myself because I was so high,” she continued. “And I would just be praying, please don’t let me die; I won’t ever do it again. And I’d wake up the next morning and do it again. They were the devil to me.”
This cycle continued for two years.
“Every piece of my heart was just not in my body; I was just controlled by a substance,” said Courtney.
“This. Is. It.”
One night, in the middle of winter, Courtney found herself huddled under a blanket on the floor of her doublewide trailer. There was no furniture, as she and her roommate had sold everything they owned to get money for pills. This left no money for heat, either – to stay warm, they filled water bottles with hot water and kept them under the blankets.
Courtney was sitting up, higher than she had ever been in her life, watching their three dogs and two cats sleeping in a huddled mass, and wondered how she got to this point in her life.
“I just remember thinking, I’m going to die, and this is it. This. Is. It,” she said.
Courtney stayed up for a few hours watching the animals sleep, and cried. She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, and didn’t recognize the face looking back at her.
“And something clicked in me: this is not who I am,” she said. “I’ve wanted so many things in my life, and I’m better than this. I’m a better person than this; I’ve got people in my life that love me that I have nothing to do with anymore. How did I get here?”
She immediately hit her knees and started praying. And something inside her stirred…she described it as a glimmer of hope, a fight within her that she hadn’t felt before.
“I don’t think I’d ever felt that my entire life. And that’s never gone away,” said Courtney.
The next day, she gathered her belongings and moved out.
Still fighting
Courtney found refuge with two close friends she’d known for many years, the same friends she was with the night she learned her boyfriend had overdosed. He bought her groceries; she let her wear her clothing. They helped her get a job working at Family Video. And they helped her stay sober – Courtney has been sober for four and a half years now.
“It changed my life. I know it was mostly me that decided I needed to give it up, but if it had not been for those two I would not be here, I’m positive of that,” said Courtney. “The love I have for them…even if I never talk to them ever again, they saved my life. And I hope that they know that.”
These days, Courtney works as the office manager for a financial planning firm and serves as chairman of the community engagement committee for the Spherion Mid Ohio 13ER, a half marathon in Mansfield dedicated not only to providing an opportunity for exercise but allowing participants to contribute to local drug prevention and awareness efforts.
“I always have this fight in me, in a positive way,” she said. “That’s why I joined this group and I want this race to take off because I feel like that’s exactly what it is, a fight for everyone.”
It’s a fight that Courtney takes personally, not just for herself but also for her younger brother, who is currently battling addiction.
“In a way I feel responsible, because he’s always looked up to me. I feel almost like he followed in my footsteps,” said Courtney. “I feel like I’m in a constant fight for him, too, because I’m so afraid that I’m going to lose him the way that I lost my boyfriend. I want to be able to prevent that for him, and I don’t want him to be too far-gone.
“I know there are other people out there who are the exact same way, and there are other sisters out there who are crying every night because they don’t know if they’re going to get a call in the morning that says he overdosed and didn’t make it,” she said. “I just don’t want that for anybody, and I want to save as many people as I can.”
Sharing her story
Thinking about her past is not something Courtney usually indulges in.
“It makes me sad to think about all those things,” she said. “I can’t even imagine the person that I used to be. I remember when I first got out of it, I wrote a lot. That was my escape, I kept a journal and I just vented through writing. And one of the things that I repeated a lot was that I was dead for two years.”
Now more alive than she’s ever felt, Courtney is ready to share her story of recovery in hopes of reaching just one person in need of help.
“I used to be embarrassed about it; I hated saying I used to be addicted to drugs, I thought people were going to think I’m a piece of crap and that I’m not worth anything,” she said. “But there’s a reason why I’m here. And the fact that I’m so passionate about it and I want to help people so much, I’m going to do whatever it takes. If that means sharing my story with the world, I will.
“I want people who have been where I’ve been, if they’re there right now I want them four years later to have the type of happiness and the love and the life that I do, because it is possible.”
Mental health and substance abuse treatment combined with healthcare reform is helping some local residents along the Road to Recovery from addiction. In the series, Road to Recovery, Richland Source shares their stories in cooperation with the Richland County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Board.
“I just remember thinking, I’m going to die, and this is it. This. Is. It,” Courtney said.
