Krissi, from Westfield, MA, is a resident of CHD’s Two Rivers Recovery Center for Women in Greenfield, which has been providing clinical and supportive services for a decade. It isn’t her first stay there. Indeed, she was a resident of Two Rivers in 2016 and 2020, and she re-entered the program again last October.

However, Krissi is far from discouraged, and she thinks that relapse can be a part of recovery “if you use it as a learning lesson”—something she is doing this time around. “I’m seeing what I can do differently this time,” she said, quoting from Courtney C. Stevens’ novel Faking Normal: “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

She said her mistakes from the past included not taking a 12-step program seriously enough. “The way I did it was the ‘softer, easier way,’ as they say in the AA literature,” she said. “I didn’t do the steps with a sponsor. I didn’t do all the work, which involves service work, and chairing meetings.”

Krissi, who is in recovery from opioid use, had endured childhood trauma, which she said was the root cause of her addiction, but admits not being totally blameless. “In the past, I thought I was a victim of everything, and I wasn’t taking any accountability,” she said. “I threw it all away. I ended up creating different types of trauma.”

She tried to stay sober and substance-free on her own, but she realized she needed the support and services of a residential recovery home. “Some people want to go straight from detox into a sober house, but if you’re honest with yourself, you probably aren’t ready for that much freedom yet. It never worked for me,” she said. Her partner tried the same thing, and he ended up developing endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart lining caused by infection from injection drug use, and he almost died.

“I needed to take baby steps first,” she said. “It’s hard work, but coming here was so worth it.” Krissi had to hit a couple of “rock bottoms” in life to finally take her recovery to heart, but says she’s in a way grateful for the experiences. “If I didn’t go through the ‘rock bottoms,’ I wouldn’t be the person I am now—and I prefer this person much more than the person I used to be when I first came here,” she said. “Now I can see the full picture—what I’ve done, what I haven’t done, and what I need to do—and I will not leave here until I do it.”