RAPID DESCENT AND THE TRIP BACK

Stephanie Wray's descent into addiction came fast. It probably began
at the age of 13, when she blacked out with her first time drinking.

"I always blacked out but I thought I was normal. Everyone else around
me was flailing and still learning how to deal with alcohol so I went
under the radar," says Wray, who is now 23.

After that first drink, she was drinking and smoking marijuana every
weekend.

At 17 when she tried her first line of cocaine, it was clear she
wouldn't be just a casual user. "The first time I tried it, later that
night I was alone in my bathroom doing it . the first night." She used
cocaine three or four times a week during high school. Her grades
suffered, and her goals, like going to university on a scholarship,
went sideways.

Wray had been a promising volleyball player who played for her high
school team and for the city, but she dropped out because it
interfered with her using.

"All my interest was in partying. I didn't play for the city in Grade
12 because I didn't want to go away every second weekend to go play
tournaments. I wanted to go party. I didn't want to miss or be left
out."

She squeaked through high school but the drug use continued. After she
graduated she dated a drug dealer so she was surrounded by drugs.

She had a job at a bistro until she called in sick. "They said come in
when you feel better. I just never went back."

Friends who intervened by writing to her parents, telling of her drug
use, started her on the road to recovery. Her parents, who were aware
of the alcohol and marijuana use but not about the cocaine, wanted her
in treatment.

Wray resisted. She denied she had a problem until the day her
boyfriend threatened to tell her parents that she had done drugs again.

"Something just clicked in my head. I found it so pathetic. It was
like fine: 'I'll show them -I'll go to treatment.' I told them that
day I needed to go to rehab and two days later I ended up in Cedars,"
she says, referring to a private treatment facility in Cobble Hill.

Walking into treatment at 19 was frightening, she says.

"I was so not ready for it. . I was young. Eventually, it made me
comfortable because I could hear and relate to what other people were
saying. The feelings that they had were the feelings that I had. I
learned that with alcohol, addiction is a disease. It's something I
have. It's not something I can beat. It's not something I can get
over, it's something I have to learn to live with. I have to learn how
to manage it."

One of her clearest memories is the first time she had a sober
belly-laugh. No drugs, no alcohol, just pure joy.

"I hadn't laughed in so long without being high or drunk. That was
just a glimpse of what recovery could be like. I was just so tired of
living my life the way I was. I had just hated myself and I did things
I thought I'd never do and said things I thought I'd never say."

Treatment, she says, "taught me how to live again."