SAVING HER OWN LIFE...

Roseanna Knight's life story is a difficult and painful one, but she tells
it in hopes that others who are struggling with addictions will receive the
help they need.

Roseanna Knight is fighting for her life - and winning.

Roseanna started drinking alcohol when she was just 12 years old. She
started smoking marijuana with her mother at the same time. The alcohol
soon took control. It helped numb feelings of worthlessness arising from
sexual abuse and abandonment. Nine years later, still drinking, but having
given up drug use, she had twin boys.

"I justified it in my head, that alcohol's legal and I can't go to jail."

Eighteen months after that, she had a daughter.

"When my twins were three, my fiance left me because of my drinking. I was
left with two three-year-old boys and one two-year-old girl. Things really
seemed to go downhill from there with my drinking."

The days became a blur where the alcohol kept her ill most of the time. She
attracted abusive men.

"I was drinking daily. It really, really hurt my children."

Now, she lives daily with the pain of knowing she inflicted that hurt,
knowing her children are growing up with other families - and knowing they
may never live with her. It's that pain, however, that has led her to recovery.

In 1997, she signed her children over to the Ministry for Children and
Families when it became clear she could not look after them, let alone
herself. They were gone for three months, but she managed to get them back.

"Being the alcoholic, I was a good bullshitter," she explains.

"Once they came home, I started drinking again."

In 1998, her children told the social worker that their mom was drinking.
The children were removed and Roseanna went to Westminster House, a
recovery house for women, after a two-and-a-half month wait.

"It was a very good house, but unfortunately, I wasn't very open to their
suggestions."

Roseanna's boyfriend of two years was a drug addict, but she was afraid to
let him go

"It was my self esteem. I thought if I let him go, who else would want me?
He was very abusive. It was hard for the kids to see."

She stayed at Westminster House for several months. "I learned a lot, not
that I'd admit it at the time."

Roseanna's children came home in August of 1999, after she'd been sober for
eight months. She managed to go for four more months before her addiction
took over.

"I stayed sober until Christmas Day."

By April, the ministry stepped in again.

"When they were taken, I continually tried to kill and drink myself to death."

But, in June of 2000, life changed. Roseanna was told her children would be
put up for permanent adoption.

She knew this was her last chance. She immediately began phoning recovery
houses, desperate for help.

"I called every day for three weeks."

And her persistence in the face of long waiting lists paid off. On July 5,
she was accepted into Charlford House in Burnaby. She stayed for seven
months. Even when she was ready to leave, she returned as weekend staff for
several months.

"Then, at 11 months sober, the ministry informed me they wouldn't be giving
me my kids back," she says, the words bringing tears to her eyes.

She adds quickly that her children are doing well in their new homes, and
they visit her regularly. They love her new boyfriend - they recently
helped celebrate his third year of being drug and alcohol free. But, still,
they're gone.

Roseanna goes regularly to counselling and 12-step programs, her saviours.
A drop-in program at Fraserside Community Services is, and was, very
helpful, particularly when she had to wait four-and-a-half months for
one-to-one counselling. She takes one day at time. She has people she can
phone if she's under emotional pressure. She journals daily. And she has
now been clean and sober for 17 months.

"I have a lot of fear I'll start drinking again - which is understandable
with my track record."

But not everyone Roseanna has met during her recovery has been so lucky.
She knows eight women who have died. A friend, Patty, overdosed. The big
problem is a lack of resources, Roseanna says. When people are ready to be
helped, they need help immediately - not in three weeks or five months or
two years.

"It's sad," she says of Patty. "If there'd been someplace to go for therapy
or counselling, maybe it wouldn't have happened."

And Roseanna recommends making the public more aware of the help that is
available.

"I didn't know there was such a thing as detox, I didn't know until the
ministry took my kids. They said, 'you need to go,' and I thought, 'what's
that?' If somebody had been able to help me when I was 24, my kids wouldn't
have had to go through what they went through.

"The sooner you can plant the seed with people, the less time they're going
to spend out there in their addiction."