As director of Hazel Hills, you would never guess Kayla McClure battled addiction only five years ago. Her sobriety date was on Aug. 4, 2016, but addiction consumed much of Kayla’s life before then.
Kayla’s addiction started around the time she was 13-years-old. It was a couple of years after her brother’s death that she started using substances.
“I can look back and remember how sad and sorrowful my family was, and crying and hurting, and I can remember thinking I never wanted to feel that way.”
As she got older, she said she didn’t want to be the “good kid” and started hanging out with people that were not a good influence for her.
“I had surrounded myself with what I thought was gonna keep me safe,” Kayla added.
When she took her first pill, she said the feeling of numbness won her over. It spiraled from there.
“God has had his hand on me in this for a long time,” she added, talking about her time in addiction.
Kayla was locked up for 10 months for trafficking meth and heroin charges with no bond. Her family said she needed to go back to treatment, a more faith-based treatment.
She had already gone to treatment once. When Kayla got out of jail, her father had already contacted Addiction Recovery Care to get her a bed at Karen’s Place before she got home.
“I was so scared, I was fighting myself, but I was fighting, you know, being in treatment.”
But once she got to Karen’s Place, she was surrounded with “newness” and felt a sense of understanding in her recovery.
“I had never felt the feeling before.”
She was asked to pray one day, and she felt so hot and started crying, and she knew she had a moment with God. From there, everything changed.
She’s incredibly thankful and in “awe” every day that she gets to do what she does at Hazel Hills.
“Coming from where I come from, I have a great family, a strong Christain family that always instilled morals and values in us,” she added. “You get to this point, all that dad preached on Sundays, you start to realize that now.”
“We recover together,” she said. “On the other side of recovery, there is true joy.”ds
