By Michelle Day
I was adopted in March 1980, and my folks split up a couple of years later. Each remarried in 1984. My dad, who was part Jewish but did not grow up religiously, did not go down a Jewish path. My mom married an Orthodox man, who I called Abba, and decided to raise my brother and me Jewishly. Since I was very young, religion was a point of contention and something with which I struggle even today.
We moved to Potomac, Maryland, in 1987. My mom and stepfather decided to follow the Orthodox tradition, and I ended up at an Orthodox day school in third grade. As I got older, I never fully felt like I fit in. I wasn’t good academically or socially. I didn’t really know where to land. In high school, I had only a few friends. Some fit into the standard norm of an Orthodox Jewish kid, some didn’t. I seemed to be drawn to bad behavior, even though that wasn’t how I was raised. I guess because I didn’t feel like I fit in, I decided to act the part.
The one thing I knew for sure was I wasn’t happy. I didn’t put forth any effort in school or try to achieve anything. Looking back, I realize I didn’t have any faith in myself to try anything.
I think I was thirteen when I tried smoking pot. I didn’t get high and didn’t do it again for a few years. I also got really drunk for the first time, at a New Year’s party. Being dumb and clumsy was comical to me. I really enjoyed it, and over the next few years, I got drunk whenever I could.
I started smoking pot more often when I was about fifteen. My friends and I would get high on weekends and sometimes at school. Then one day in January 1997, these kids from an alternative high school came to give us the ‘Drug Talk’. Afterward, one of my classmates sent an anonymous note to the guidance counselor saying he (or she) was concerned after seeing me drunk. The school called my parents and recommended I call one of the girls who spoke at the school to see if she would be willing to take me to a twelve-step meeting. So that Superbowl Sunday, I was in Alcoholics Anonymous. The meeting was at a clubhouse in a smoky room. I wanted to fit in, so I smoked a cigarette (and started a habit that lasted fifteen years).
Although they wanted me to stop using and get on to a better path, my mom and Abba were not happy about AA. The meetings had me associating with non-Jewish kids they didn’t like. Rather than being able to focus on recovery, I always felt like I was doing something wrong. Once again, religion became the center of every argument.
A few months went by, and I just seemed to be getting worse. I was really unhappy. I felt like I didn’t fit in with my new friends or belong at the Jewish school. There seemed to be nowhere to go. My parents were always disappointed in me; I couldn’t do anything right. I was depressed and anxious, but everyone just thought I was a bad kid. It got to the point where I wanted to disappear.
One day in April 1997, I wrote my best friend a note that I was going to kill myself in the yard at school. I told her to have someone come look for me after lunch. I knew something had to give and didn’t know how to get someone’s attention. After the suicide attempt, I was admitted to the
psychiatric ward of a local hospital for a few days for deep, intensive therapy. The day I got out, my mom and I were called into the school headmistress’s office.
I will never forget that day. My mom, who was progressively losing her vision from a degenerative eye disease, had to ride with me into school. It was us and this headmistress. No guidance counselor. She referred to me as a ‘freak’ who didn’t fit in with the standard kids at this school and informed us they were expelling me. They kicked me out a few weeks before the end of my junior year. I had been there nine years. This was how they dealt with mental illness in 1997 at an Orthodox Jewish high school in metro D.C. True, I was not a good student. But they expelled me for trying to kill myself. It was devastating. I felt horrible. My parents were crushed.
I ended up going to the high school that came to speak to us. I went from being the bad kid in a Jewish environment to a sheltered kid in an alternative school. Another place where I didn’t fit in. It wasn’t long before many of my friends were not allowed to hang out with me anymore. I am still grateful for all the open-minded and loving families that always accepted me into their homes despite my reputation. I don’t know if they will ever understand how much that meant to me.
I had spent most of high school planning to study in Israel the year after I graduated. After my expulsion, though, most programs there wouldn’t accept me. But one awesome rabbi heard about me and was still willing to have a conversation about it. Within two hours of meeting, he accepted me, and a few months later I was off to Israel.
Almost immediately, I began drinking and drugging. A lot of people get there and party for a month or two, and then stop. I just did not stop. I went from drinking and smoking pot to doing ecstasy almost every day. I began dealing drugs and living a pretty dangerous lifestyle in a foreign country. The most interesting thing about that year was that despite the drugs and everything else, it was the first time I found a core group of people I fit in with. It was a good feeling.
When I left for Israel, I planned to come home and go to the University of Maryland. But after spending the summer at home, I enrolled at Touro College in New York City. I moved into a dorm in September 1999.
I don’t know how I functioned. I was always high or drunk. Thinking back, it was miserable. Still, it was my life. When you’re on ecstasy, everything is great. But when you’re on it for so long, it becomes maintenance. It’s like you can’t be happy unless you’re high, but the high doesn’t last long, so you are constantly chasing it. Yet you never find it. I feel like I spent the better part of a decade in a comedown. Needless to say, I was not doing well in school. And once again, I was the bad kid.
And then in 2001, 9/11 happened. I was living in the dorm on West 85th and Amsterdam. That morning, someone came running into my room and told me about the plane. I ran through the dorm to find my close friend Devora. Her brother-in-law had been in the Twin Towers and was missing. I found her in the dorm mother’s apartment in the middle of girls all praying. We hugged. I don’t remember saying anything, just the hugging. I felt helpless and useless, so I got into a cab with another student and told the driver to go south. After registering with the Salvation Army as volunteers, we were put in a van and driven to Ground Zero. I could never come up with words for the things I saw, smelled, experienced. It was just remarkable—one of the single greatest tragedies our country has experienced, and I was standing right there giving water to those who were picking up pieces of rubble, hoping to find people. It made a mark on my soul that forever changed me.
Another friend and I went later to the West Side Highway, where volunteers were giving out drinks and supplies to first responders as they came out of the wreckage. I don’t know how these responders kept going in. That day I developed a love for police and firefighters.
Finally, we knew we had to go home, where I proceeded to drink myself into oblivion. That picked up my drinking quite a bit and led to my willingness to try cocaine.
I finished college in 2003, moved back to Maryland and got my first job, working in a nonprofit. I had the potential to be so good at what I was doing and even got promoted. But I spent so much time out drinking and doing drugs that I was always hungover or still drunk or high at work. I spent all my money on drugs and alcohol. I faked injuries so I could go to the hospital, and insurance would pay for opioid painkillers.
My next job ended after only a year. I had officially become unemployable. I ran out of money and had no place to live. I called my brother and sister-in-law to ask them to bail me out of a financial bind, and they did the best thing anyone could have done: They said no. I think they were starting to realize what was going on and understood that enabling
me would have been the worst thing they could do. It probably saved my life. I went to visit them around that time and was so worn out that I couldn’t enjoy time with my niece and nephew. I just wanted to be high.
In February 2006, I moved back in with my parents. I had spent so long buying other people drinks and drugs, because that was the only way I thought people would like me. But when I had no money, nobody was buying me anything, so I had no access to drugs and alcohol anymore. I was either going to have to start doing things for drugs and alcohol, or I was going to get clean. It was a horrible place in life. I felt alone. My family was so disappointed in me. I couldn’t land a job. I was just a mess.
Then one day I admitted to my parents I was using, and we decided I would start going to twelve-step meetings again. Going to the first meeting gave me the courage to tell my mom details of what I had been going through. For the first time, she really understood how bad things had gotten with my drug use. It was also the first time I was honest, fully and completely. We agreed if I stayed sober and went to AA meetings, I could stay in the house. If I relapsed, I would be out.
I stayed sober for five and a half months, during which I found a job. And then a girlfriend and I decided it would be fun to go out dancing. It was the dumbest thing I could have done. I was drunk and seeking cocaine within an hour. My parents made me find a new place. I moved into a sober home and stayed clean for about fifteen months. Pleased with where things were going, I moved into my own place—and relapsed immediately. It was a horrible three-week relapse. It wasn’t the quantity of drugs or alcohol. It was the behavior that went with it. I stole from my family and alienated everyone. I’ll never forget the morning of March 10, 2008. My grandma called me and said, “I know you stole money from me.” I’ll never forget the sound of her
voice. She had just buried her husband of sixty-six years, my grandpa. That’s where my addiction took me. I stole money from my grieving grandma, who I loved with all my soul. Even though I did worse things, that was it for me. That was my rock bottom. I haven’t had a drink or a drug since that day.
One of the biggest gifts I found in sobriety—and there were many—was time with family members who have died since. I spent a beautiful seven years with my grandma, who passed away being proud of the person I had become, having forgiven me for all of my mistakes. My stepmother died about the same time, and I had been able to make amends to her as well for past transgressions.
As I started to come out of the fog of addiction, I came to discover (contrary to the little voice in my head for so many years) I was actually quite a talented professional. My career took off, and I started to achieve things I never thought possible. I started giving back to my community instead of mooching off it. I also became active in the recovery community, which has been a source of joy and sadness. The painful reality is you are going to lose people to this disease. But you also get to watch people celebrate their first year clean.
In April 2012, I called my mom and told her I really loved my life as a single and successful professional, and I didn’t think I wanted to get married. She cried. Then, two weeks later, I was playing softball in a sober league, when I met this adorable man named Bart. He had been sober for a year. To my mother’s relief, we married eighteen months later. I gave birth to my first child, Elianna, in December 2014 and then to my second child, Sophia, in February 2016. Sophia was named for my grandma, who passed away while I was pregnant with her.
My beautiful and courageous mom died in 2017 after battling uterine cancer that metastasized to her lungs. I was able to spend a lot of years with her clean. She was at my wedding and met both of my children. I was able to make amends to her. We had a remarkable relationship that was both funny and honest. I asked her before she died if there was anything she thought was left unsaid between us or anything she felt I needed to atone for, and there wasn’t. It was one of the many gifts I received because of my sobriety.
Today I take things day by day. I still struggle with depression and anxiety, but I know how to advocate for my own mental health now. I still have cravings, but I also have the tools to work through them. I went from being dishonest about everything in my life to being an open book when anyone asks. I like talking about my sobriety, because it takes the stigma out of it. Addiction happens—even in the Jewish community—and it’s something we all need to talk about.
For the last few years, I have been asked to speak to the school that expelled me in 1997. The guidance department developed a program to deal with issues like addiction and mental health. I am honored to support that effort. It shows the tide is changing with regard to how our community talks about these issues.
When our kids are older, Bart and I want them to know where we come from. How we will handle that, I don’t know. I don’t know yet what it’s like to be the parent of a teenager. I want them to be comfortable talking to me in ways I wasn’t with my parents. I want them to feel safe and tell us everything. It scares the heck out of me. But I also know that God or the universe or whatever there is out there hasn’t gotten me this far to drop me now. We’ll figure it out.