“Slowly but surely, everything that was near and dear to me stopped being near and dear to me”

To look at Victoria DeGroot today is to see someone who has big plans for the future, including a possible political future. But most know that what we see doesn’t always tell the story.

“I am someone in long-term recovery. I’ve been in recovery since October 4, 2016. I had a very chronic heroin addiction. My recovery message is ‘from the mess we carry the message’,” says the poised young woman today.

Outwardly, there are very few scars from her traumatic childhood that included poverty and behavioral struggles.

“When I was a kid, I endured heavy traumas that no kid ever should, and as a result of that, I was sent to North Star (Behavioral Health) for inpatient treatment for mental health issues,” says DeGroot.

According to the National Institute of Health, one of the leading causes of developing addiction in adult life is childhood trauma. A study of individuals being treated for substance use disorder and PTSD found that 77% of the sample had experienced at least one trauma as a child.

For DeGroot, it wasn’t simply the trauma she encountered, but she believes that her inpatient care was detrimental to her behavioral health, “I was overmedicated, and it left me completely unable to handle my emotions, implement coping skills and unable to identify what was wrong with me.”

Trauma is thought to result from an event or multiple events that an individual experiences as emotionally or physically harmful. These experiences have lasting effects on the individual’s wellbeing.

“I think that mental health played a major part in my addiction because when you medicate and aren’t sure what the issue even is, it just adds more on top of that. At the age of 13, I picked up heroin, as a result of the people, places, and things I’d been subjected to,” DeGroot says.

She also believes that a lack of education many parents have, and the awareness of how childhood trauma impacts the overall wellbeing of young people plays a huge part in misunderstanding trauma and mental health children and adolescents need.

“I think that many parents or loved ones caring for a child aren’t properly educated in regards to handling adolescent trauma, which for me, led to a lot of therapy and a bunch of medication, to the point I can barely recall elementary school.”

DeGroot says that she primarily used heroin, though would dabble in other drugs, but that no matter the substance, eventually her need to get high destroyed her life.

“Slowly but surely, everything that was near and dear to me stopped being near and dear to me. My addiction looked a lot like destroying everything and everybody to make sure I was going to get high. Whether that was shooting up in a department store bathroom and falling asleep in there, or wrecking a car because I was under the influence, or trafficking drugs. All those things were a reality of my addiction, because I would go to any extent to get high.”

She also thought her world was no different than anyone else’s, that she didn’t have a problem, “I thought everyone used drugs, drank, and that everybody was as mentally messed up as I was.”

In fact, according to the NIH, millions of young adults are living with a mental or substance use disorder and many either do not realize they have one or are not paying attention to the signs and not seeking help.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a division of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, of the 8.9 million young adults who reported having a mental illness in 2018, more than 2 in 5 went untreated and of the 5.1 million with a substance use disorder, nearly 9 in 10 did not get treatment.

“It wasn’t until I was 20 that I crawled into my parents’ garage because I was so dope sick and called the national hotline and within 5 days I got into treatment. I got a flight down to Texas and went to 6 month long treatment center it was beautiful,” she recalls.

“And in there was the very first time I tried fentanyl.”

That’s right, in her treatment center.

“I graduated treatment while getting high. That’s where my mind was. They say when you’re ready to get sober, you get a gift of desperation, and I had yet to get that gift.”

DeGroot looks back now and can say that her gift of desperation was on its way, as fast as God would let it.

The gift didn’t take long to find her.

“I got out of treatment and went to California and within 18 days, I relapsed. And that relapse was the very last time I got high.”

DeGroot says she ended up getting drugs off of Craigslist while she was in Stockton, then got into a car with 3 felons that she didn’t even know.

“We went to Vallejo, used the drugs, and I overdosed. They kicked me out of the car onto the street. They took everything I had-wallet, ID, even my comb-just kicked me out of the car.”

DeGroot becomes emotional when she says it was by the grace of God that someone pulled over and called 911, and gave her Narcan until the ambulance arrived.

“Once at the hospital, they brought me to my Sober Living Mom- she was a family friend, she met me there and it was a total out of body experience,” she vividly recalls that particular hospital encounter.

“I had no idea what was going on, but she said I came to in the middle of everything going on and said ‘I don’t wanna die. I know I need help, I don’t want to die.’”

Four days later, once released from the hospital (from complications due to a heart issue related to her drug use), DeGroot went back to treatment.

“And since then I’ve stayed clean,” she beams.

“Since being in recovery, I have done so many things. I appreciate life so much for the little things. But recovery to me means so much more than stopping using drugs. Recovery to me means an active connection to a Higher Power, which thanks to TNR (True North Recovery), I’ve found one. “

DeGroot says that it was through TNR that she was saved and introduced to God, something that she is grateful for today.

“To just be able to grasp and own the Higher Power I believe in, I’ve been able to get a handle on my mental health issues and just have a newfound sense of happiness. To be able to make my parents proud and rebuild relationships within the community that I absolutely demolished, I get to make myself proud,” she says.

Her journey to TNR began as a commercial fisherman, following in the path of her grandparents, which brought her a lot of movement, but also fraught with the lures of money, something she says is detrimental when using drugs.

Ultimately, though, DeGroot was connected to TNR through COVID.

“I was down crabbing in California and this skipper docked the boat and fishing was done. As someone being consistently out at sea, I came back to Alaska to figure out what I was going to do. I have no skills. I dropped out of college. I’ve only used drugs and ruined relationships.” She says that it was a job listing for Peer Support at TNR that led her to think that her struggles could actually be useful

“For the first time in my life I thought, ‘wow, you can have a future, a career based solely because you fell victim to addiction.’ So that day I applied and got a call back that day and interviewed the next day, then offered the job that day.”

She was instrumental in helping start up Vida Nova (TNR’s Residential Treatment Program) as part of the original staff, a tremendous source of pride for her.

“I was given the honor of seeing the first client come through there and continue to see clients come through TNR.”

She did take a brief sabbatical to go fishing. Upon returning, she was offered a supervisor position and gets the opportunity to onboard some of the alumni that have come through TNR. 90% of the staff at TNR are alumni, something that DeGroot thinks is helping turn the tide in the battle against Substance Use Disorder (SUD).

“For the first time in a long time, not just here in Alaska, but everywhere, the way that addiction is looked at is changing.”

DeGroot has a message for the community that still places a stigma on people suffering from substance use disorder and mental health struggles:

“I think today, there are very few people out there who can say that they haven’t been touched by alcohol or addiction. As a community, if you think about how much funding is put towards reactive actions towards addiction, and cleaning up the messes of addiction and alcoholism, it’s really disappointing because I would argue that only 5% is placed into preventative measures.”

Did she mention that a long-term goal of hers is to run for Senate?

“I think that whether its climate change, the rising cost of living, addiction or education, the one thing they have in common is how funding allocated.”

But it is evident that her passion also lies with the work being done at TNR.

“That’s what keeps me coming back, this is where the hope is. Instead of reacting, we are proactive and able to meet the client where they’re at and say ‘hey, you don’t want to change alright, we’re going to love you until you are ready.’ We see miracles happen here every day and it is mind-boggling to think that I’m privileged to see that.”

She also believes that there is a paradigm shift in how recovery is beginning to be treated, saying, “I think that TNR really embodies a social movement similar to when AIDS began to be treated under healthcare. TNR for the first time gives people that have been in recovery a chance to build a future.”

DeGroot has a message for anyone who thinks SUD isn’t in their life, or affecting someone they care about:

“It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, black white or purple, addiction doesn’t care who you are. And if you’re struggling with mental health, SUD, anything making life unmanageable, you are not alone. If just one of us is courageous enough to shout from the rooftops that recovery is possible, you are not alone. Maybe, just maybe we will get people from dying in silence.”