Reader Report: Getting sober in supportive Costa Mesa

At 6 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2014, I got out of the car and stood on the icy ground in front of the half-lit American Airlines check-in desk at O’Hare International Airport, in my hometown of Chicago, and looked at my exhausted, emotional mother.

“It’s 45 days. I’ll see you in 45 days,” I said to my parents, eyes foggy, partly from my tears, partly from the bitter cold.

It was the coldest winter that Chicago had experienced since 1978-79. Everyone was miserable enough as it was.

I was being sent to rehabilitation in Tucson for drugs, alcohol and depression. I never thought in a million years this would be my story, but I was on a quick road to nowhere. I had no idea how my life was going to change, but I knew it needed to.

I messed up. After being expelled from high school for possession and distribution of marijuana, I kept running with my party girl act.

I brought drugs and my attitude with me to the University of Miami and was politely asked to leave. I transferred to the University of Colorado and failed out. I went back to my hometown, trying to make peace with my past and lost the trust and respect of my family and friends.

I spent more days than not hidden in my apartment bedroom watching the bustling city of Chicago move past. Ignoring everyone, going days without even the slightest bit of energy to shower, I hit my bottom. I needed to recover.

Going to a rehabilitation center was embarrassing, heartbreaking for my parents, and my only hope.

I was on a red-eye flight to the treatment center only two days after I called my father and admitted I needed help. Upon arriving, I was welcomed to recovery.

Little did I know, recovery was more than a 45-day stay in a rehabilitation center. By day 43, I was all squared away to check into a recovery home in Costa Mesa, as recommended by the treatment program to continue my care.

In Tucson, I learned the tools to dig myself out of the gutter. That was rehab. What I did not realize was I still needed to learn how to keep myself out of the gutter. That is recovery. I had never heard anything about Costa Mesa before, and here I was relocating my life there as a commitment to recovery.

Within three hours of landing in Costa Mesa, on day 46 of my journey in recovery, I found myself at a young people’s Alcoholics Anonymous meeting six blocks from the Newport Beach Pier. Surrounded by seat after seat of twentysomethings who had gone through what I went through, knew where I had been and now seemed happier and healthier than ever, I knew I was never going home. Costa Mesa was exactly where I needed to be.

Having spent the last five years in and out of different schools and rehab centers, I was blown away by Costa Mesa. It wasn’t like anywhere else I had ever been. This community truly inspired me. It wasn’t a smoky A.A. meeting in the back of a church full of people complaining about their lives like you see in the movies.

When I sat down at a meeting at an A.A. clubhouse in Costa Mesa, the walls were painted bright colors with the names of people who had contributed to the club. Everyone was socializing. People were talking about the great things they were doing with their lives today. No one was miserable.

The vibrant colors on the walls, the young people, the weather — these are the reasons Costa Mesa has become one of the larger recovery communities in the country. It is not about the treatment center or the sober-living home.

Costa Mesa is about what comes after you are released from rehab. It is about recovery.

The fellowship, the lifestyle, the support of others who have gone through what you have gone through, and the motivation to move forward is what I have found through my recovery journey in Costa Mesa.

Nine months clean and sober today, I am doing the best I have done in school since my elementary years. I work a part-time job for a huge Southern California apparel and footwear company. I shower daily. I have the energy to live life today because I agreed to continue my recovery in Costa Mesa about seven months ago.

MADILYN MARKS attends Orange Coast College. A version of this piece previously appeared in One Fifty Two, a student magazine at OCC.