Clarissa

1990 Graduate Document Design Specialist

Growing up, I was the golden child from the projects– being recruited by colleges while being the first in my family to graduate high school. I turned down college in order to begin a career in the government specializing in legal documents. As I was advancing at work, I began to succumb to peer pressures. I started my drug use at 21 from social drinks to marijuana, acid, PCP, to snorting cocaine. By the time I was smoking crack, I had lost my job, marriage, house, and given up my ten year old son.

When I was court-ordered to Second Genesis for eighteen months, I was thirty-five years old and beginning to think it was the college education I had turned down years earlier. After months of therapy, my counselor kept telling me to ‘loosen up’. It took a blank sign around my neck, by choice, to loosen me up. I had been faking my progress in treatment for months and still had stood for nothing. After the hurt from the assessment wore off, I saw that my brothers and sisters in treatment actually liken me! From that day forward, I walked the talk and dove into my treatment plan.

After graduating in October 1990, I became employed at the same law firm that I am currently working for. I begin advancing rapidly from Secretary to Document Design Specialist. After my initial success, I have learned to stop fearing failure.

With 19 years of recovery, I have sponsored women who now have their own sponsees. I am Chair of a recovery newsletter in my area and a former Chair of the Ocean City, MD Convention, and a proud foster mom to a beautiful boy.