A woman who once spent her life obsessed with drugs and booze, living on the streets, has revealed how she transformed her life.
Today, 31-year-old Cara Walworth from Michigan, US has got it all. She recently married the love of her life, has two gorgeous daughters, and a baby son on the way.
But life wasn’t always such a fairy tale for Cara, who had become addicted to meth by the time she was 17.
The stay-at-home mum turned to the bottle when she was just 13 years old. She suffered from depressive episodes as a child and was the victim of several traumatic events, including being assaulted by an older boy at summer camp.
"I was really, really depressed as a kid, I struggled a lot with my parents' divorce and when I was 13 I went to summer camp. So I got home from summer camp and just became a total train wreck,” she told The Daily Star in an exclusive interview.
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After the divorce, Cara spent every other weekend with her father where she says she was exposed to an environment of substance and alcohol abuse. After she first tried alcohol at the age of 13, drugs quickly followed suit and soon scoring the next hit was the only thing she cared about.
She described how, after that first taste, she quickly became obsessed with substances.
“It was like this overwhelming need to keep doing it and I didn’t know why,” she said in a powerful depiction of her addiction. I would wake up in the morning the only thing I cared about and wanted was to be high or drunk, nothing else mattered anymore."
She puts her fast deterioration into a life defined by addiction down to genetic, as well as environmental, factors. Whereas her mother’s side of the family were all doctors, lawyers and psychologists, her father came from a family broken by drug addiction, alcoholism and mental health issues.
“I think I did inherit some of that,” she explained. “I do believe addiction is partly genetic.” Drugs and alcohol were not only a coping mechanism for Cara but soon a defining part of her lifestyle and she rapidly spiralled into using harder substances, seeing her become addicted to meth at the age of 17.
"I would take anything I could get my hands on. So finally one day somebody offered me heroin and crack and meth, I was just so lost, depressed, filled with shame and I just didn’t care so I said ‘yeah’ and got very addicted to that, it had that spiral effect," she recalled.
After years of turmoil, Cara was determined to get clean. And she did, enrolling on a nursing degree at a university and beginning a career in the healthcare industry. At the age of 20, the young nurse welcomed her first baby and spent the next couple of years building a stable home and providing for her baby girl.
Sadly though, addiction was to rear its ugly head yet again when Cara was prescribed pain medication after a hip injury. The young mother quickly became addicted to the pills, seeing her fired from her job, estranged from her daughter and family, and living on the streets.
In 2020, Cara hit rock bottom, overdosing five times in a row. Haunted by the idea of her daughter having to endure the grief of burying her own mum at such a young age, Cara once again made the decision to get clean. But this time, for good.
With the support of her mother and new partner, Cara has remained sober for the last three years, sharing her story on social media with the hope of inspiring others trapped in the cycle of addiction.
Cara has gone viral with videos showing her appearance while she was going through addiction, where she can be seen with open sores covering her face. "I mean in those pictures, those [the sores] were on my face and on my body too, my legs. Everything was covered in sores open infected sores,” she said, explaining a lot of the wounds were from sharing dirty needles.
"Unfortunately, meth can cause psychosis. So, I would be up for days on end in psychosis thinking that I'm covered in bugs so I'm picking my skin and just seeing myself like that was like my God, it's scary,” she continued.
Now three years clean, things are very different for Cara, who is now married with a family and “genuinely happy,” something she once thought was impossible.
"I didn't think it was possible, which is why I kind of just didn't even want to bother trying. I'm so glad I did and I'm so glad that my family is emotional support and my husband now," she said. "It definitely was worth fighting for.”
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