Burning Tree Ranch Alumni Marlena H. Shares Her Recovery Journey
Video Summary:
Marlena H., a Burning Tree Ranch alumna, shares her experience of our long-term treatment program in this candid testimonial. Here, she speaks on her initial resistance to treatment and her pivotal moment of surrender that led to her gradual embrace of the treatment program. Her story, like many others, illustrates the power of long-term treatment in addressing chronic relapse and achieving lasting recovery.
Read: Video Transcript
My parents – they said: ‘There’s one more option, it’s a long term facility in Texas.’ And I entered there on January 13th of 2010. I ended up walking off the property, drinking alcohol and ending up in the hospital.
That morning that I woke up in the hospital – that was really the first time that I can remember thinking, ‘I know if I walk out the doors of this hospital, I won’t be able to not drink or get high. I know if I stay sitting in this hospital bed, I’m gonna have to feel the way that I feel right now’, and it was horrible. I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
Neither of those options felt like good options. I had never felt that way before – that real moment of utter hopelessness that I was at the end. And that’s really, probably, a turning point for me.
But even the first couple months I would stay at the facility, I really struggled. I would struggle with mental health. I didn’t know how to live life without being high. And more importantly than anything else, I wanted to want to be sober, but I didn’t actually want to be sober, and that was a real struggle.
The staff called me into their staff meeting one day, and I thought ‘Great, what did I do now? I really thought I was doing everything I was supposed to do,’ and they, for the first time that I can remember, they said “You’re doing a great job. Keep it up.”
I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s working.’ Everything that they’re asking me to do – it’s working. That was really a defining moment, I think.
