When the phone rang at the Myers residence one night in January 2003, the last thing that Trina’s family expected to hear was the voice on the other end of the phone saying that their sweet 16-year-old daughter had been in a car accident.
Trina Myer was a bright, happy, well-adjusted 16-year-old girl who had a good childhood in a home that was filled with love. She enjoyed spending time with her friends, going to high school, playing the clarinet in the marching band, and singing in chorus.
When they got to the hospital the doctor told them that Trina had suffered a traumatic brain injury. Seconds felt like hours as they waited for their baby to open her eyes.
Finally, after 16 hours Trina woke up for a moment. She did not remember anything or anyone except for herself. Eventually she remembered her mother.
Trina came home but what came next was a nightmare. Not only was there physical pain but Trina’s frontal lobe was damaged, and her short-term memory was gone. The frontal lobe controls several things. For Trina, her brain injury caused difficulties with social interactions and impulse control.
Trina slipped into a deep depression and every day she wished for death. Her doctors prescribed opioids for her physical pain. In addition to the opioids, Trina started using marijuana to numb her emotional pain.
Six months after the accident, the doctors felt that there was no reason for her physical pain anymore. They took her off the opioids. Trina still had pain and found that she had become addicted to the pills that they had given her. That summer, for the first time, Trina shot up oxycodone, which is a powerful opioid.
In August, Trina contracted pneumonia and was in respiratory failure when her lungs collapsed. She had to have three surgeries to save her life. During one of the surgeries, she remembers having an out of body experience. She had died. The doctors were able to save her, and she woke up in the ICU.
This experience changed the course of her life even more. With the support of her parents, because of all the challenges that she was facing, she walked into the principal’s office and told him that she was going to take a year off school. Her principle told her that she would not graduate if she did that.
Trina moved in with her friend and started dating a guy who later became her child’s father. They started snorting a stimulant. Eventually she moved back home. She felt bored and stuck. She wanted more for herself, so she went back to school. Trina did what her principal said that she would not do. Upon graduation, she took her diploma, went to the principal’s office, and put it in front of him. She had done it! Trina even earned a scholarship to go to college. She started school with the goal of becoming a registered nurse but after the first semester, she left school as her brain injury proved to make it too difficult.
Trina started shooting up drugs with her boyfriend and at 20, she found herself pregnant. She stopped using cold turkey. Her boyfriend was very abusive throughout the whole pregnancy. When she was 9 months pregnant, her boyfriend assaulted her and tried to smother her. She was hospitalized from it and relapsed from the morphine that they gave her. Trina had a baby girl who spent 10 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Trina brought her baby daughter home and tried to make a family with her boyfriend but the drug use and abuse at the hands of her boyfriend made it impossible, so she gave her baby girl to her mother.
Trina and her boyfriend moved in with her boyfriend’s father and stepmother in Texas. They tried to get clean by going to a methadone clinic, but his family was using meth. Trina started using meth with them. People who use meth can have meth psychosis. Meth psychosis is a serious potential side effect of heavy meth use. It can involve symptoms of extreme paranoia and hallucinations. The people she lived with did experience meth psychosis and life became dangerous, so they moved out. Now they were homeless, so they moved back to Michigan.
In Michigan, Trina had a warrant for her arrest. When Trina got out, she wanted desperately to get clean. It lasted 2 weeks until her boyfriend convinced her to use again. They started committing crimes to pay for the drugs.
Trina found herself pregnant again. She was in denial about it. When she stopped using drugs, she went through a horrible withdrawal and lost the baby.
Trina went back to drugs until she got arrested in 2008. She had taken responsibility for drug possession that was truly her boyfriend’s. She did this because if he were caught, he would have gone to prison. While in jail, she was allowed to get out each day to go to school. She went to cosmetology school.
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The judge noticed that she was turning her life around and gave her early release. Trina had quit everything and got off the street. She went to work and had her own apartment. When she would not support his habit, her boyfriend left. Her eyes were open. She said enough is enough and ended it with him.
Trina ended up in two more toxic relationships. She was caught up in a cycle of abuse and drug use. She would pick herself up, get clean, start using again and go to jail.
On March 19th, 2021, life had become too unbearable. She was not there when her grandpa died of for the funeral and she missed her daughter’s birthday, all because of using drugs. Trina overdosed on heroin. First responders brought her back and she went to jail because of it.
As the cycle dictated, she spent another year using until one day, she overdosed again. Again, she went to jail. This time though, she was put into heroin court. She had warrants in other counties and had to serve those sentences before she could go though. She ended up using again. It was not until a couple more times in jail that she was finally put into rehab. She had been begging for rehab for a long time. She had been using for 20 years and needed to learn tools to stay sober and to go into a sober living house. Most of all, she also needed to learn to forgive herself.
When Trina got out, she had the support of a healthy relationship, her family, and the community. She learned that the victim mentality kept her using. Trina is a survivor. She says that “acceptance is to let go. I cannot change my past, but I can control how I respond to things now.” Today Trina has been sober and thriving for 18 months!
Since becoming sober, Trina has become a recovery coach to give back. She says that “My story is only mine, and I can use it to help people.” Trina just passed her Certified Peer Specialist exam with a 100% score. Her next goal is to become a substance abuse counselor.
Trina currently works at The Gathering Place as a Certified Peer Specialist and Recovery Coach. She facilitates support groups and helps people on their recovery journey. She also works as a Recovery Coach for Darjune where she goes on crisis calls to area hospitals when people come in from overdose. She sits by their side and walks with them if they want to work toward recovery as their coach.
Her message to you is, “Recovery IS possible! There is hope and The Gathering Place is a place where people can come and feel accepted and not judged.”
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