Brittany Marsh

As a nine-year-old, Brittany Marsh started drinking alcohol. At 13, she tried marijuana, which became a habit. The she started using ecstasy; a few years later she added cocaine. For three or four years, she had an eating disorder. In her early 20s, she started smoking crack cocaine.

  "That really scared me, and I realized I had to do something," she said.

  What Marsh did was admit her substance abuse problem, something she could not do for years. "A whole part of my life was denial," she says. She found a counsellor, joined addiction groups and studied treatment options. One night, she had what she calls a spiritual awakening.

Following that evening's addiction group meeting, she sat with the group's counsellor and helped him fill out the forms for Marsh to go through treatment at Pacifica Treatment Centre in Vancouver . As they finished the forms, the counsellor, Marsh and two other group members sat as the counsellor prayed for Mash. Then, Marsh prayed for her own recovery.

Suddenly, Marsh says, she felt fuzzy and warm and found she could not walk or talk. "The only way I could associate that feeling was with drugs. I've never felt that good before." After many years of poor sleep, Marsh slept soundly that night. She still feels, "I have this light around me."

Marsh, who is 22, is clear that isolation, abandonment and sexual abuse drove her into substance abuse. She's also clear about what's leading her out of it: her own desire for change, the support of counsellors, family and friends, and her spiritual awakening.

  Marsh did detox at home in Quesnel and then, when a bed became available, her father drove her to Pacifica in Vancouver . He also drove back to visit her for family days at the centre.

  Sitting in the school hallway where the City's November, youth, substance-abuse prevention event Get Plugged In! was taking place, Marsh reflected on her own experiences with drugs and alcohol and her recovery. Marsh and several other women who were just completing the Pacifica program had been featured in a film earlier that day - " Street Addicts " - which was created for the event by youth, under the mentorship of Reel Youth.

  Marsh has high praise for Pacifica 's program and its counsellors. She said that their efforts helped her to move from feeling like an insecure 15-year-old to experiencing self-growth, self-acceptance and maturity.

  One of her last tasks, before travelling to Quesnel the next day, was to write to all of her closest friends back home, telling them that she can't see them anymore, because seeing them could trigger a need to use drugs again. She was dreading the assignment, particularly the e-mail she knew she had to send to one of her oldest friends she'd known since she was a little girl. But she was also determined to write the letters, complete the program, stay substance free and continue on her recovery.

  Back in Quesnel, Marsh planned to get back into counselling, join a recovery group, attend recovery meetings, start to do some volunteer work and, eventually, start working again as an esthetician.

  She also plans to continue praying. She says that where she used to feel darkness inside herself, "I now have this light all around me."