Michaela Fissel - Young people in recovery

My name is Michaela Fissel and I'm a young person in long-term recovery. For me that means that I'm in recovery from a primary diagnosis of Bi-Polar Disorder which led to drug use. Recovery gave me the opportunity to live a meaningful life and now I am a contributing member of society, with a purpose and a future. [music] I lived in homeless shelters, I lived on people's couches, I slept under bridges, I did anything really just to survive really. It was all about survival - it was where is my next meal coming from, but more importantly it was where is my next hit coming from. There are periods of my life that I can't even remember up to this point, I didn't realize that I had a future. My mood instability and things like that made me feel like out of control and I tried to cope with those feelings of unrest and anxiety by doing drugs, because that is what seemed to be like the norm that everyone else my age during adolescents was doing. At 20 years old I was hospitalized after an episode of psychosis and while I was in the hospital for about a month I received the formal diagnosis of Bi-Polar Disorder. When I was in the hospital and I got that diagnosis it was like this Ah-HA moment, where finally I had a reason for why I had struggled so hard for so many years. I wouldn't be alive today without recovery. I probably would have killed myself by now or died to drug use. I couldn't even count the number of doors that have been opened while I have been in recovery. If I can't rise above the circumstances of my diagnosis, or rise above the circumstances of my history, then what purpose is there to live. Recovery gave me my purpose, recovery gave me the opportunity to take all that garbage that I was handed and to turn it into a masterpiece because that is what life is really about. That is what recovery is about for me - it's just living everyday to the fullest. Any opportunity that I get to share my story if it is going to inspire hope in anyone that is in the audience I'll share it. Amazing things happen in recovery, amazing things!