February 15, 2018 at 10:34 a.m.
Sobriety, spirituality and self-love
Jessica Mann becomes first woman graduate of Zaagiibagaa Healing to Wellness Court
Sobriety, spirituality and self-love
By Abbey McEnroe-
Journey to addiction
For most, addiction does not happen overnight, it is a slow process often present before the victim is aware.
Mann said her first introduction to drugs was smoking marijuana at the age of 12, before trying alcohol at age 13 or 14.
"My first time drinking was not long after my first hit (of marijuana), like 13 or 14, there was a family Christmas party and my cousin had a big jug of wine and of course I drank it because all my sisters and cousins were doing it," Mann recalled. "We had consequences that night. My first time getting high I got away with it, but the first time I drank I got - it was the worst."
Mann said her dad has been sober since she was two years old, so he reacted strongly to finding out his young daughter had tried something he had experienced the devasting effects of.
"I got consequences because my dad was like, 'I give you a good life and this is what you do,'" Mann explained. "It was just awful, so I never really drank because the first - I might as well just say it, back in the day you could spank your kids, you could discipline them, and I think it did a lot for me during those years - I didn't take another drink until I was 16 and then 18 and then 18 through 19 really didn't drink that much and then 20, I started to drink a lot when I was 20."
From marijuana use throughout high school to drinking heavily in her early 20s, Mann expanded her drug use to cocaine.
"It was just drinking and marijuana and cocaine here and there," Mann stated. "When I hit 22, I think, it was more hiding it from my ex, with the cocaine. So, I'd take off on him for weeks at a time just to go run around and do cocaine. I was a snorter before I started smoking it."
While unknowingly battling addiction, Mann became pregnant with her first child, Odin.
Shortly after, Mann was required to go to treatment for a prior conviction.
"Then I moved to Crandon and from a prior conviction from drinking I end up having to go to treatment," Mann explained. "I went to treatment for a month and I get out and I was clean for a month and then I end up falling off harder than I was before."
Mann said it was when she began using again after her first time in treatment that she found a slew of new drugs.
"I end up picking back up all my bad habits, drinking," Mann continued. "No, it didn't start off with drinking, it started off with marijuana and then it went to drinking, and then it went to drinking and marijuana, and then I end up finding a new drug, which was percocets, and Xanax, and strips. Eventually, I just started to mix them. During all that mess I end up meeting my daughter's father during both of our relapses. He was sober, I was sober at that time. We end up relapsing together."
It was when Mann tried percocets without another drug for the first time that she began chasing an unattainable high.
"I did percocets a couple times here and there but never actually tried them without a different drug," Mann said. "I was either always intoxicated or I was either on marijuana, but one day I tried it alone without alcohol and marijuana or anything and it got me hooked, fast. Faster than anything, faster than alcohol, it was about the same as marijuana. I started to get enraged because of the irritability, you get irritable, you get angry and it's just a nasty drug. So, then I started trying everything and anything under the sun to chase a high that was unchaseable. I started speedballing, which is smoking crack, percocets and Xanax. I would do a Xanax after I would do crack and percocets all night and to go to bed I'd take a Xanax."
At that time, Mann's boyfriend tried to get her to come to treatment with him. However, Mann wrote off treatment as not working as it had not been successful her first time going.
Mann then went from not only using drugs, but dealing them as well.
"I ended up getting caught back up with a couple of my friends and start dealing to maintain my high," Mann recalled. "I always dealt marijuana but when I started dealing the other stuff it was coming in faster. So, I started to get more of a high from that than the actual drugs themselves."
She eventually got caught with drugs separated in different bags and was sent to jail.
Once she got out of jail, she went on a drug and alcohol binge and was pulled over in a car that did not belong to her.
"I gave my sister a ride home one night and I was all messed up from a two day binger doing all sorts of different types of drugs," Mann explained. "I got pulled over in someone else's vehicle - and this is so messed up - got pulled over in someone else's vehicle. I had paraphernalia on me and I tried to hide it. This is when I found out I had a real problem, this was when I exactly knew I had a problem, when I was hiding stuff."
Unbeknownst to Mann, the vehicle she was driving had scales, small bags and other paraphernalia in the trunk.
"I was always truthful with the cops, even when I got caught with the two ounces I said it was all mine," Mann assured.
However, because she had not seen her probation officer the week before, Mann had a warrant out for her arrest and was arrested.
"So, I was like alright, I know I'm going to jail," Mann said. "So I go to jail, I end up telling them the truth because I'm not a liar so I said, 'The scale and the baggies weren't mine but I have (drug paraphernalia).'"
It was later found out the vehicle's owner was from a state which allowed recreational marijuana usage and Mann was not charged with that paraphernalia.
It was this time in jail that changed the course of Mann's life.
Road to recovery
As Mann had had multiple run ins with the law prior to her most recent arrest, she called the public defender who had represented her in the past.
"I was sitting in jail, Mary Burns, such a godsend, she's always done all of my cases, even in Rhinelander, from the time I was 18 on up," Mann said. "So, whatever charges I had within Vilas or Forest or anything, Mary Burns was always my public defender so that was the first person I called and she said she didn't do cases in Forest County anymore."
Mann said this news devastated her and requested a message be left for Burns.
Burns visited Mann at the Forest County Jail and told her she would make an exception for her case and represent her.
"She ended up helping me find a treatment center here in Lac du Flambeau; first she fought my revocation, because I signed my revocation papers because I was like, 'F*** it, I'll just go to prison,'" Mann expressed. "Then I found out I was pregnant that trip in jail. So, I felt more guilt about the whole thing. It turns out I was about two weeks pregnant prior to jail. I think jail was the best place for me."
Mann knew at that moment she did not want to continue the lifestyle she had been accustomed to for years.
"I did a lot of 12 steps in jail," Mann said. "I already knew when I got out I didn't want to do drugs or drink. I didn't want to continue with my lifestyle that I was living."
After Burns fought Mann's revocation, she successfully enrolled Mann into Gookomis Endaad, a treatment facility in Lac du Flambeau.
"Mary Burns got me into a treatment center here in Lac du Flambeau and I stayed there for about two months, two and a half," Mann said. "We did a transitional period from where I was staying at the treatment center to my dad's house because we were trying to get a residential place here in Flambeau to get me on the Wellness Court. That's how that journey began, was through Mary Burns getting me into treatment."
While attending the Zaagiibagaa Healing to Wellness Court, Mann said Burns never gave up on her.
"I'd go through where I felt like I was never going to get out of this program. I felt like I was just stuck and that I was never going to graduate or anything and she'd always be right by my side and be like, 'I got you,'" Mann expressed. "She was like, 'I want you to be with your babies. I want you to be able to graduate and continue your life in a positive, productive way. I know you can do it.'"
Without Burns, the rest of the Wellness staff and her case manager Susan Schoonover, Mann said she would probably be sitting in prison.
Healing and Wellness Court
Recovery and healing from drug addiction is a difficult path to take.
"What was hardest for me in the beginning was letting someone - I felt like they were judging because you're sitting around a table ... and there's like 12 people around this table and you feel like you're getting constantly judged every week or you're being told what to do," Mann explained. "They're not telling you what to do, they're just giving you simple guidelines to follow, but you're not used to it because when you have an addiction you're used to doing things your way, and only your way."
Mann's first step in recovery was letting go of her control and allowing herself to be helped.
After allowing herself to be helped, Mann had to learn how to forgive not only others, but herself.
"The hardest part was to let go and forgive, to forgive myself, to forgive myself first and then forgive others," Mann expressed. "While I was working on myself I came to find out that it's not others that I have to forgive, I have to forgive myself for what I've done to others and what I have done to myself, and to accept and be accountable for everything that I've done and not put it on anyone else. That was by far the hardest because even after I began to forgive myself I still struggled to find self-love. That's one thing I didn't have in my addiction was self-love or self-respect. I think that has a big part in staying sober or finding sobriety is that self-love and self-respect. Without that I don't think I would be where I'm at right now."
Without the Wellness Court, Mann knows she would have probably progressed to more lethal drugs.
"I think about the worst of where I could have been," Mann said. "I wasn't getting any better and I wasn't accepting that I had a problem because I was still getting up with my son, I still had a regular schedule for my son, he never left my side, he was always by my side. I would only get high when he was sleeping, which would be at night ... He doesn't deserve that. He didn't deserve that at that time, either. I think I would have been worse, most definitely."
Spirituality and self-love
Reconnecting with the Creator and her culture is what Mann credits as the turning point in her fight against addiction.
"The biggest part in this change for me would be my spirituality," Mann said. "I always had spirituality but I really wasn't connected with my ceremonies, I wasn't connected with my elders. That's number one key, being connected with your elders, having that respect for their stories and their knowledge, and being open to new opportunities and understanding of other people's situations. Those were the big things I learned."
The process of finding and maintaining self-love is complex for anybody and Mann said the Creator, her elders and her caseworkers aided her throughout the process.
"When I got in touch with my Creator," Mann said of finding self-love. "When I started talking to my elders. When I started taking advice from my caseworkers. My therapist, Shelly, gave me a self-esteem book and self-esteem exercises and we'd have to go through these exercises and there was different ones; tell myself what I did well today, what I like about myself today. Eventually, it just became habit to know that I'm beautiful, confident, that I'm happy with my children, realizing that how can I love my son and love my daughter and not have love for myself, and now I love them more deeply than I've ever loved them before because I found that love for my Creator, I found that love for myself.
"The Creator has a lot to do with it though, with my sobriety, my elders, but most of all the Creator," Mann continued. "I knew He was always there in my addiction, I just didn't want to find Him, even though I knew He was there, He walked with me, side by side. I just didn't want to accept Him at that time, even though He never left. I thank Him everyday for blessing me with the life that He has blessed me with. I'm very thankful of Him."
Once she reconnected with her spirituality, opportunities within the community presented themselves to Mann.
"... it started to open up a whole new world, a whole new perspective on life and things that I want to hand down to my children," Mann said. "I think it's beautiful. How we all bleed the same color, it doesn't matter about the skin, the color, the creed or race, gender. It's all about love and being kinder, not only to yourself but others around you, having self-love and being able to give that love out and following that. That's where most of it is and I ended up getting a job at the Youth Center, of all places. I worked at so many bars and my day job was a librarian. I did that for three years, four years with the bars and the library. I never once actually loved a job the way I love the Youth Center. That's where I'm at."
Historical trauma
While reconnecting with her spirituality, Mann began learning about how historical trauma played a role in creating addicts on Indian Reservations.
"Historical trauma, how I've learned it, is about when our elders got put into boarding schools and taken off the reservation, taken from their families and weren't allowed to practice their culture or our religion ..." Mann explained. "After they were done with the boarding school, they got put back onto the reservations. So once the boarding schools were all done they lost their culture, they lost most of the culture, the elders taught them when they came back home but they were so filled with what the boarding schools did to them, through the beatings, the rapings, the killings, through witnessing children, their classmates, pass away through the hands of their caretakers."
"They go back to the community, they all witnessed all of this violence and the next thing you know they drown what they've seen or what they've learned in the boarding schools with alcohol, later on it became alcohol and marijuana and from there it progressed to other drugs," Mann said. "That's what I talk about with the historical trauma, is the loss of our culture, the innocence of our people, the boarding schools."
Although historical trauma has a factor in addiction, Mann said she believes it is a time for the community to heal.
"We just have to accept that this isn't it, that this is just the beginning, that we can heal together as a people," Mann expressed. "... We have a beautiful treatment center, we have the Wellness Court, and we do have spiritual leaders here in the community, we just have to seek them out. The number one thing I was scared to do was seek out my culture, but once I sought that out, I realized that it isn't all about powwows and regalia and fry bread. It's not all about that, it's a deeper connection with the Creator, with our Mother Earth, Grandfather Moon, and there's a deeper connection with us Native Americans with our earth. Spirituality, our spirits. That's the number one thing, is just getting in touch with our culture because that's one thing that's lost and it's still there, you've just got to seek it."
Maintaining sobriety
Maintaining sobriety is an everyday struggle for recovering addictions and relapses are common.
"The thing with treatment is that you have a honeymoon after the treatment," Mann explained. "You're feeling super well, like you could take on the world and that sobriety is going to be there forever. But one thing that most of (the addicts) usually forget is that you have to maintain that sobriety ..."
Throughout the process, Mann struggled with a few relapses, but learned that leading a sober life was what she truly wanted.
"My things were just one night, I'd never go further than the one night," Mann stated. "But that time it really hit me because I didn't recuperate like when I was using. I was so drained and I had a lot more to do. I had to drop my kids off at school, I had to come to the Wellness Court, then go to work, pick my kids up, then go back to work and stay there until 8 p.m. I didn't feel like myself for about a week and I didn't like that feeling. It was a wakeup moment."
The first step to maintaining sobriety was making her sobriety internally motivated.
"Instead of saying 'because of Wellness Court' I started to say whenever I had opportunities present themselves I'd just tell them, 'No, it's not really what I'm into,'" Mann explained. "Instead of more onto to the Wellness Court it became more of what I wanted."
As well as wanting to stay sober for herself, Mann's support systems help her maintain sobriety.
"My dad has been the one in my family the most that's pushed me through this," Mann said. "He's always giving me good advice about situations in the Wellness Court and how I should handle it, from an outside perspective, and most of the time it would work but other times it would backfire on me because I was trying to skip around working on myself. With my dad, yeah he was my number one motivator. My mom, my real mom, she was a motivator, my step mom, but mostly I'd say my dad because I lived with my dad the whole process and he had a sober home. I have him as a support system and some people who come into this program don't have any of that."
Mann said being a positive role model for her children is also a main factor in living a sober lifestyle.
"They need at least one positive parent and I don't care if I have to be the positive parent, the mom and dad," Mann assured. "They deserve that because they're so innocent, they're so full of life and they're just so precious to me. I'd do anything and everything for them. It's easy."
Understanding those struggling with addiction
Being a recovering addict, Mann understands the struggles of addiction firsthand and has sympathy for those still lost.
"I know that feeling when your skin crawls, you feel suffocated within your own mind, your own body," Mann expressed. "You just feel like - it's a gross feeling, to be stuck. You're not literally stuck, but you're stuck in your own mind, your own body, you're stuck in a circle that you can't get out of easily because then you have to think about the detoxing, you have to think about - when you get sober - all of the guilt. That's the number one thing, feeling guilt for all of the things you've done to people or yourself. Or dealing with feelings, that's the hardest thing, because when you're so numbed up by drugs you don't feel those feelings."
"When I see close ones lost in addiction, I know they just need help, they just need someone to understand them and talk with them like they're humans," Mann continued.
Looking at addicts like she looks at her children allows Mann to keep an open heart.
"I always keep an open heart of understanding and being able to cope with the situations and understand that they are still human, they are somebody's daughter, son, sibling, uncle, auntie, family member," Mann said. "When I look at my baby, that's how I look at other people, that's somebody's child. Somebody once looked at them the way I look at my child."
Now sober, Mann realizes the way out for many addicts will be death. While going through the Wellness Court, Mann said she dealt with deaths and overdoses first hand.
"Addicts lose the battle," Mann stated. "It's just a really sad situation to even talk about because in my addiction I never thought I could be that person and I've even used with these people who have passed. It's just like how close I could have been to that."
Advice for those struggling with addiction
As someone who has successfully graduated from the Health and Wellness Court, Mann knows the struggles of finding sobriety.
"I felt like, 'Why would I want to be sober? I'm having so much fun being high. I love this high. I like the dark side,'" Mann expressed. "But deep down, I was sad, I was hurt, I was lost and I didn't want to face reality. It was hard for me to grasp the idea that there were sober people out there, because everybody I surrounded myself with was using and it was a never-ending line I used to stay high."
"... Happiness is in the hand of the beholder," Mann continued. "That was the number one thing that I couldn't get, for the longest time, that your happiness is based on you. You're chemically imbalanced from the drug usage so you don't think you'll ever be happy. But in reality it's just because the chemical imbalance in your brain has to level out after you find sobriety. It's not going to level out in 30/40 days, might not take 90 days, it might take a whole year for your brain to actually catch up to you and for the chemicals to get balanced again. That's why I really loved the Wellness Court, because they give you a whole year. Mine was a year and eight months for me to actually balance and my two relapses ..."
Mann wants those going through the process of getting sober or those seeking help to know they are worth it.
"The best advice I would give is, I know it can get hard out there, I know how you're feeling and I think it's time to heal," Mann offered. "I would tell them it's time to find self-love, self-respect and that it's going to be hard but you can find sobriety and when you find sobriety you'll find that self-love and self-respect. It's going to be hard but it'll be well worth, because you're worth it, we're all worth it. They deserve to be happy, they deserve to find that happiness ..."
Closing thoughts
Mann graduated from the Healing to Wellness Court on Jan. 18 and is currently 235 days sober.
"It feels good to be the first woman and I want to uphold that title and respect it the way that I respect the people who helped me graduate," Mann concluded.
For those wishing to speak to Mann, she invites you to message her on Facebook under "Jessica Mann."
Abbey McEnroe may be reached via email at [email protected].
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