Aug. 22, 2024

From the Depths of Addiction to the Heights of Recovery: Shannon Schlett's Inspiring Journey

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In this powerful episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, host Curveball welcomes addiction wellness and peer coach Shannon Schlett. Born inside a prison and raised in North Dakota, Shannon shares her harrowing journey through addiction and her inspiring path to recovery. From growing up in a tumultuous household to battling her own demons, Shannon's story is one of resilience and transformation.

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31:07 - (Cont.) From the Depths of Addiction to the Heights of Recovery: Shannon Schlett's Inspiring Journey

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> Curtis Jackson>Welcome, to the Living the Dream podcast with curveball. if you believe you can achieve chee chee, welcome to the Living the dream with curveball podcast, a, show where I and a few guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today we're going to be talking about addiction, as I am joined by addiction wellness and peer coach, Shannon Shillette.

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> Curtis Jackson>Shannon was born inside of a prison.

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> Curtis Jackson>She struggled with addiction of her own, but she has been able to beat it, and now she's helping others with it as well. So we're going to be talking to her about her journey, her story, and all that she's doing to help others. So, Shannon, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Shannon Shillette>Yes, thank you for having me, Curtis. it's really fun doing these podcasts. I really think that, being able to share helps other people to understand that they can make it, they can get out of the trenches, most definitely.

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> Curtis Jackson>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself, for sure.

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> Shannon Shillette>So, my name is shannon. I'm from, North Dakota originally. Grew up in some small towns, things of that nature. I am the only african american kid in my family, out of a family, of white people, obviously.

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> Shannon Shillette>right now, I, specialize in peer coaching. I just got promoted, and I'm the supervisor now. So I really enjoy that, being able to help people, help people better or, you know, help, people along their journey. It's really been a privilege and an honor to do that.

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> Shannon Shillette>So, a little bit about some of my early years. I suppose we can start, you know, as I shared, I'm from North Dakota. We grew up very, poor. I am smack dab in the middle of, a family of seven, kids, essentially.

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> Shannon Shillette>my growing up poor, you know, we, I don't know who's familiar with the area.

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> Shannon Shillette>we went through what would be the flood of 97 when I was about. I'm kind of getting off par here. Excuse me. we'll just start from the beginning.

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> Shannon Shillette>So, when I was, when I was born in a prison, my mother, she was going, she was upscounding from some charges she had out in North Dakota. And before me, she had three children with my stepdad.

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> Shannon Shillette>and when she had gotten these charges, she had decided she didn't want to deal with them, and she had ran.

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> Shannon Shillette>So she went out to Oregon, Portland, Oregon, where she essentially hooked up with my biological father.

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> Shannon Shillette>and then she had decided to come back to North Dakota. Do her time, figure out what needed to be done in that aspect and in doing that, she had later learned that she was pregnant and then, gave birth to me on Thanksgiving day in prison or in prison or the hospital or wherever that was at that moment, she had to go back and serve her time. And so my stepfather had come up and signed, the birth certificate as I was lighter in color, and took me home. So my stepfather had thought that I was his, fast forward to myself being about 20, I think 20. I think like 20. And I was in jail for, something. I don't remember what it was. It was just kind of like a weekend stint. And, I ended up, you know, you're in jail, you're doing a little small talk. And there was a woman who was actually in prison with my mother. And she said, I remember when. When you're. When you're. When your stepdad was calling up to the prison, Angie, whose baby is this? Angie, whose baby is this? And she lied her ass off, you know, the baby's yours. The baby's yours.

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> Shannon Shillette>And he finally said, angie, the baby's black. Whose baby is this? And then she had to tell the truth. and so kill me up on that. You know, my mom got out of prison and, you know, they stayed together. They had three children prior to me. but then they had another one. They had two more after me, and so that would have been six, you know, in their home at that time. we had the flood of 97 hit, and that, engulfed all of the greater grand forks area, where I'm from. and so we were pushed off into different areas of Minnesota. And, that was hard for my family. You know, we lost a lot of our things. I don't have any, you know, like, baby pictures or anything like that. You know, that was.

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> Shannon Shillette>That was really hard. my mother always struggled with addiction, and I think my stepfather did as well. But, it was either drinking. I remember having a lot of people who would call them our aunties and our uncles, and they weren't. They were just. They were using friends. You know, looking at it from an adult perspective, you can kind of see that, my mother, she liked nice things, but could never afford them, and so she would teach all of us kids how to steel. And so starting from the age, I want to say, after the flood, you know, things kind of really got worse for us.

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> Shannon Shillette>Or maybe I just started to understand better because I was getting older. And so she would take us out to, you know, a TJ Maxx or a Walmart.

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> Shannon Shillette>And she taught us how to take the security tags off of things. She taught us how to, to look for the eyes in the skies, which would be like, the cameras and things of that nature, and to be careful. And so what she would do is she'd have us, you know, she'd know what she wanted.

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> Shannon Shillette>She loaded stuff up. We put stuff in totes in the Walmart, put the lid on it, and then teach us how to, you know, like, walk out. She'd have us walk out with it because we were minors. So if we got in trouble, it was a slap on the wrist. These kids don't know what they're doing. Such and such, whatever. M.

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> Shannon Shillette>so we did that a lot of our younger years.

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> Shannon Shillette>my older sisters probably did more of it.

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> Shannon Shillette>I remember times where we got caught and it worked that way. You know, they just kind of let us go, whatever. I remember my mom sending my sisters up to, like, dope houses to go get money for her or not money for her, but that day was cranks. Crank was kind of her thing.

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> Shannon Shillette>I remember big moments where she would blame the kids for taking money out of her purse. But it was my. My stepdad at the time, because he needed money for lunch, for work or something of that nature, and she'd destroy the house. Just mad, just pissed.

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> Shannon Shillette>And later, to find, you know, that my stepdad needed lunch money or money for gas or whatever it was to get to work. And then it would just be, all of a sudden she'd be settled. I don't want to say that we were. We weren't locked up in a closet. We weren't beat to death, but there are times where my mom would be coming down and my sister. I remember my sister being sick one day, and she wanted to stay home because she was sick. And my mom got so mad, said, you're going to get on that bus. And she beat the shit out of her for no reason. Just. I remember my sister said, mom, I'm just. I'm sick. And she pushed her into the closet and just backhanded and legit, close fist punched her, and made her get on the bus with a bloody lip. And, then there were moments where things were really good.

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> Shannon Shillette>We'd go out to the lake as a family, and my dad had a friend who had a boat, and we would knee board or do things like that.

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> Shannon Shillette>So it's really hard when not everything was bad.

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> Shannon Shillette>but most of the memories that come to mind weren't the best. We lived in houses that were, like, pretty much abandoned farmsteads. And my dad was a. My stepdad was a handyman, so he would be, my mother would, like, convince him, hey, let's fix this house up.

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> Shannon Shillette>And you can't fix a house up without the proper funds. And life's hard when you have six kids at that time and trying to build things up. So we had houses that legit had, you know, water. the house that comes to mind the most for me is we had a house that had black mold in the basement and, continuing flooding in the, in the basement. So it always had stagnant water in the basement. We had no insulation. We had a woods burning stove. my parents didn't pay their electricity bill, so we ran it off a generator.

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> Shannon Shillette>there were days where the generator would run out of gas and we would just, you know, throw in some candles or use the stove for heat. some of the houses didn't have insulation, no drywall. We had, like I said, that wood burning stove. I remember boiling my bath water at times, and you would start from the cleanest kid and go to the dirtiest one.

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> Shannon Shillette>It, wasn't the best. And when you grow up poor like that, and you're going to school where there's, it's rich farming towns, right? So the kids that you're surrounded with, they have everything and anything they could imagine, you know, they didn't have to worry about things of that nature.

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> Shannon Shillette>and so growing up in that way, it wasn't the easiest. It was hard, and especially being the only one who was black. We don't talk about enough, about how, like, representation does matter. You know, I was always looking to find myself and someone else. And I'm surrounded by what the idea of beauty is. These smaller towns. You know, living in north Dakota, there's not very many people that look like me. And, in a family where I'm always mistaken as the little friend or, you know, so it's funny, there's the things that people say to interject, you know, oh, it's so nice for you to bring your little friend shopping. Meanwhile, we're undercover robbing the store.

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> Shannon Shillette>so it's funny the way things get interpreted.

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> Shannon Shillette>Kind of like, you know, fast forwarding a bit.

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> Shannon Shillette>clearly, my mother was still struggling with addiction. my father, my, stepfather, he. He drank. I don't want to say that he struggled. I think that he could. And there's different ways that my mother has explained it.

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> Shannon Shillette>and that the way that I look view it is they possibly did use together. And I don't think that my stepfather, I don't think that my stepfather got addicted the way that she did. And that was definitely her underlying issues. And I think my mother has more mental health things that she's never identified with.

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> Shannon Shillette>So she struggled a lot of my years and she wanted to run away with us kids out to Florida. And so she loaded up her car and I remember leaving kind of in the still the night, loading up her station wagon. And she had my, she had my sister do she and my sister go into the. My mom was bartending at this, vfw at the time. And my understanding is she had my sisters robbed the safe and she had that money to help us get down to Florida.

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> Shannon Shillette>And she loaded us up in the still night. My stepdad came out the house and I remember him punching the window of the cardinal.

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> Shannon Shillette>And my mom just kind of, you know, put stuff into the night. And then we we got, you know, we took the little trip down to Florida. And my mother not being the most, aware person of finances, you know, we made it to Florida, but we were broke when we got to Florida, you know, sleeping in the car. I remember this lady out of a gas station coming over and bringing some cookies.

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> Shannon Shillette>And I don't know if it was. I just remember the cookies part because I think she felt bad for us. My mom was like scrambling for some gas money and she was yelling at me like, look at my purse, I know there's got to be something in there.

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> Shannon Shillette>And it was just pennies. It was just pennies. I don't know how she got the money to get gas that day, but she did. So we, went and we were sleeping on the beaches in Clearwater for a little while, I think a couple days. and then I don't know if she phoned back home or what, but she got some money and she decided that we needed to leave Florida and head back home to North Dakota. And when we got to South Dakota, she was having us like, this is where I live now. I live here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She had us go to the mall in South Dakota. And we were walking around, I think it was JC Penney's or Macy's one of those.

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> Shannon Shillette>And she had us doing a, you know, doing a little gig loading up a cart. And we, knew, my sisters knew that someone was following us around like they had a bad feeling. And so my sister, the sister right above me, she said, no, I don't want to do it.

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> Shannon Shillette>And, yeah, I was still pretty young to be, you know, putzing out a cart that size. So it was up to my other sister to do it. And she was, yeah, you never talked about this, but parents do have favorites, and I think my oldest sister kind of got the brunt of things at times. And, so my mother, with her manipulation, it would always be like, oh, you don't want nice things. You don't want to, you know, have these clothes. You don't want to get home. You know, it was always something to kind of like, turn it on us, you know, if you don't do this, this is what's not going to happen, or this is what will happen. And so, we all left the store, and my sister, my oldest sister carted the cart out, and all you see is security guards following her, and the cart flip, and then she runs right to the car where we're at, and we're surrounded by security officers. So we got put in the children's home here in South Dakota, in Sioux Falls. I think it thinks the children's inn is what we were in at that time. And m my mother got caught up in her gigs, and she had to, you know, pay for what she did. So they took her in, and she went to jail. She ended up doing some prison time down here in South Dakota.

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> Shannon Shillette>and eventually, our stepdad had to come get us, and so he, I think he was seeing another woman at that time while my mother was, you know, running away with us to Florida. So he got a car and our van and came down and got all of us kids, and we went back home, and he, I think, was lost in himself. My stepdad, he, didn't quite know how to take on, you know, six kids by himself. and so he was still out seeing his, his, the person he was seeing who became our stepmom later on.

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> Shannon Shillette>And, we would be processing your mother leaving, processing some of the things that we've been through and not having someone explain anything to us, at least to me. I can't speak for everybody, but at least, you know, sit down and explain things to me so I can understand. our mom's gone. Our stepdads, who I call dad, is out with another woman, and we're at home, and we don't have, I, think the most we ever really had to eat half the time was ramen or something easy. and if that wasn't the case, like, sometimes we would be going down to the local grocery store and charging things under my mother's name, because it was small town, so there was rapport in that sense. But then eventually that charge account don't get paid, you don't get no more groceries. So I remember the police officer knocking at the door, hey, you know, why aren't you guys in school? Because my stepdad didn't quite know how to go about doing that or didn't have time for it with work or whatever that case may be. I can't speak for him.

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> Shannon Shillette>And so, eventually we got reported social services and my older sisters went to a safe house. My oldest brother at that time, he was 18 finally, and so he got to go live with our grandparents.

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> Shannon Shillette>and our grandparents, they weren't super involved.

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> Shannon Shillette>They definitely favored my oldest brother. He was able to go out and help my grandpa, like work on cars and trucks. the men in our family, they're all mechanic, very, very mechanically inclined. and so with my brother being that man, he definitely was favored.

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> Shannon Shillette>And, so he got to go live with our grandparents. older sisters went to safe houses. And then my younger sister and I, we went to a foster home.

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> Shannon Shillette>we were there for, I'd say, like about seven, eight months.

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> Shannon Shillette>our stepdad, yeah, got, did what he had to do. the thing that really, really hurt the most is that when you would have your little visits, I remember him being so angry because he had to pay child support and he made sure that we knew that. And it's like that was not necessary in my eyes. I remember him saying something along the lines of, you know, they're taking you guys to go buy these nice things and they expect me to, be able to be able to get everything done that I'm supposed to get done, but they don't know that that takes out, that comes out of my check or something like that. But mind you, we didn't have a lot, you know, I remember hand washing clothes. I remember. And this is all I was at this time. Well, by this time I was ten, but from, you know, the year of eight, you know, eight years old, nine years old, I was hand washing clothes. I could do laundry, cook, do all those things by then. And, it was hard, it was hard, it was really hard. And when he finally got us back, you know, it was like I said, seven, eight months.

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> Shannon Shillette>We found out that our stepmother was pregnant and so they had another baby on the way, something I kind of want to emphasize on is I don't think badly of my parents. I think that they work best with what they had. and I think that everyone has their own stuff that they have to work through. And the area I lived in and the background we came from, I don't think anybody really was aware of mental health or cared to dive into it much. and I wish that that would have been more, common. And so, we go home and we live where we live, and I think kind of coming back to myself, a lot of that. I was looking for that outer validation for a lot of years. my older sisters, they would go out and do whatever, so they dropped out eventually and went and lived their lives individually. And, I was like, okay, cool, I'm gonna be the first graduate. This is something to be proud of. so I would do, I did volleyball, I did basketball, I did theater, I did musicals, I did fbla, I did everything under the sun to just say, you know, look at me, I can do this, look at me, you know, and, I really searched for that outer validation, and it never came the way that it came from my older sisters. And so this is, you know, my stepfather and my stepmother at the time. And I'm not, you know, I wasn't locked up in a, closet. I wasn't neglected in that sense.

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> Shannon Shillette>but I was always searching for someone to say, hey, I'm proud of you. And I don't think I ever got it the way I would have liked or the way that I searched for it, I'm not quite sure. so eventually you get tired.

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> Shannon Shillette>You get tired of doing all these things because you realize as you become an adult, it didn't matter if you did volleyball and basketball.

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> Shannon Shillette>It didn't matter if you did theater. I mean, eventually, we're just out here to find a purpose and pay these bills.

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> Shannon Shillette>And, eventually, you know, I.

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> Shannon Shillette>I started working at the age of, like, 14 or 15. 1st job was little Melby's food pride. And that was the first time I was offered meth. And, when I was, I was kind of. I think I was cool. And some of the older kids that I worked with, they were seniors at the time, and I remember them offering me some meth, to go do a line off the back of the toilet. And, I said, no, I think I'm good on that. But, you know, it definitely crossed my mind. I didn't use it, but they would invite me out to party. So I'd go out, we would smoke weed together, we would drink together. You know, it was cool to feel accepted, to feel good with that group.

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> Shannon Shillette>you know, sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, things of that nature. Eventually I ended up saving up money. I got myself a little car, got my license, things of that nature.

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> Shannon Shillette>You know, I've got that little taste of freedom. So I'm out at different parties, living my life, this and that.

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> Shannon Shillette>eventually I stopped going to school, started working, more things of that nature. And I had a friend who had said, hey, let's go out to Bismarck. I got friends out there, and, oh, I got friends out there, too. My oldest sister at that time, I'm about 15 now, my oldest sister at that time, she was living out there, and she still does. And so I said, yeah, I got friends out there, too. so we went out there, took my car out there, and it was only supposed to be a weekend trip, but then my car broke down because we did something stupid.

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> Shannon Shillette>And snowstorm, hit. And so we ended up. I ended up just running away. I just called it good and ran away. And, eventually my oldest sister heard that I was in the Bismarck area. She called in a welfare check on me, ended up getting the house I was at, got raided and swatted. So, long story short, ended up having to go live with her. And at that time, I had started using, you know, I got offered cocaine. That, was kind of like the first thing right there. The cocaine, the drinking. And it didn't really grab me the way that. It didn't grab me the way that I wanted. I was also, you know, dealt with suicidal ideation, that feeling of not belonging. So before I even ran away, I was cutting around my ankles. I was cutting on my wrist a bit. Never to commit suicide, never to kill myself. But I. Because it felt good. And I remember, like, my stepdad saying, oh, what happened to your arm? And I said, oh, nothing. I fell off my skateboard, something silly like that. And, you know, skateboard scratches don't look like that.

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> Shannon Shillette>And, no one ever took it serious, so it was. Maybe it was another thing to say, look at me. Maybe it was another thing for validation. Not quite sure what my thought process was then, but what I do know is I was hurting.

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> Shannon Shillette>and so eventually I remember being at a party and I got offered, ah, a hydro.

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> Shannon Shillette>I don't remember if it was green or if it was a blue, but it was a hydro.

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> Shannon Shillette>Crushed it up, snorted it. And I remember that feeling of just numbness. And it was amazing. It was. That was. That was it right there for me. That was good. So, you know, you end up making good friends with the people who offered it to you and you end up finding out where to get them. So I ended up being, you know, a little bit of a. Well, you know, just using pills. So opioids became my thing at that time. I was using perks, opioid, perks, hydros, things of that nature. Just snorting at that time and drinking with friends, things of that. It was just kind of like that little, what would you call it? Like a party favor, I guess.

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> Shannon Shillette>eventually my sister got sick of me because I wasn't listening. And so she told me to go back to my dad's house, my stepdad's. So I got sent back to North Dakota because I was only 17 at that time, or I got sent back to grand, Florida. So I was 17 at that time. And, I turned 18, like, a month or two later. And so I was working at the golden corral and, I, ah, was still struggling with myself, my identity, suicidal ideations, things of that nature. And I met this, this girl. And, I'm lesbian. And I've known that I liked women. I've known that I loved women since the age of five. Like, the earliest I can remember really thinking about that. I remember when the movie Titanic came out and seeing Jack paint.

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> Shannon Shillette>Paint. Rose. There's probably a reason that's my favorite movie. It was kind of like, you know, I was more excited about Rose. And then Jack and my sisters were all digging on Leonardo. So, when I met this girl at Golden Corral, you know, you start talking and she says she's bisexual. And she asked what I do in my free time, and things of that nature. And this was the first person I had kind of, like, heard openly admit that they were into girls as well. and so, so she had said, you know, hey, do you, you know, do you do anything else? And I was like, oh, I smoke weed. You know, I like hydros, things of that nature, like, oh, so y'all like to do meth? And I said, huh? Okay, you know, that's the thing that everyone says, don't do it. Whatever you do, don't touch the meth. So you start small talk and start hanging out.

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> Shannon Shillette>And I thought, man, you know, I really dig this girl. And if she's doing meth, it can't be that bad. It really can't. So, start doing meth with her and start smoking it. Eventually, we would, like, quit our job, go back to our job, and quit our job and go back to our job. And at some point, we quit. And, we were living in, like, the basement of her mom's house. And, we didn't always have money to go get what we wanted, so we ended up, like, going to grocery stores and, like, stealing poor sedents and robitussin, and zycams because there was a robo trip. It was supposed to be such a good time, so we were doing a little bit of robo tripping. honestly, a lot of my usage was whatever we could get our hands on.

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> Shannon Shillette>And when I started using that, she really fell into that pretty deep.

00:25:08.953 --> 00:25:14.693
> Shannon Shillette>and her mom noticed it pretty quickly and sent her out to rehab. And so here I am.

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> Shannon Shillette>I wasn't kicked out, but it didn't feel good to be there still, so I left. And, I was living out of my car, living on the streets, you know, working here and there.

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> Shannon Shillette>I'd be like that couch surfer at parties. You know, you would be the person that would bring all the good stuff to parties, and.

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> Shannon Shillette>And so then you were welcome to stay. And, eventually, I ended up finding a really good connection for, morphine. And it was a person who had a prescription for it. So I'd buy the prescription super cheap and sell it. and then a buddy showed me how to.

00:25:52.364 --> 00:26:03.953
> Shannon Shillette>How to suck the coating off and melt it down and shoot it up. And, Remember him shooting me up for my first time? And that when you.

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> Shannon Shillette>For anybody who's ever, there's a way that you feel when you snort, and there's a way that you feel when you pop something. but when you shoot it up, it takes it all away. Anything and everything that you've ever felt that you've ever had trouble with, anything that you've ever suffered from, any ailment, it takes it all away. And that did it for me.

00:26:27.337 --> 00:27:03.933
> Shannon Shillette>That helped me really put all my problems to the side. So then I began shooting up. I'd shoot up morphine at night, and then I would shoot up meth in the morning to go to work and became, started working at a restaurant again. And so, I was a closet user. If you weren't shooting up with me, you didn't know that I shot up. So there was probably, like, two or three people who knew ended, up, you know, go to different parties, hanging out with different people.

00:27:05.584 --> 00:27:10.564
> Shannon Shillette>I was dating somebody kind of at that time, when I started dabbling with that, that relationship ended.

00:27:12.564 --> 00:27:23.796
> Shannon Shillette>and so, again, feeling all those feelings and using to cover that up and to really struggling with my identity. So I started hanging out with this person, with this guy.

00:27:23.900 --> 00:27:37.183
> Shannon Shillette>He was cool. He was cool. Smoking meth, too, and doing. He liked. He liked opioids, too. And so we had all. We had that in common, right? So you start hanging up out with him a little bit more, party with him a little bit more, and he was going through a breakup.

00:27:37.223 --> 00:27:40.175
> Shannon Shillette>I was going through a breakup. And so why are we so sad?

00:27:40.319 --> 00:27:59.582
> Shannon Shillette>And we ended up looking up. I, later on, was coming off of everything and anything that day, you know, like a month later, and realized my period hadn't came, and, hit up my best friend. She is, She was in recovery from alcohol, and she was doing amazing.

00:27:59.718 --> 00:28:02.261
> Shannon Shillette>And so I hit her up and said, hey, I think. I think I'm pregnant.

00:28:02.317 --> 00:28:05.233
> Shannon Shillette>Like, let's go get a test this, that.

00:28:06.054 --> 00:28:08.766
> Shannon Shillette>So we go get tests and. Positive. Take another test.

00:28:08.829 --> 00:28:14.314
> Shannon Shillette>Positive. And my whole life in that moment just changed.

00:28:15.094 --> 00:28:55.124
> Shannon Shillette>And, stayed at her house for the next two, three weeks. The day that I found out I was pregnant, I was actually trying to leave grand forks. I was going to go down to California. I bought a bus, a bus ticket. I put my notice in at my job and, saved a bit of money, and I was going to go down to California and just kind of be a hippie and live a life. There really was no plan. It was just that the, job that I worked at had. They had a, part of the franchise down in California, so I was guaranteed work. and maybe it was me trying to get away from the drugs. I'm not sure, but I know I wanted to get out of grand forks.

00:28:56.824 --> 00:29:10.513
> Shannon Shillette>and so I got pregnant, and obviously didn't take the bus that day, and really, had to start thinking about what I wanted to do. So, initially, first thing that came into mind is I wasn't fit to raise a kid. So I was thinking about doing an abortion.

00:29:11.713 --> 00:29:17.463
> Shannon Shillette>So I, hustled some guy out of money, and it's not. I'm not justifying it.

00:29:18.193 --> 00:29:36.362
> Shannon Shillette>he was someone else I had hooked up with, and, he was rich, and it didn't matter. It does matter. I'm not trying to. I'm not gonna. Anyways, I did something bad. I made a mistake. I hustled a lot of money, told him the baby was his, and he gave me the money to.

00:29:36.458 --> 00:30:20.625
> Shannon Shillette>To get rid of it. I did what I had to do. And anybody who's been, in the trenches and the depths of addiction, I mean, it is what it is. You do what you do. I definitely got my karma for it later on in life. And, so I had this $500 to go with the abortion. And, to do that, you have to get your pregnancy verified. So this two, three weeks, I was, completely cold turkey, abstaining from usage. between the withdrawals, the shivering, the shaking, the hot, the cold sweats, you know, the throwing up the shit in yourself, like it was just me dying in my friend's apartment for two, three weeks. I really wish I would have gone to a treatment center. I really wish I would have done it differently. it's really unsafe to do it that way. But it was just.

00:30:21.405 --> 00:30:50.003
> Shannon Shillette>It was what had to be done for me. And I didn't have any other support or help. And so with my friend Sam to take care of me in that way, I made it through. And so, finally I get to my verification, appointment. I think they made me wait till you're a certain amount of weeks. And, I take the, They go to listen to the heartbeat. They couldn't hear the heartbeat, so they're like, oh, we better do an ultrasound. So they do an ultrasound, and I see this beautiful alien head up on the screen.

00:30:50.374 --> 00:31:06.534
> Shannon Shillette>And I was like, oh, my goodness. And I just. Something in me, there was a switch. It just flipped. I just decided that I had to be different. I had to be better than, the life that I had. So I took that money, and I put it down on a little apartment.

00:31:06.953 --> 00:31:24.392
> Shannon Shillette>And I don't know how this happened, but I did lose my car at some point. And so I was legit. No car, no house, no nothing. So I took that money and I put it down on a little apartment, called my job back and said, hey, I'm not, you know, going to California anymore. Let's, can I, you know, start work back up?

00:31:24.448 --> 00:31:35.200
> Shannon Shillette>And they did. They were a big part of my support as well. I just ended up building up my capital. And, that's something that we emphasize here at face it together, is building up your recovery capital.

00:31:36.089 --> 00:31:39.057
> Shannon Shillette>I didn't realize that that was what I was doing at the time.

00:31:39.193 --> 00:31:58.670
> Shannon Shillette>So, I got a home. I moved into that home with a blanket and a duffel bag of clothes and a storage tote. started, you know, saving up money, buying the things that I needed, building that home, making it a home. got my license back, got a car again, just building the things that I needed to be able to be a successful parent for my daughter.

00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:14.105
> Shannon Shillette>I got promoted later on at the job I was at and moved down to Fargo to kind of distance myself from some of those people. You know, you still got people calling you, still got people texting you, asking you, hey, where's the goods? Can you get this? Can you get that?

00:32:14.178 --> 00:32:20.016
> Shannon Shillette>And, through my pregnancy, I didn't use. I, was.

00:32:21.395 --> 00:32:32.395
> Shannon Shillette>Yeah, since the day I found out I was pregnant, I didn't look back at needle usage. I didn't look back to do meth. I didn't look back to do opioids, none of that. And, came up. I had my daughter.

00:32:34.736 --> 00:32:37.596
> Shannon Shillette>We, moved out to Fargo probably by the time she was one.

00:32:38.576 --> 00:32:46.950
> Shannon Shillette>And then one, or two, moved out to Fargo, moved, down to Sioux Falls for a different relationship.

00:32:48.009 --> 00:32:58.910
> Shannon Shillette>And here at Sioux Falls, I was still working with the same restaurant franchise. And, something happened that this kind of was a bad day.

00:32:58.950 --> 00:33:07.281
> Shannon Shillette>So I started looking, for different jobs. And I saw the app, saw, the, What's the word? I'm looking for the advertisement for this job.

00:33:07.442 --> 00:33:10.385
> Shannon Shillette>And it was, have you ever. Have you ever been in trouble?

00:33:10.433 --> 00:33:21.579
> Shannon Shillette>Have you ever struggled with drug usage? Have you ever been to prison? Have you ever done anything like that? It's like, man, this can't be real. And so I applied, and I applied to some work and face it together, and, I got the job.

00:33:21.756 --> 00:33:33.142
> Shannon Shillette>And, I've really been prospering. And it's helped me realize a lot more about myself as well. Something, I share with people is it's easy, in my opinion, it's easy to stop the drugs. It's easy to get off of them.

00:33:33.261 --> 00:33:42.077
> Shannon Shillette>But how do you stay off of them? And I like to refer to recovery as a relationship. You can get the girl, you can get the guy, you can be in the relationship. But how do you keep the relationship?

00:33:42.230 --> 00:34:01.471
> Shannon Shillette>And so, for me, keeping my relationship with recovery is important. Recovery is what you want it to be. So many people emphasize on your days, on your time, you know, how many, how long you can abstain for things of that nature. So recovery for me is I don't ever want to go back to needle usage. I don't ever want to go back to using opioids or using amphetamines.

00:34:02.582 --> 00:34:16.733
> Shannon Shillette>I want to continue to be the well person that I am. Recovery, for me, is I'm able to go out and have a drink with some friends. I'm able to go out and, you know, visit or have, you know, pair a good wine with a good meal, things of that nature.

00:34:16.838 --> 00:35:11.092
> Shannon Shillette>And. And I enjoy that. I enjoy that part of my recovery to where I am confident enough in myself and in my capabilities. a lot of that was realizing, you know, my identity, being okay with who I am. am I right that I'm lesbian? It's okay that I'm black. This last year, I've done so much, you know, redefinition. I actually, my ex partner convinced me to do a ancestry, DNA test, and I found my biological father, and I found this whole amazing group of family, out in Portland, Oregon, that has nothing but love and acceptance. I, was actually able to go to our family reunion in New Orleans this last summer. So this was. I just had so much love and so much support. It's absolutely amazing. my daughter is ten now, and she isn't needing me as much. I'm not as cool as I used to be, I suppose. So that's also helped me to understand that I need to work more on myself.

00:35:11.284 --> 00:35:30.989
> Shannon Shillette>What are my passions? What are my things that I enjoy? because when you have, for lack of a better term, when you have distractions such as kids work upkeeping the home and you're doing it by yourself, it's easy to forget your self care. It's easy to forget the things that may be better for you.

00:35:31.157 --> 00:35:48.525
> Shannon Shillette>So I began working out more. I began writing again. I began doing journaling, began doing those things again to keep the recovery, to keep yourself from thinking, maybe just one more time. So that's kind of where I'm at, man. That's where I'm at.

00:35:49.465 --> 00:36:05.268
> Curtis Jackson>Well, congratulations on your recovery. we got about five minutes left. You know, tell us about anything that you, got coming up that people need to know about. Give out your contact info and give us some final thoughts the next five minutes for sure.

00:36:06.407 --> 00:36:09.018
> Shannon Shillette>well, I, like I said, I work here at face it together.

00:36:10.177 --> 00:36:24.831
> Shannon Shillette>we specialize in peer support, so being able to connect people with people who have had that lived experience of addiction. So whether you're struggling to use and you're not abstaining or you're in recovery looking for a little extra support, please feel free to reach out. We specialize in virtual calls.

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:55.688
> Shannon Shillette>We, also do in person visits for Colorado Springs area and, the Sioux Falls area here at South Dakota. So, please feel free to reach out. it's going to be facethogether, uh.org or, excuse me. We faceit together.org dot. we have a couple different fundraisers that are coming up that'll be pretty exciting. We have a faceit. Face, it in the fire. So we're going to be having, if you look on our website, we have different, excuse me, on our facebook, we have different content to share some of that, some of what's going on there.

00:36:55.751 --> 00:37:20.454
> Shannon Shillette>But it's essentially kind of like a chef off. it'll be really interesting to see, these chefs chef it up and do different tastings. So I think the, it's buying tables and things of that nature. And we also have a march on the light coming up here. March, in the light. We start in the early morning sunrise and we march into the light as the sun comes up. It's a recovery walk that we do out of South Dakota, excuse me, out of Sioux Falls and out of Colorado Springs area.

00:37:20.824 --> 00:37:31.860
> Shannon Shillette>anybody is welcome to join. We do a nice big breakfast to start the day off, and then we do a nice walk into the sun. So, just representing the recovery that everybody's been through and, coming out of it together.

00:37:31.972 --> 00:37:35.184
> Shannon Shillette>So, yeah.

00:37:35.884 --> 00:37:57.213
> Curtis Jackson>Ladies and gentlemen, we faceittogether.org. if you know of anybody who needs Shannon services or needs, addiction recovery services, please follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible. Jump on your favorite podcast app. Give us a follow a review Curtis Jackson, 1978.

00:37:57.713 --> 00:38:02.853
> Curtis Jackson>Net is the place to send any guest suggestions or suggestions or feedback for the show.

00:38:03.333 --> 00:38:11.594
> Curtis Jackson>Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the show. And Shannon, once again, congratulations on your recovery. And thank you for sharing your story.

00:38:12.014 --> 00:38:14.393
> Shannon Shillette>Yes, thank you for having me, Curtis. Appreciate you.

00:38:14.893 --> 00:38:22.806
> Curtis Jackson>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurvefball.com.

00:38:22.989 --> 00:38:28.092
> Curtis Jackson>until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.

00:38:28.197 --> 00:38:28.344
> Shannon Shillette>It.