Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. As a Recovery Advocate my commitment is to break the silence of addiction and show the success of recovery.  Ten percent of your constituents have a serious abuse or addiction problem and 25 percent have loved ones or co-workers with this problem.  That means at least one out of every three people in your district knows firsthand the anguish and shame of this disease.  As our elected leaders, we look to you to find and implement solutions. 

I'm grateful to testify as part of the search for solutions.  For many years I was part of the problem. I am an alcoholic and addict and have been in recovery for over five years. When someone is in active addiction we are very visible as part of the problem.  We crowd emergency rooms.  We don't show up at work or when we do, we're moody, cranky, irresponsible and often dangerous.  We fill up our nations prisons.  The voters you represent want solutions to the costs of these social problems. Nearly 2 decades of scientific research makes it increasingly clear that addiction erodes a person's ability to control behavior, therefore if you ever hope to correct the behavior that produces those social costs you'll have to address addiction as the fundamental, underlying factor.

The criminal justice experts will tell you what it's like to try and cope with the problem.  The researchers and scientists can tell you what happens in the brain.  I'm going to try and tell you what it's like to be an addict and how I got there.

Consider the issue of voluntary choice. I chose to use drugs. Drug use is voluntary.  I did not intend to become addicted, it never even occurred to me that use might lead to addiction and I certainly had no idea how quickly that shift would take place. So, when I made that first voluntary decision to use I was 13 years old.  Like most kids, I made the decision casually.  I wanted to fit in.  There was no particular reason, it was just experimentation.  But I loved the effect and soon began having to use more to get the same effect, that's tolerance.  By the summer I turned 15 I was drinking and using drugs every day.  Drugs like marijuana, hash, lsd, mushrooms, pcp, speed, and meth.  My parents caught me and tried to control my actions by taking me out of school and keeping close watch on me.  External controls produced forced abstinence. 

Forced abstinence is not treatment and use will begin the cycle again.  I started college at 16.  By 18 I was living the double life of many successful addicts.  I was active on the George Mason University Debate Team, Student Government, and school paper.  I got good grades, B plus average.  And, I was addicted to speed and methamphetamines.  I had to take 2 hits of 12 hour timed-release speed just to get out of bed.  A guy I was living with got pretty disgusted.  One day he locked me in a room and wouldn't let me out until I detoxed.  That experience scared me so badly I stayed away from speed.

Forced abstinence or an unavailability of the drug is not treatment.  Without treatment and the tools to stay in recovery, it's only a matter of time before use and the cycle of addiction begins again.

My first reporting jobs were covering the police beat.  I was afraid to use illegal drugs and cover the cops, so I stayed away from drugs.  I kept drinking; eventually I did go back to using illegal drugs. My life looked great on the outside.  Moving to CNN at age 25, moving up in the ranks until getting my own show, CNN's TalkBack Live.  My disease also progressed. 

Here's one example.  The day before the debut of TalkBack Live I got stopped for a DUI.  I remember going home, scared and deeply ashamed. I vowed I would cut back on my drinking and never do drugs again.  I did not know that somewhere along the way I had passed from voluntary use to addiction.  I could not control my drinking and drugging and I could not stop.  Of course, I vowed to have just one beer that evening.  I don't know what happened, it became one of many blackouts.  That feeling of being caught in the addiction is awful.  It is a place beyond lonely ... a place without hope, without faith, without a future.

It never even occurred to me to ask for help.  I thought it was a moral weakness and I was a bad person.  I didn't know I have a disease and treatment is available.  That misconception and the silence that surrounds addiction almost killed me.  I overdosed at 35.  CNN paid for inpatient addiction treatment when my insurance ran out.  The support of CNN management was critical.  I was told I was not a bad person, trying to get good; I was a sick person trying to get well.  Those words opened the possibility of hope, the possibility of recovery.

You don't see people in recovery much because we now have the option of being invisible ... we tend to be healthy, without need of emergency rooms, we don't crash our cars or run into you, we don't commit crimes to support our habits, we don't start meth labs to cook up drugs to take and sell to other people.  In recovery we go to work, we take care of our families, we do the best we can just like other people.  People, who do not have experience with addiction, don't know that doing those simple, adult, responsible things actually represents huge growth and lots of work on our part.  

My story is a visible one but there are millions of people just like me out there.  Some have been fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to receive treatment and enter into recovery.  Unfortunately there are many more who have died or are still in the agony of addiction.  There is an opportunity for creative partnerships for all the various constituencies to work together for the solution to the problems caused by addiction.  Every day millions of people are living sober lives, being part of the solution, not the problem. I believe we must start with the premise that recovery is possible and a reality for many people.  This gives us all something to work towards, instead of fighting against.

Thank you for your time.