(relaxing piano music) - [Introducer] The employees at Pineland Farms Natural Meats have seen how substance use disorder can adversely affect our families and communities, and we are pleased to sponsor the documentary series, "Voices of Hope, The Rugged Road to Recovery".

(relaxing piano music) We applaud the people who bravely tell their stories which help us better understand the disease model of addiction, while also identifying positive routes for recovery.

(relaxing instrumental music) (waves gushing) - [Tory] Beyond Maine's beautiful landscape, there's a dark, desperate crisis, a substance abuse epidemic.

(waves swishing) We set out to capture the faces and stories caught up in it and discovered there is a science to addiction.

There is also a way out.

These are the "Voices of Hope".

(relaxing instrumental music) (relaxing piano music) - The first time I ever tried alcohol, I knew that I wasn't supposed to be drinking it as a 12-year-old.

And maybe a piece of me thought that that must mean it's pretty good if it's restricted., but the first time I drank it I knew I liked it.

I think it was one of the first times I really felt emotionally full as a child.

It was the first time I felt that warm feeling.

And maybe not the first time, but the first time I can remember saying, "This is the stuff and this is how I wanna feel."

(relaxing instrumental music) I was starting to abuse Adderall because I would stay up late studying.

And then I would use opiates throughout the day to have some sort of sense of numbness, because I was stuck in this pattern of feeling stupid in school.

- My brain just told me, "You have to do this.

"You have to do this," and it didn't seem like there was an alternative.

I've never been diagnosed with ADHD or anything else that I've consistently taken medication for, but I have a feeling if I had a test, I would've been diagnosed with that because my head just seemed to always be going in overdrive, whether it be worry or just really over excited.

- I start doing Oxycontin, I think I was about 18 and by 19, I had gone to treatment for the first time.

By the age of 23, I was an IV heroin user.

- I took a hit.

(Eric chuckling) I coughed, I didn't like it.

It was really gross, and honestly, I don't even remember feeling anything initially, except I had several other people in the vehicle who were pumping their fists and yelling and celebrating because they had witnessed my first use, and that was exciting to me.

And here I am, an hour after taking my first hit of a joint and I find myself in the car, heading to go purchase my first bag of marijuana of my own.

(birds chirping) - Alcoholism is what I am and my need for relief from the flesh prison, that I use substances to get that relief.

And untreated, it leads to me drinking in a way that takes my brain out of my own control.

- I remember sitting in school and watching the documentaries on heroin addicts and alcoholics and stuff like that.

And I remember sitting in health class, drinking alcohol out of a water bottle in high school, laughing at those people.

Fast forward, I'm now one of those people.

(ominous instrumental music) (upbeat music) - Growing up, I think that if you would've ever told someone in my family or my parents or even my aunts and uncles, Brittany's going to be a heroin addict, they wouldn't have believed you but they would have thought that was the most outrageous thing that they'd ever heard.

I was really a vibrant young girl.

I went to school.

I loved school.

I loved sports.

I loved hanging out with my friends.

- I was sort of always in the smart kid crowd.

I played sports but I always felt like I was sort of tangentially involved in a lot of different groups, cliques of people, but didn't really belong in any of them.

(birds chirping) - I thought I was this good girl that got good grades, playing field hockey, loved my family.

I live in a suburban neighborhood and now I'm 17 years old.

It's my last year of high school.

That's supposed to be a fun year and I'm on probation, trying to not drink and use drugs because I could go to a youth center.

It just was crazy to me how that happened.

But in the moment it didn't feel crazy.

I didn't even think anything of it.

I was just like, this is everyone else's fault.

- So by senior year, on the outside I'm still holding it together.

I'm in all AP classes, level one classes.

I'm a three-season captain.

I have a pretty decent future ahead of me.

But what my family doesn't know, what most people don't know is that as soon as I leave the soccer field I'm getting high.

Right before school I'm getting high.

During school I'm getting high.

After school I'm getting high.

(Eric chuckling) And I'm pretty much my existence is doing all those things successfully while I'm getting high.

- I grew up playing a lot of sports, a lot of after school activities, somewhat of a social, outgoing person, made a lot of friends.

And for some reason I always just felt out of place.

I always felt like I was different, not worse or better than other people, just different.

No matter what crew of people I hung around with, I just felt different.

I felt like an outsider at all times.

I remember that feeling from a very young age for some reason.

I never knew what that was.

Now I know that that was my addiction.

(relaxing instrumental music) - My parents weren't drinkers.

But one day I went to Rite Aid with my dad and he found this five gallon bottle of wine for a disgustingly cheap amount of money.

And he's like, "I need to buy it 'cause it's a deal."

He never even drank but he needed it in the house.

And so I had started taking sips of that and immediately I was like, I like how I feel.

This feels good.

This feels like I don't have to be myself or sit still because I'm putting disgusting red wine in my orange juice when I'm 12.

By the time I was 13 I had started smoking, I had started smoking weed and I had started stealing my dad's medication.

So I had a good candy bucket of opportunity there.

So by the time I was 14, I had been abusing so many opioids from my dad's medication that I got jaundice in my hands my freshman year and I walked around with my hands being yellow.

And I didn't realize how scary that was until recently.

(relaxing instrumental music) - Oh, he's right there.

(Brittany chuckling) Good, I hate people following me.

(man chuckling) (relaxing instrumental music) Okay.

At around 14, I started drinking and I kind of, I didn't know it then but I did notice that I was a little bit more preoccupied with the alcohol than my friends were.

Meanwhile, I'm still like a straight A student, top of my class, avid soccer player, student council, all the things that would've led you to believe that I wasn't internally struggling at all.

When I would drink, I would black out.

I would go crazy.

I would have freak-outs.

I remember my mom saying one time that a couple of the run-ins I had with my parents, that I was literally possessed under the influence of alcohol.

And I liked to drink but I didn't like that.

My junior year of high school, my boyfriend at the time went to get Advil or something, just very innocently out of the cabinet.

And he said to me, "Hey, do you know your dad has a bottle "of like 300 Vicodin in there?"

We decided that day and we each took a pill.

And for him it ended that way, it ended there and for me it was this moment of this is how I wanna feel.

Every moment for the rest of my life and whatever that looks like, I'm gonna make sure that I can do that.

(birds chirping) - My drinking, initially, it worked for me.

This is a thing I hear a lot of other addicts talking about too.

It absolutely worked for me.

I loved alcohol, what it did for me.

In college, it helped me socialize.

It helped me feel confident.

It helped me feel funny, even though I probably wasn't any funnier that way.

So it worked for quite a while and the problem was over time I used it more and more and it worked less and less, but I couldn't see that.

I had a need to be a little bit less cognizant of myself in my skin.

Alcohol gave that to me for a while.

I probably do have that kind of sandstone brain that wears away faster so it was easier for me to get trapped in a physical addiction.

I would tell myself, alcohol made me malleable, like workable, like clay and that if I drank, I could somewhat control my emotions or make myself feel more of whatever.

So it's like either I could, if I was feeling upset about something, I could dull it with alcohol, or if I wanted to be able to be more outwardly happy or joyous, I could accentuate that with alcohol.

In my head it gave me that power.

I don't even know if it was to fit in, but it was to feel internally more a part of.

(birds chirping) (water trickling) - Some of the reasons kids use has to do with their friends, wanting to be accepted, experimenting, they curious about it.

Other kids are using because they wanna fill some sort of a need.

- [Tory] Clinical neuropsychologist, Dr. Matt Bellace works with students, middle-aged on up, and says there is a direct correlation between what even the first sip, sniffs, and pills can do to the brain.

- Alcohol and other drugs can alter brain development.

And it does that partly because the brain is plastic.

I mean, the brain is changing.

If you're using a drug and it's having this intense effect on your functioning and it's changing your personality and your behaviors, of course, that means it's changing your brain.

They might not even be aware of the fact that they've gone through some trauma in their life and this drug makes them feel happy in a way that they hadn't felt before because they come from a difficult life circumstance.

(door buzzing) (door clicking) - When I was about 10 and a half, I'd say that's when my, I guess, addictive behaviors started coming out that I can remember.

A lot of video games, always wanted to be with friends and not with my family.

And very shortly after, I started kind of misbehaving in school.

And then something drastic happened, which was my parents were getting a divorce.

At the time it flipped my world upside down.

It was a something I didn't wanna accept.

It made me feel even more different than other kids at school or at home.

And it started to become kind of chaotic between my parents.

Within the first couple months of them separating was when I really started acting out, stealing cigarettes from my mother, a lot of stealing.

It's like I got addicted to stealing from the mall and out of my mother's purse and stuff like that, just looking for anything that would get me out of myself.

And by 12 or 13, I was stealing alcohol from my parents, finding marijuana from friends, older brothers or other people, older people that were around that I knew smoked pot.

And I remember the first time I drank, I got really sick, I didn't care for it.

But the first time I had smoked pot, it was like a, I wouldn't say an out body experience, but I just felt like, ah, like everything's perfect.

(relaxing piano music) - I just remember having this feeling like this is it.

This is what I've been looking for.

And I don't even think I realized that I was looking for anything, but once I experienced what it was like to be high, I got this overwhelming sense of relief.

And kind of looking back at it now, sure, I mean, I imagine that early high school days, early teens, pretty uncomfortable in my own skin, trying to satisfy people, to be part of the popular crowd, to be a successful athlete, to be good at school, just all the normal things that people go through at that age.

I think once I experienced what it was like to be high, all of that fear and all of that anxiety and all of that worry just kind of faded away.

And I continued to smoke weed pretty much every day after that.

It became priority.

It very quickly became the norm.

I felt like I couldn't get through the day without it.

And I felt like normal was high and being sober felt uncomfortable.

(birds chirping) (relaxing instrumental music) - Being a freshman in high school at 14, that's kind of when most of my friends started experimenting, I guess it was kind of excitement of the unknown, 'cause there's so much, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.

Well why, I wanna know why not to do it?

I wanna try it.

And I wanted to know what all of the excitement was about, the positive and the negative excitement.

A lot of it was also fitting in.

I wanted to feel like I fit in.

I was also, I was on the field hockey team so there was girls that I looked up to and they all went to these parties and would drink and smoke weed.

And they were still doing sports and they were still getting good grades, so I thought, well, if they're doing it then it must not be that bad.

People want me to try this new thing with them.

There was definitely times in my childhood before that where I didn't feel like I fit in, I felt left out.

And so this felt like it was my time to be exciting and important.

And of course I had friends that weren't using drugs or drinking and I kind of just for about them because I was so invested in being, like, I wanted to just fit in and seem cool.

That was really what started it.

(relaxing instrumental music) - And what we see over time is people who use drugs a lot, their everyday life becomes dull, gray, listless, and they start to use drugs just to feel normal.

So you have a choice.

You get to choose in your life how you're going to get a high.

And this is the time in your life when it's so important.

- [Tory] Dr. Bellace's expertise puts him face-to-face with students in classrooms all across the country.

A motivational speaker, Bellace is also a clinical neuropsychologist and expert on the science of addiction and what addiction does to the brain.

- But when you pursue a high with a drug, okay, you're forcing your brain into a state it doesn't naturally wanna be in.

And your brain responds by doing various things.

First of all, your brain can become damaged if you give it too much of the chemicals.

But over time, let's say you use something like weed on a regular basis.

Your brain responds with something called homeostasis, which is it trying to maintain balance.

You force your brain to a high state.

The brain reacts by putting you in a low state to try to respond to it.

If you look at some of the research as to the reasons why kids use, it's really diverse, it's varied reasons.

But the kids who are using often because they feel bored, and it's about 30% of teenagers who use, are the ones that are more likely to go into harder drugs later on.

So there's something about that reason for it.

Like hey, I'm looking for stimulation, I am bored, is predictive.

And it may be the fact that the brain is looking for stimulation.

The dopamine hypothesis of addiction basically says that you don't have enough dopamine present in your brain, so you're constantly seeking out things that it's gonna increase the amount of dopamine present.

And drugs will force your brain into that state.

And you can imagine if you have low sort of dopamine levels before you start using, you use the drug, you feel good, you're more apt to use it again because, of course, you wanna feel good.

It is much more dangerous for youth to use, partly 'cause they are more vulnerable, one, to addiction.

Their sensitivity to rewards and pleasure make them more apt to get addicted to a substance, but also because they have so many years of life left and these are drugs that can alter your development.

Human beings, you know, 200 years ago weren't living to 80, 90 years old.

Now we're living long lives, but if you affect your brain's development at age 13, 14 years old, it could have really long-lasting effects.

- [Tory] Bellace's mission is to prevent that from happening.

His education module is teaching kids to literally get high on life.

- Here's something you should know about exercise.

After 30 minutes of any exercise that gets your heart rate up, it could be cycling, it could be swimming, it could be running, your brain releases chemicals.

Do you know what they're called?

Endorphins.

Nice.

One of those endorphins is a funny name though, anandamide.

Anandamide gets released when you exercise for about 30 minutes or more.

It improves your mood and improves your memory.

Smoking weed, which by the way, THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, looks so much like anandamide.

I'll show you a picture later how similar they are.

Smoking weed has the opposite effect.

Do that three or four times a week as a teenager, your mood gets worse, your memory gets worse.

When you do it naturally through sports, through laughter, through meditation, what happens is your brain releases these chemicals and you feel good, but it balances the chemicals.

It never releases so much of the chemicals that it damages your brain tissue.

(relaxing instrumental music) Drugs can hijack the brain.

It can replace a drive state like eating or drinking with craving the substance.

And so the first time you use, you're gonna get this euphoric effect and it felt so great, is a real positive experience.

But eventually at some point it becomes a chemical dependence.

You cross over from, oh, I'm experimenting.

This was fun.

I was with my friends to now you are physically dependent on the chemical and your brain has figured out a way to hijack your thoughts and make you want to pursue that drug at all costs.

- And it really wasn't until I graduated high school and it was really the summer beyond high school when I really started to get into Oxycontin and get into the opiates, which again, was an experience like no other.

The first time I did it, and it kind of seems like this with every drug that I use, but the first time that I use Oxycontin, for sure, it was like my true love, (Eric chuckling) right, it was like, this is it.

And I ran with it.

- By the time I was 16, I was stealing alcohol, selling it to my friends, using very hard substances, skipping school, and my decisions and my identity had become unrecognizable in the midst of what I was sacrificing to be high.

- Earlier on in my drinking, it didn't necessarily feel like a crutch to me, but it felt like an enhancer.

And over time it definitely turned into that and it was probably more than the crutch.

it was like a wheelchair and a dialysis machine and it was everything.

I felt as if I couldn't function without it.

It's like if I had to go to the grocery store, it's like, better have a first so we can go handle the grocery store.

- [Tory] Addiction physician, Dr. David Kispert says it's like throwing a car from first gear into fourth gear, and once it's there, it's not easy slowing down.

- Now when we experience natural rewards like sex or food, that increases the activity in the reward circuitry.

Now, the thing that drugs do is that they activate that same reward circuitry, but to a higher degree.

They activate it higher than any natural reward would.

And the more that that circuitry is activated, the higher the subjective high.

- I started trying Suboxone and I had no idea what it was.

It made me really sick, but I felt really good at the same time.

And a few days after I had tried the Suboxone, I figured out through a couple other friends that I was using with that it was an opiate.

So I started chasing the opiates, whatever it was, Vicodin, Oxycontin, Codeine, whatever I could steal out of a medicine cabinet at 15.

That's what I wanted to do over anything.

(relaxing piano music) - [Tory] Addiction is everywhere.

Addiction touches every one of us and that is the reason for this "Voices of Hope" series.

Through the courage of real people sharing their own stories, their struggles, darkest hours, tragic losses, and for the fortunate, their victories, our hope is that there can be better understanding, support, compassion, and help for the millions who are right now struggling with their own substance use disorders and addictions.

If you or someone you know needs help right now, go to the www.knowyouroptions.me website.

You will find immediate help that's closest to you.

(relaxing piano music) - My drug use started when I was 14 years old.

I started off with alcohol and pills and it progressed as I got older to opiates.

When I was 14, I started using because I was covering up a lot of scarred emotion I had.

I was sexually abused, physically abused as a child.

I dealt with a lot of trauma and I wanted to cover up my emotions.

As I was in high school, I unfortunately didn't graduate because of my use.

I started hanging out with the wrong crowd and started partying and getting into trouble, fighting people 'cause I was blacking out all the time.

Alcohol and heroin were my main two that I was using.

At the time I was filled with a lot of anxiety and anger.

And when I'd mask these emotions, temporarily it was great, but as I progressed and my tolerance got higher and I guess when I didn't have the drugs or the alcohol, I would have panic attacks, I felt very anxious.

And I didn't have any money so I couldn't afford it.

So I was dealing with a lot of withdrawing and it just made me depressed.

I recently just had a recent heroin overdose and I ended up in a mental institution because I was fed up.

I wanted to get help and I ended up getting out and doing the same thing over again.

It's just like I just don't want to be that person.

- As I progressed through high school, things were experimental, I think, with my using and whatnot.

It took away inhibitions that I may have had.

Before I knew it, I was actually smoking pot every day around 14, a daily user, drinking here and there, trying hallucinogens, all innocent I thought at the time.

I had a hernia operation, sports-related hernia operation.

That hernia operation led me down the path of opiates, which really took the inhibitions away and made life tolerable.

Why life was so hard at 19, I'm not quite sure.

Growing up playing sports and being part of the athletic community, there was a lot of things that I thought that I would never do, steroids or supplements or heroin, cocaine, hard drugs, things like that.

Being an intravenous drug user was not in the cards whatsoever.

But once I got to it, it seemed really normal.

It wasn't something I could stop doing because it was the, Pandora doesn't go back in the box once... (Shawn chuckling) A lot of things that I said I'd never do, I ended up on that road which leaves you a lot of guilt, fear, shame, remorse, and a whole bag of tricks with that so.

(ominous instrumental music) (clapperboard clicking) - I am the middle child.

I grew up with an older brother and a younger sister.

I had a lot of insecurities as a kid.

I never felt like I was good enough.

At a very early age I discovered drugs and alcohol.

My dad was in recovery.

My dad was a recovering heroin addict.

So when I found out my dad, my hero, my biggest fan was a heroin addict, it threw me for a loop and I was 13.

So if you combine those two things, it was a recipe for disaster.

The first time I drank alcohol, I got alcohol poisoning.

I was 14 years old.

I had to have my stomach pumped.

I was brought to the emergency room and it was not pretty.

Red flag, that was ever red flag right there.

Looking back on it, I'm able to see that I needed to be good enough at something to feel like I was enough in other people's eyes, and cheerleading was that thing for a while.

I was very good at it.

I was captain of the cheerleading squad for 13 years in a row and it was what made me think that you think that I'm enough.

I didn't feel like I was enough, but if I could convince the whole world that I was enough, that was enough for me.

I knew about addiction enough because of my father's addiction that I probably have this thing, just by the way my behaviors looked right from the beginning.

My friends would all go home at the end of the night after riding around, smoking pot and drinking alcohol.

I wouldn't wanna go home, I'd wanna keep going.

I would go until the wheels fell off.

(relaxing guitar music) - When I was younger, my father was a police officer and that's what I wanted to be when I grew up.

But growing up I got picked on a lot in school.

I was a bigger girl.

I started dressing different and I didn't really get along with anybody in school, started hanging out in a tougher crowd.

So I kind of started rebelling and started trying different drugs.

It started off with smoking cigarettes in 7th grade and then it turned into marijuana.

And then eventually it turned into huffing.

Anything I could find as far as putting it, you know, air freshener and then air duster.

I started hanging out, skipping school in Biddeford and going to Biddeford.

And I had had a boyfriend and best friend and they had passed away.

They had gotten shot and killed on my 18th birthday.

So that was really traumatizing and a lot of us haven't really been the same since then.

A lot of us have been doing drugs.

A lot of us became alcoholics.

Yeah, I haven't really been the same since then.

(birds chirping) (waves swishing) - The first time I drank was when I was 12 or 13 and I think I was 14 when I first smoked pot.

And I think what I thought being free was, was having that feeling in my head or in my body and being free meant being able to do what you want and consequences weren't part of my idea of what being free was.

But the longer that I used drugs and drank, the less freedom I had because I couldn't do what I wanted anymore.

I woke up in the morning and I was like, my first thought would be how are you gonna get a drink in your system or how are you gonna do drugs?

So there's really no freedom about it once I got into my twenties because I didn't feel like I had a choice anymore.

My brain just told me, "You have to do this.

"You have to do this," and it didn't seem like there was an alternative.

But I also remember right before college, my biggest fear was not being able to get alcohol or drugs.

So I got on a plane and headed down to Florida and had three different kinds of drugs with me.

And looking back now, I was putting myself in these really dangerous situations from a very young age, situations I really had no business being in.

But I could always just downplay it and say it's big deal.

Everybody's doing it.

And I look back now and that wasn't the truth.

Everybody wasn't doing it.

There were some people doing it.

The people I surrounded myself with were doing it, but definitely not everybody.

The drugs being a priority, I was kicked out of college my sophomore year for never going to class because all I wanted to do was drink and party.

And they said, enough's enough.

I was just a disruption to everybody around me in the school.

And when I ended up going to jail, there was really no choice.

You didn't have a choice of where you went or when you were gonna eat.

You were told what to do and I didn't even have the choice to do drugs anymore if I wanted.

So it was all all taken away.

And to be honest, I think being in jail is the complete opposite of being free.

It made me feel like I wasn't even really human anymore, that I was less than human and that could even help to damage the way I felt about myself or my self-esteem.

(relaxing piano music) - [Tory] According to the most recent numbers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, most people use drugs for the first time when they are teenagers.

According to research by the Addiction Policy Forum, 90% of people experiencing a substance use disorder began their usage before age 18.

In the beginning for many, there is a line they tell themselves they will never cross.

I will do this but I will never do that.

Substance use disorder, however, is a slippery slope.

- If there was a promise that I said to myself, it was that I would never use heroin, and especially that I would never be involved with needles.

I was absolutely terrified of needles.

So at the very end of my history using drugs, when I found myself doing both of those things, being involved with needles and using heroin, I think that the day after I had done that, I remember sitting in my car and just crying and saying to myself, "I'm either gonna die or I'm gonna go to jail."

- It was just drug seeking.

I can smoke pot and I can take benzos, but I won't do opiates.

And then before you know it, I'm back to opiates.

I am stealing.

I am lying.

I'm robbing my parents blind.

I'm stealing jewelry from my aunts.

My grandmother is passing away of cancer and I'm taking her pain medication.

I am just lost, so lost.

- I mean, I promised myself I wouldn't do heroin or cocaine or I wouldn't hang out in certain places.

I never thought I'd find myself in the slums of certain ghettos smoking crack with people I don't know, or just were really don't care about me.

They're not my friends.

They're just using partners, sharing needles.

- And it's so intense that despite the consequences, despite losing girlfriends, despite getting arrested, despite not having any money, despite all the consequences that I've experienced, despite my own family sitting down with me at the kitchen table with tears in their eyes, begging me to stop.

And I love my family.

There's no one else in this world that I love my family.

And if there's anybody that I should be able to stop for, it's them, right.

And I can look them dead in the eye and say, "I'm gonna try my best, "or yes, I'm gonna stop, "or I really want to, "or I won't do that ever again."

And I can look them dead in the eye and say that because it's all true, right, or I believe it to be true.

But then an hour later I'm again stealing money out of my mother's purse, right, to go buy myself some more drugs.

And once I'm in that vicious cycle of sort of that physical craving, there's not much that's gonna get in the way.

- When I'm trying weed and alcohol for the first time at 14, I'm like, well I would never do pills.

I'd never put anything up my nose.

I would never do or drugs.

I just wanna drink and smoke weed and that's it.

And it just was so easy to, someone else had Xanax or someone else was like, "Oh, I did Xanax.

"It was so fun."

And it's just there and I'm like, okay, well then I might as well try it.

If that's what my other friends are doing that are drinking and smoking weed, then I'll try it.

The idea of anything going up my nose made me kind of creeped out, but I didn't care.

It was like I just wanted to feel the effect.

And then that led to using heroin for me.

- So she talks again about setting these limits that she thought she never would pass.

- [Tory] Dr. Jonathan Fellers is a psychiatrist specializing in addiction.

- The addiction really starts to take hold and she passes all these points that she thought she never would pass.

And it's a gradual process.

I've heard it described as kind of like if you threw a frog into a pot of boiling water, they would notice it and would jump right out.

But what's happening in addiction is, it's like that frog is in the big pot and you're slowly turning on the heat and the heat is starting to go and it takes a long time and it's a gradual transition as it heats up.

And then by the time it's boiling, it's already too late.

It's such a gradual transition that someone has passed these points and there's not this point where they're jolted awake, that they pass these things that they thought they never would do before.

(birds chirping) (relaxing instrumental music) - But it kind of slowly lured me in.

It became slowly more attractive as I learned that, the frequency and the abundance, that it was around and people were doing it and that it was sort of attached to fun and partying.

Eventually it became sort of interesting to me, even though I knew it was wrong.

I didn't think I'd ever become addicted to heroin and cocaine several years later.

- [Tory] And despite knowing it's wrong, Dr. Kispert says the pull to drink or take drugs is often stronger.

- So it really sets the stage here.

He's experienced it once and now all of a sudden he finds he taps into a feeling that he's never experienced before.

And before you know it, this is kind of the stage of addiction where things kind of start to hit a slope, a downward slope.

- The truth is it's like I don't know how to approach life without drugs and alcohol.

The second that I found drugs and alcohol as my solution, I stopped functioning as an adult.

I stopped knowing how to do things for myself.

I stopped wanting to.

- I always told myself that it would just be alcohol.

Then alcohol turned into pills.

Pills turned into heroin.

And I thought I would never be that person.

- My addiction took a turn for the worst and I started smoking crack cocaine and I started using IV heroin.

My addiction and my lifestyle had completely shifted into something that was completely unacceptable to me.

It was a disgusting way to live and I hated myself.

I absolutely despised myself.

And I was a daily drug user who could not not use drugs.

It controlled me.

- It went from pills to harder things to needles.

And I told myself I would never use needles and not too long after that, that's what I was using.

- And that's very common that someone will start with one substance and perhaps move on to another substance.

Different substances do have different addiction liability, which means some things are more addictive than others.

So cannabis is one out of a 11.

Maybe alcohol is one out of six.

So these are general numbers.

Cocaine and heroin are one out of three.

So one out of three people who try them will become addicted to it.

That's pretty high.

And then the highest one is cigarettes.

Cigarettes, one out of two people who try them will become addicted to cigarettes.

- [Tory] Dr. Fellers says chemical substances can be incredibly addictive, and the way they are ingested plays a big role in determining the degree of addiction.

- Once someone changes the route of administration, meaning going from swallowing pills to snorting them, what's happening is they're allowing that substance to become more addictive because the faster on the effect of a substance and the faster off the effect, the more reinforcing and the more addictive it is.

And by changing the route of administration from oral to nasal, you can get higher blood levels faster and it's just that much more rewarding.

When someone has been chronically exposed to an addictive substance and the brain alterations of decreased dopamine receptors, decreased function of the prefrontal cortex, increased stress hormones and increased impulsivity, it's like a brain wreck.

- [Tory] Dr. Fellers says that kind of a brain impairment results from patterns of use that continually reinforce the compulsive use of substances.

- It's very difficult to break that pattern because you need a lot of time away from the substance, and you need to develop a lot of coping strategies and techniques to replace the reasons you turn to using the substance in the first place.

- So there are 30 million different substances known to man.

About a hundred of them are known to be addictive.

Some are stimulating.

Some are sedating.

Some cause withdrawal symptoms.

Some mask physical pain.

The one commonality that they have is that they all affect the mesolimbic or reward system.

They're all inherently rewarding.

They're all inherently pleasurable.

- [Tory] Addiction physician, Kispert, says that to stop the slide into dangerous drug and alcohol use we need a healthy, functioning prefrontal cortex.

- Now, this is the structure of the brain that's the last to develop in young adults.

It happens around the age of 25.

Before that, it's growing, it's changing and it's neuroplastic which describes the flexible ability of the brain to change.

Now, the prefrontal cortex really drives the executive function of the brain.

And when I say executive function, what I'm referring to is really self-regulation and decision making.

So anytime before the age of 25, the substances that go into your body really demonstrate the ability to change that prefrontal cortex.

And if you engage in substance use before that age, you're really putting that prefrontal cortex at risk.

The dopamine cells there are not firing as they normally would and as a result, decision making can be changed.

This idea that it's never gonna happen to me, I think you think the same thing about cancer and you think the same thing about dementia and you look at those diseases and you they're distant, they're not personal.

There's an element of remoteness from the disease process itself.

(ominous instrumental music) - When I was a little girl and I would see drug addicts on the streets or hear about people's horror stories with drinking and using drugs, I never thought that that would be me.

I never thought I would go to those places.

But throughout my sequence of just starting to use a little bit, just using very light substances to then using hard substances, it very quickly became who I was.

- It's a medical disease, just like any of these other illnesses are.

And it's easy to distance yourself from it but when the drug's right in front of you, when you have the neurobiological vulnerabilities, even when you don't have those genetic factors, all it takes is one change in your brain and you're gonna make a slow descent into a perilous disease process.

- Experimenting at a young age with pills and alcohol and all of that stuff, any of it's addicting for me, and I was addicted right off the bat.

It all started from trying pot for me.

Everybody's different, but for me it was, I became addicted to the pot because it made me feel so different.

And these past nine, 10 years of my addiction I've tried, I would say every drug out there.

(relaxing piano music) - I have a body that reacts differently to drugs and alcohol.

My body cannot handle drugs and alcohol and I have a mind that tells me that that's okay to try again.

It will be different.

Just one more.

- You know, what I've come to learn is that people use substances differently and people react to substances differently, right.

And I oftentimes use this example, but like someone like my wife, she's what I would consider a normal drinker.

She has a glass of wine from time to time.

She can drink one glass of wine and has no desire to drink more.

(Eric chuckling incredulously) She could drink a half a glass of wine and have no interest in finishing it.

I seem to physically react differently to substances than other people.

And not only do I have this experience sort of internally in my mind where I think and obsess and desire more and more and more but I really believe that I physically am experiencing a different response to these substances than other people where I have this intense craving to use more.

- [Tory] The human brain, researchers the globe over are searching for evidence that the link to substance use disorder is something we're born with.

Can it be that the brains of those suffering from substance use disorder are different?

- One of the things about addiction is that it resides in a very primitive part of the brain, a part of the brain that I think is best described as the reptile part of the brain.

And it's so primitive that it's before conscious thought, really.

- 40 To 60% of addiction is believed to be attributed to genetics.

So there's a very strong association between a family history of addiction and a personal descent into addiction.

I mean, looking at neuro imaging of the brain, specifically pet scans, what they do is look at radiolabeled glucose molecules that enter the brain at different stages, and they can kind of track where in the brain is there the greatest activation or need for sugar, which is the driving molecule behind energy.

- And if we were able to peer into your brain and watch it function and there's addiction in your family, there's a good chance that you're gonna have less dopamine present in the pleasure center of your brain.

So you're one of those people who may be seeking out things in life to increase dopamine.

And the question is, what are you seeking out?

(relaxing instrumental music) - [Tory] Next time we'll explore the anatomy of the addicted brain, plus the jail of addiction in the next episode of "Voices of Hope" here on Maine Public.

- The first time I tried heroin, I think from that day on, that morning when I woke up, stood on my feet and asked my mom for $20, I think that's when I was slowly putting on those shackles and cuffs to my addiction.

- I guess I was searching for an escape with the drugs and alcohol, but for a long time I don't think I knew what that cycle was gonna look like, that I was imprisoning myself.

I didn't understand that.

I didn't ever know that there would be so much torment associated with the escape.

- The process of addiction starts out because the drug is so rewarding in the beginning.

And then it becomes like a prison sentence.

You're imprisoned in your own mind.

You're trapped in these compulsive behaviors that you're doing because your brain just is constantly craving the drug.

- [Tory] Plus, what does it take to break out of the prison of addiction to recovery?

- As soon as I was willing to reach out and ask for a little bit of help, people were there.

I just had to take the first step and do it because nobody was ever really able to help me until I was a little bit willing to accept that help.

- My sponsor helped me to believe that I am worthy of this too and I can recover just like anybody else can.

- [Tory] If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use disorder, reach out to the www.knowyouroptions.me website.

Resources by county a are listed with direct contact information.

If it's an emergency, call 911.

You could be that critical link to saving a friend or a family member.

♪ Recognize myself for the first time in the mirror today ♪ ♪ Spent so long in the dark ♪ Now I'm stepping out ♪ I'm finally feeling brave ♪ When you're lost inside a maze ♪ ♪ That you created for yourself in your own brain ♪ ♪ You'll start to lose sight of the light ♪ ♪ I've been there before, it'll be all right ♪ ♪ Today for the first time ♪ I was able to forgive myself ♪ Today for a new life ♪ I could start being somebody else ♪ ♪ I never could see the sun ♪ But now that I'm here, I've finally won ♪ ♪ Today for the first time, I forgave myself ♪ (relaxing guitar music) ♪ Back on my feet for the first time ♪ ♪ Since they made me think less of me ♪ ♪ It's been two long years ♪ I never thought I'd be here ♪ Of who they made me scared to be ♪ ♪ I never could see the sun ♪ But now that I'm here, I've finally won ♪ ♪ Today for the first time ♪ I forgave myself (birds chirping) (water trickling) (relaxing piano music) - [Introducer] The employees at Pineland Farms Natural Meats have seen how substance use disorder can adversely affect our families and communities, and we are pleased to sponsor the documentary series, "Voices of Hope, The Rugged Road to Recovery".

(relaxing piano music) We applaud the people who bravely tell their stories which help us better understand the disease model of addiction, while also identifying positive routes for recovery.