RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT: Miranda Cline
By Dakota Baker, RealWV
Excluding when she was in drug court, which she first graduated around 2019-20, Miranda has struggled with addiction for 25 years of her adult life. She suffers from short term memory loss and sometimes struggles to recall some of her long term memories.
Miranda told the RealWV she did not start doing any kind of “hard drugs” until she was older, but when she was 16 had started consuming alcohol and smoking marijuna. She started out using those substances on the weekends, but as she grew older she believed it was okay to participate in those things because that was what she grew up watching her parents do. She thought that’s what everyone was doing. It wasn’t until later that she realized it had become a problem. She had started drinking everyday which went on for the next 10 years.
Miranda married before she graduated high school, and three days before she graduated she found out she was pregnant. Once Miranda realized she was pregnant she turned to sobriety. Later, when Miranda’s child was two and a half years old, she went through a divorce; leading to her turning back to alcohol and marijuana, and hanging out with the wrong people.
Some of her friends and cousins were using Oxycontins at the time and they were telling her she should try them. She began to split the pills with them, sharing the cost and only using them on the weekends. But, before she realized it, she was starting to get sick. She thought to herself that if she went and bought them on her own and stopped splitting them she’d have more to herself and not feel so sick. She said this led to her using them everyday.
As time went on, her addiction became worse. She began using more drugs and would add more if she wasn’t able to find the drug she wanted. Before she knew it she was using three to four different types of drugs.
Miranda got married again and had another baby five years after she had her oldest daughter. She had become sober again before she found out she was pregnant. After her second daughter turned three, Miranda went through another divorce causing her to return to her old habits of substance use.
Miranda told the RealWV at this point in her life she stayed by herself for a long while. She was never attending church in her adult life until she had her second daughter. Once she started attending again, she was saved and she was doing real good up until her second divorce. She said “I’ve had a lot of trouble that I’ve brought onto myself from doing drugs, with my health and how I’ve lived”.
Around New Years one year, Miranda had been renting a place and selling drugs for someone else at the time. She was visiting her grandma who prayed over her. Her grandma told her “I want you to know that if you don’t listen to me here’s what the holy ghost showed me: I see you standing in a pile of ashes, your clothes are indecent, there is a blue light around you so bright I can hardly look at you. You’re barefooted and I see a flag rippling in the wind behind you”. Miranda asked her grandma what kind of flag, to which her grandma replied “An American flag”. Miranda said she thought her grandma was crazy, she believed in God and things but this had nothing to do with her. At the time, she just wanted to get back home and sell drugs because she had run out of her own.
Months later, on April 20th of either 2011 or 2012, everything her grandmother told her had come to pass. She had bought some Xanaxs and been laying out in the sun in a bikini top and ball shorts. She was wearing a shirt that read “Salvation” on the front of it which she had cut up the sides so you could see the sides of her stomach. She had been awake for about 3 days, drinking, and had been arguing with her brother. She decided she was going to try the Xanax she had and see what they would do. She was really upset at the time so she took the Xanax and went up to her sisters. Her car was broken down, so she rode a bicycle all the way to her sisters who then told her she was drunk and needed to go home and go to bed. Miranda then stopped to see her cousin on the way home because she knew he liked the kind of pills she had. She said she gave him some, told him to come over and she’d cook them both something to eat. He told her no, that she was really drunk and talking crazy and that she needed to go home and go to bed. When she got home she still had it in her mind that she was still going to cook herself a steak and some french fries. She thought she had taken the food from the burner as she went to message someone else she knew to come eat with her and she ended up falling asleep. Her telephone rang and woke her up and as she sat up she started coughing and said to herself “Oh my god, Miranda, what have you done?” She got on her feet and pulled the curtain back and saw the stove was on fire from the floor to the ceiling. She had to crawl to the door, her feet and hands were burning and she was choking. It took her three times of hitting the lock in the door to get it to slide open.
After she got out of the hospital the next day, she went to the fire department and a woman had her go back to the place that burned to finish paperwork and get Miranda’s story. The woman told Miranda there was something they threw in a bucket of water so it wouldn’t burn up and that it was the only thing they were really able to save out of the house. Miranda said she leaned down, reached into the bucket to pull out the object. When she pulled out the object she said she hit her knees.. It was the American flag that had come off of her dads casket who was a veteran. Then, she remembered what her grandma had told her on that New Years and that had been enough for her to “straighten up for a little while”. But she ended up falling back into step with her old demons.
Miranda married again and her and her husband were constantly fighting so she began drinking again. Once they divorced she started using meth. Eventually, she was put on Suboxone but she didn’t like how they tasted, someone suggested she should shoot up the Suboxone so she didn’t have to taste it. She began to shoot up the Suboxone as well as the meth along with other routes such as snorting or smoking. She continued that for 10-12 years.
One day she found an old needle in her bag that was hers and since she had been the only one to use it she thought it would be okay to use it again. She shot up in her hip and it burned badly. After that Miranda laid under a car shed at her friends for about 28 days extremely sick. She wasn’t sure what was happening but she was struggling to breathe.
Miranda ended up with a diagnosis of Endocarditis, a rare, life-threatening inflammation of the heart’s inner lining and valves caused by bacterial or fungal infections entering the bloodstream. The infection was caused by using her own dirty needle. She had to have her mitral valve replaced. Miranda had to stay for 8 weeks in the hospital and receive antibiotics or else she was going to die according to her heart surgeon. Her surgeon had advised her that everyone he had performed the surgery on for the same reason had passed away because they went home and continued to shoot up instead of staying in the hospital.
Miranda shared she really didn’t want to go to rehab, she didn’t understand it and what she had heard about it made her think it was a place she didn’t want to go. She told the doctor she didn’t want to go to rehab but she’d stay and finish the antibiotics. He told her to pray because he had never seen a valve that destroyed. Miranda said she had to sign a paper saying it was a 50/50 chance she’d make it out of surgery, her surgery was 15 hours long, but she made it through and finished her 8 weeks of antibiotics.
Once she was released from the hospital, Miranda said she moved in with her now boyfriend, who she has known since kindergarten. She started selling drugs again. Eventually, someone wore a wire on her and her and her boyfriend both ended up in jail. He was out within a week but her parents left her there to show her tough love. She said she was never allowed to go home and stay with them, she had to live with what choices she made. She spent 88 days in jail and pleaded guilty in order to do 12 months in drug court. That was the only time in her life she had ever been sober before she came to the Marjorie Oakly Home. It took her 14 months to graduate drug court. She said they were very hard on her and had no faith in her which made her want to prove them wrong.
But, she still did not want to be there. She was only there because it was mandatory. Miranda also stated they did not work the 12 steps in this particular program and they left God out of it. She said she stayed sober for about a year after that but ended up back on drugs. The crowd she had always associated herself with often dragged her down throughout her life. Miranda said “It’s a matter of people, places, and things. I do believe you have to change and you have to be willing. You have to have the willingness to step out of your will and let God’s will be done in your life. I do believe, before any of this will work”.
After Miranda was arrested for the third time, she was accused of acting as a lookout for another girl who had stolen copper from a mine, even though Miranda had not been at the mine on the day in question. When law enforcement searched the other girl’s house and found the copper, the girl claimed that Miranda had helped her. Miranda avoided the police for about four weeks before deciding she was tired of living the way she had been and realized she had a problem. She didn’t want to go back to jail for something she didn’t do, especially on a felony charge.
Miranda spent 15 days in jail for what she was accused of before her family bonded her out. A stipulation of her bond was regular drug screenings but she didn’t want her family to have to drive her 45 minutes for constant drug screenings because it wasn’t their fault. She said, “I just feel like God put me in a place to really think about what I was doing with my health, and my life, because I wasn’t going to the doctor like I should”. Miranda told her daughter she needed help and her daughter told her she needed to go to rehab. Her grandma who had told her about the fire also said to her, “God told me to tell you, that if you ask God to open the door and mean it with all your heart, he will open it up. If you’ll go through it, he promised me he’ll meet all your needs”. Miranda said she has hollered that out, screamed it out, and people probably think she’s crazy but she doesn’t care. Miranda admits she didn’t really mean it until she came to the Marjorie Oakley Home for Women. Miranda let her daughter pick where she went to rehab, her daughter told her it was a faith based home and that’s all Miranda knew. She packed up her things and went to the home on August 7th, 2026. Miranda said she was the seventh girl in the home at this time and she believes that was a sign as her grandma always told her that seven was God’s perfect number. Miranda said, “Everything that I feel in my heart that the devil sent to destroy me, led me back to God”.
Since she has been at the Marjorie Oakley Home, she says everyone has been nice, respectful and helpful. Giving specific thanks to Chris Baker, Joey McComas, and Christy Baker. She has been connected to resources she needs such as getting her eye glasses, dental work, obtaining her birth certificate and photo ID, rides to doctors appointments, and she has a job and a bank account which she hadn’t had in 20+ years. Miranda stated, “I have structure in my life, I have goals to meet… most importantly I have a relationship with God”.
The RealWV asked Miranda if she could give somebody who was struggling to make the decision to go to rehab or seek help, one bit of advice, what would you tell them? Miranda said, “I would tell them if they are truly willing, it truly works”.
The RealWV would like to thank Miranda for taking the time to share her story and congratulate her on her sobriety. We are extremely proud of you and wish you nothing but the best on your ongoing journey.
For more information on The Recovery Group of Southern West Virginia, visit recoveryswv.org or contact Chris Baker at 304-953-2028 or chris@recoveryswv.org
