RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT: Mary Smith

By Dakota Baker, RealWV

Mary Smith has been sober since April 3rd, 2022. 

Mary told RealWV, “I’m not one of those addicts who spent twenty years in the madness. I was only in the madness for about four years.” 

She was 32 years old when she entered into a life of addiction and 36 years old when she went into recovery. Mary’s drug of choice was meth, she had experimented with heroin/fentanyl but did not like the downer effect, she wanted to be “up.” 

When talking about her youth, Mary expressed she had a great childhood.  She grew up in a middle class family, her father was an assistant principal and her mother was a teacher. 

Mary explained, “To me, it was a loving home. We went on vacations every year. My parents weren’t addicts; they very rarely, if ever, drank, so it wasn’t like I was around drugs or alcohol growing up.” 

In high school, Mary told RealWV, “I did the whole stay with your friends on the weekends, get white girl wasted, but that was it.” Mary said she tried to smoke marijuana but she did not like it. She then went onto college at WVU and spent a few years there, so of course she went out and drank socially. “It wasn’t something my body needed, I didn’t need to drink. No matter if I drank on the weekends or not, I didn’t need it to survive”, she stated.

Around 2005-2006, Mary came back to Greenbrier County, WV, where she is from and got a job at a movie rental store. During this time she became reacquainted with a guy who she had known for years and they began a relationship which lasted for three years. 

Mary described this relationship as “horrible,” telling RealWV it was one of those relationships where she became isolated from her family and friends, he kept her to himself. They had to work the same job, work the same shift. When she was in public with him she had to look at the ground, she was not allowed to look up, left, or right. If she looked up she was accused of looking at other men. He would berate her and tell her things like, “You better be glad I am with you, because nobody else will ever want you.” He also drank alcohol and used pills, but she was not allowed to, so she had no way to numb herself and escape. 

Mary said this led to her becoming a shell of the person she once was. 

Eventually, Mary escaped that relationship and went on to attend beauty school. During that period of her life she met another man who was just as terrible. Mary explained that due to the trauma from her prior relationship she had no self-worth remaining. Her partner in this relationship continuously cheated. Although Mary was not okay with it, she felt that if she was able to run off the other women and go home with him that she had won in a sense. She expressed that it was a very messed up place to be at mentally.

In 2008 Mary’s mother was diagnosed with liver cancer. By 2009 she had passed. 

Mary told RealWV, “If you’ve ever had someone so close to you pass away… it’s a feeling I can’t even describe. A part of me died with her. I was hurting so bad.” She left her boyfriend and needed to move as far away as she possibly could. Thinking that if she ran she wouldn’t hurt as much. 

Mary ran south to her grandmother’s home in Naples, Florida, where she stayed for about six months. During that time, she drank heavily and was introduced to what she later called her “first love,” cocaine. At one point, she and some friends stole her aunt’s car to get drugs. She remembered thinking to herself, “What are you doing? This is not who you are.” Still, she continued down that path for a while longer.

Tragically, while Mary was in Florida she was sexually assaulted. A few days later, she returned to West Virginia, telling her family she was homesick and needed to go home.

After she returned home, all was well in Mary’s eyes. She got another job. She wasn’t using cocaine or drinking. She then met her now ex-husband. Life continued to go well, she thought he was the best thing “since sliced bread,” he was loving, he was caring. He had a seven year old stepdaughter who Mary adored. They married shortly after meeting and it soon became a very narcissistic relationship. 

They were married for twelve years and during that time she wasn’t allowed to work. Mary described the relationship as being abusive financially, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Every time she would try to leave and take their daughter with her he would beat her. When this would happen she would call her dad who would come get her, she’d stay with him for a few days and then go back because she felt trapped financially. She had no way to leave and support herself and her child. 

They welcomed another daughter in 2016, but frequent moves left Mary isolated, with no support system beyond her husband. 

In 2017, the family relocated to Oak Hill, and by then the situation had deteriorated significantly. Mary found herself constantly competing with other women. 

Desperate to try and make him love her, Mary agreed to whatever he asked of her, including inviting multiple partners into their marriage. 

Later on, with her ex-husband’s birthday coming up, she decided to celebrate by getting some cocaine, inviting a few girls over, and having a party. 

She called the guy who would eventually become her “middleman” to pick up some cocaine. Somehow, though, wires got crossed. When she asked for cocaine, he thought she meant meth.

As soon as she realized the mix-up and understood he was trying to sell her meth, she shut it down. She could barely handle smoking marijuana without panicking, and she’d heard way too many horror stories about meth to even consider it. But after about an hour of going back and forth, he kept pushing and eventually talked her into just trying a little.

When he came over, she snorted a small amount. 

“I thought my nose had fallen off, the pain from smoking meth was so bad, I might as well have snorted gas,” she said. But once the burning faded, everything changed. The rush hit her hard. She described it like angels were singing, it felt incredible, like this was the feeling she’d been chasing her whole life. From that moment on, she was hooked. She had him get more, completely forgetting about her ex-husband’s birthday at that point. 

Mary was addicted to meth from then on. She said she never sold or stole anything, but she did have to make an OnlyFans to pay for her habit. 

One day her ex-husband came home and found the box she kept her drugs and paraphernalia in. He asked her if she had a problem and she denied it, telling him it was from years ago when she had left and didn’t want to feel anything. He left to buy a drug test and while he was gone she went and bought fake urine from a vape shop. 

In November, 2021, her ex-husband had beaten her so bad, Mary thought he was going to kill her. 

She ran to her neighbors house, no shoes or jacket, and called the cops. When law enforcement arrived they went to her ex-husband’s house first and sided with him. Mary showed the officers her injuries, including the bruises around her throat, and the rest of her body. 

Law enforcement then proceeded to tell her, after speaking with her ex-husband again, that he would not be pressing charges, but she had to pack some clothes and leave the residence. She was extremely confused considering she called law enforcement to press charges herself. Even more shocking was the fact a female law enforcement officer was on the scene and did not advocate for Mary at all. Mary said she was labeled the abuser that night because her ex-husband had a scratch on his arm. 

After some time had passed Mary and her ex-husband would end up in another dispute where he pulled a pocket knife on her and threatened her saying, “Now don’t get it twisted, I will kill you right here and put your body in an abandoned coal mine, where nobody will ever find your body.” Mary stated this shook her to her core due to their previous domestic incident, causing her to leave. The next day she filed a restraining order. The order was granted but he was only ordered to keep 100 feet away. 

Mary had the rights to the house and her ex-husband proceeded to move his camper to her neighbors yard and taunt her. The neighbor’s wife took the side of Mary’s ex-husband and would also taunt Mary and give her a hard time. This same neighbor accused Mary of assaulting her by throwing a screwdriver at her. 

Mary left the residence and returned a few days later. Because of the taunting from her ex-husband she always had to lock the door a specific way; by pushing a chair against the door so she could hear if someone entered. 

The day Mary returned home, she had learned there was a warrant out for her arrest. So she went home with the intention of then going to the magistrate court to answer for the warrant. 

When she arrived at her house she could tell someone had broken into the house and vandalized her bathroom as it was flooded. She proceeded to call law enforcement. It was two hours before a state trooper showed up, she made the officer aware she had a warrant she needed to go answer for. The officer acknowledged this and assured her he would complete the report for the breaking and entering and take her to the station to call the magistrate court, she agreed. 

Mary rode with the officer to the police station. She finally finished everything, posted bail, and the state trooper took her home. This was the first respectful interaction she had had with law enforcement during this entire ordeal. 

Mary then received a call from her sister who worked as the secretary at her children’s school, stating her ex-husband had shown up during that time and claimed Mary was not allowed to pick up the children from school. This is when Mary found out her ex-husband and the chief of police had gone to family court to get an emergency modification because they assumed she was going to jail. This gave her ex-husband full custody of the kids and house. Even the state trooper was dumbfounded. 

Her ex-husband had his family reach out to tell Mary if he could keep the house with the kids, she could have his camper and live in the backyard 100 feet away. Reluctantly she agreed since she had no other options available and she knew her kids needed an actual house to live in. She only asked him to move the camper out of the wooded part of the backyard. He agreed, his family later contacted Mary to tell her the camper was moved. 

She returned home later and attempted to take the alleyway that led to their backyard only to see the camper had not been moved. Mary then pulled around to the side yard of the house and noticed her ex-husband, his stepmother and her kids were on the back porch. She did not interact with anyone and went to leave. As she was leaving she noticed cops heading towards her house so she turned back to see what was going on and as she was driving by a cop flagged her down, pulling her out of her vehicle and arresting her for violating her own DVP. They also found a small amount of drugs underneath the seat of her car. 

She was arrested but the officer did not mirandize her. She says the same officers left her handcuffed standing at the station for hours before then telling her she was being arrested for child endangerment. 

Her ex-husband had called law enforcement and told them when Mary had pulled into their yard that their youngest daughter was in the yard and she almost ran her over, Mary told RealWV she knew for a fact her child was not in the yard, everyone was on the porch. 

Mary also told RealWV she refers to the two officers that arrested her that night as “21 Jump Street” because when they arrived with her at the station they high fived each other over her arrest. She then had to tell them how to get to Southern Regional Jail (SRJ)… because neither of them knew where it was. 

After arriving at Southern Regional, Mary was charged with fraudulent use of a credit/debit card which was her ex-husband’s account. She had been using it because it was their family account, but unfortunately her name was not listed. In addition to three assault charges, child neglect and endangerment, possession with intent, and destruction of property with more than $5000.00 worth of damage. The last charge was her ex-husband taking a car he had been working on and ripping all the interior out and then blaming the damage on her. 

Mary was quarantined for her first eight days at SRJ, she said she was scared out of her mind as she had never been to jail before. There were days she would go days without water sometimes or have to drink the dirty sink water, because they were locked in their cells 23 out of the 24 hours a day due to the quarantine. 

Later, Mary, through her sister, got in touch with a guy who had been through the recovery process. 

He worked to get Mary out of jail and into rehab. Mary was in jail for 48 days, which she said she knows doesn’t sound long but it felt like a lifetime. 

The man trying to get Mary into rehab had to plead with the judge, who was initially hesitant, to allow her to attend while wearing a GPS monitor. In the end, the judge reluctantly agreed. Home confinement met her at the gas station across from SRJ the day she got out, put on her ankle monitor and off to Harmony Ridge she went. 

At this point in time, Mary had no intentions of being sober because she loved being high. 

Her intentions were to “do the song and dance,” complete the program, go home, and go back to her normal day-to-day life. However, something clicked for her. Mary said she can’t really explain but she realized she did want to be sober. 

While Mary was in rehab, she had her ex-husband pack some of her clothes to send to her. When she received those clothes and went through them, she found her old container of drugs that he so graciously packed for her. Panicking and worried she was going to get thrown out of the program Mary took off walking and found a place to dispose of it. 

Mary completed rehab, but decided she needed more time. She couldn’t see or talk to her kids yet and she knew if she went home she would try. This was extremely difficult for her, she had been a stay at home mom for 12 years, the only constant in their life. Despite how hard that was, she did not want to risk violating her probation, so she went into sober living. 

For Mary, sober living was a very humbling experience. That experience and the hurt she put her kids through are what keep her from going back. She stayed in the sober living program for nine months while she got back on her feet. She formed a great support system while there. 

After Mary left sober living she continued to go to meetings and stay connected with her peers in recovery. All of Mary’s charges were dropped and she was in home confinement for 13 months. 

I asked Mary what her biggest piece of advice would be to someone in recovery. She said, “I know that it’s scary. It was probably one of the scariest things I ever had to do, because I was like, ‘I don’t know how to live life without being high’, but it’s worth it. In early recovery we think about how we want our life to go sober, our goals, what we want out of this. Real life is so much better than anything I could have thought of. Work your recovery everyday, in some way, shape or form. Grab the hope, let the people who are trying to love you until you can love yourself, love you. Let them help you. There are so many resources and people who care about us, more than we realize. But, get your ass to treatment is my biggest advice.”