Michelle Ruck- 2004 Courage to Come Back Award Recipient

Toronto, Ontario

May 2004

Michelle, at age 20, is a young adult who courageously faced enormous issues from childhood to now.  She struggled with a chaotic family life enduring physical and sexual abuse, and depression.  Her family was not able to raise and care for her properly due their own struggles with mental illness.   To Michelle, the world began to appear as a dark landscape of despair.  She turned to drug use to cope with the pain and she continually placed herself in extremely dangerous situations to try to survive on the streets, and ended up repeatedly re-traumatized emotionally, physically and sexually; there was no support system she could turn to.  In addition, Michelle suffers from type one Diabetes, which she could not care for properly because she was living on the street.  Complications resulted in the amputation of her right leg when she was just seventeen. 

Despite all of her hardships, Michelle had one strong quality about her that allowed her to persevere - faith that things could get better if she tried.  With the resolve and determination to escape the horrors of living on the streets, she decided that she would try to stop her drug use and begin addiction therapy for the first time.  She cut down to no drug use and joined Narcotics Anonymous.  Her mind had begun to clear and she was able to focus on the underlying issues that the substance abuse had kept buried deep within her - the issues that had led to drug use in the first place.  She came to the Youth Addiction Services at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to engage in psychotherapy to address her mood and trauma issues in addition to her addiction problems.  She committed herself to following her dreams rather than her nightmares. 

Michelle has been regularly attending school, taking up new healthy activities including swimming and planning a future for herself.   She has finished high school and is planning post-secondary studies in a health care related field.  She holds down a job and is living independently.

Michelle has also become an advocate of mental health and addiction issues.  Through Narcotics Anonymous and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, she has volunteered to go to schools and treatment agencies to talk with kids, mental health and addiction workers to discuss her story.  She also speaks at public health forums for health care professionals and 12-step programs.  She wishes to share her experiences to help prevent anyone else from having the same barriers and feels that educating youth and the people they turn to will help.  She connects with people, especially fellow youth with similar issues, in ways that are empathic, encouraging and motivational.  Michelle says she has learned to "live life, not hide from it and be scared of it."

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