Dear Mom and Dad

In a heartfelt letter to her parents, Logan reflects on her five years in recovery. She shares a glimpse of how her time at Hazelden Betty Ford's Center for Teens, Young Adults and Families in Plymouth, Minnesota, changed her life in ways she never expected.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Now that it's been almost five years since I was admitted to Plymouth, I see that time of my life with more clarity. I know when I walked through those doors I seemed angry and hostile, but truthfully, I was scared. I had made up my mind about recovery and treatment, so I promised myself to hate everyone who tried to help me. I was so desperately attached to my active addiction that I could not possibly conceive of a way out of it, much less determine how to live a happy, functional life without that crutch. I struggled to fathom anything besides the self-hatred and walls of shame that I'd known for years.

It's been almost five years, and I used to be angry and delusional and sad, and now I am nothing but grateful. I find it hard to completely convey the magnitude of the personal transformation that took place during my time at Hazelden Betty Ford. I have been fundamentally altered. I walked through the double doors to Plymouth and saw people like me—I recognized myself in those who were suffering. I was pulled out of my self-pity and welcomed into an environment of support and understanding. Some combination of being taken seriously, being seen and being treated as a person with an illness changed my entire comprehension of myself. I realized I am not stricken with an incurable moral failure but with a treatable disease.

While at Plymouth, I was instilled with hope for my future, a feeling to which I was not accustomed. Even more importantly, that hope remains. No matter what I've gone through in these past five years, I know I don't need to drink. Thanks to help from you, from Hazelden Betty Ford and from the people I've met along the way, I'll always hold on to that hope. At some basic level of my very being, I have become a different person. I am no longer scared and angry and sad, but optimistic, joyful and stable. And I could not be more thankful.

Thank you for everything! I love you,

Logan