Cherryl remembers the first time the pain went away. Chronic pain in her knees was something she had lived with for so long that she didn’t even remember what it was like to not feel it. Born with congenital musculoskeletal defects in her knees, she had learned to live with pain because it was all she had ever known. Her pain tolerance was much higher than the average person, and it wasn’t until that pain became unbearable in her late 30s that she turned to opioids.

First her pain management through opioids was for a “flare up,” and then a daily dose, and then several times a day. She doesn’t blame the drug companies, accepting the responsibility for her addiction. She knew there was something wrong with wanting to take so many, but she just wanted the relief.

“Opioids were introduced to me to help me take care of the pain that I was feeling,” says Cherryl. “They were introduced to me at a time when everyone believed or was told by the drug companies that your body knew the difference between pain and enjoyment, and that by taking the drugs you couldn't become addicted. I was just happy not to be in pain, and was taking more and more and I made some really bad decisions.”

Following her divorce in 1993, Cherryl, who was 36 at the time, stopped in Seattle on her way from Alaska to Idaho. She never left. She found work as a bookkeeper and was able to maintain a normal work life. However, as her pain worsened, the need for relief intensified. Initially, she was able to manage the pain with opioids, but over the next 10 years she developed an addiction. As her addiction progressed, she started making simple accounting errors, falling asleep at her desk, and nodding off on the bus on the way into work.

“Physically, I was a complete and total mess,” explains Cherryl. “Emotionally, I don't think I was feeling anything. All I was thinking about was surviving and covering mistakes that I made. I was making one bad decision after another until I ended up being arrested and thrown in King County jail.”

Cherryl was charged with identity theft in 2019, and spent a year in prison at Washington Correctional Center for Women (WCCW). While incarcerated, she took math classes and learned that her over-60-year-old brain loved math. That led to an interest in coding, but she didn't have the amount of time to serve that would allow her to take any of coding classes. She did, however, take The IF Project’s Health and Wellness course, and soon enrolled in the Writer’s Workshop, as well, which was created around the “IF” question.

Prison was a wake-up call for Cherryl, and she hasn’t taken an opioid since. She was released six weeks early due to COVID-19, and, without any living family members to turn to she had to figure things out on her own. With the support of The IF Project and a few friends with whom she lives, she was able to enroll in school and focus on moving forward to create a different version of herself. She wishes others had the landing pad that she’s had.

“I think it makes all the difference in the world to have the support that I have right now to go forward and try to obtain the goals that I want to obtain,” says Cherryl. “I want to be self-sufficient. I want to make a livable wage again. The IF Project has helped make that a reality.”

Cheryll has a lot of dreams, even calling herself a “Walter Middy-type person.” She is currently enrolled at Code Fellows, an online academy that offers degrees in software development and ops and cyber security. She wants to use her coding skills to work with other senior citizens to do the things needed to be done to keep her community healthy, like creating programs to help manage medications.

“The education piece was missing from my life for so long,” says Cherryl. “I had to leave school before I ever got a degree. I lied about having a GED for God knows how long. The big thing for me is that I'm finishing my education. If I am able to get an AA degree, I will die a happy woman, and if I'm able to get a bachelor's degree, I will probably die when they hand it to me. But I'll be the happiest woman on the planet because though it may have taken me my entire life, I will have the piece that I was always reaching for.”

Throughout her reentry process, Cherryl is also dealing with her pain using alternative therapy. IF connected her to Stacy Lenny, a substance abuse therapist with the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program (COAP), who introduced her to modern deprivation sensory floating. The treatment takes all the pressure off of her joints, and relieves the inflammation caused from arthritis. Cherryl tries to schedule three sessions a month, where she floats weightless for an hour in an Epsom salt-filled pod. The therapy, which she calls “the most fabulous thing in the world,” leaves her feeling “positively 50 years old and two inches taller.” Now she doesn’t take anything stronger than Tylenol for the pain that travels from the tip of her spinal column to her toes.

“The IF Project gave me the foundation to believe in myself and what is possible,” says Cherryl. “I don't know how else to say it. IF and Stacy put me on the road to understanding that there are alternative methods to dealing with pain. It has nothing to do with narcotics. IF also gave me a laptop and paid for some of my classes, but I found the program and got enrolled and did everything that I needed to do to make that my next step in life.”

While in prison, Cherryl didn't think about the past or the future or how long she was going to be there. She didn't think about what the person she was talking to did or didn't do. She accepted them in the moment for where they were and has now applied that approach to the rest of her life.

“Prison was the worst of the worst that could have ever happened to me,” says Cherryl. “It wasn't pleasant, and it wasn't pretty, but I'm a one and done kind of person. It's on me that it happened, and I should have known better than to take the number of opioids that I did. But every step is a step up. And there are other opportunities out there, and - even at 63 - there are other opportunities. Opportunities are not going to go away until the day they take me off the planet, and I turn to dust. There's always going to be something out there, something to reach for, and that's what keeps me going.”

“No one quite knows how I'm still standing, other than I refuse to sit down.”