FORMER ADDICT REBUILDS HER LIFE

'I Was Either Going To Die Or End Up In Jail': Mom

WHEN SUSAN'S son was taken from her five years ago she finally realized how bleak her future had become after eight years of drug abuse.  "I was either going to die or end up in jail and ( my son ) Joseph was going to grow up in foster homes without a mother," said Susan, a Toronto mother of three and a self-described survivor who has turned her life in the right direction.  Now 30, Susan is a role model to recovering addicts and a full time mom to "three happy children."

Susan's downward spiral began when she was just 17.  She started drinking alcohol every day and developed a dependence for prescription pain killers first, then crack cocaine.  She went from being on the honour roll to becoming a high school dropout.

"I'd wake up in the morning and start my day with a handful of pills," said Susan from the new Child Development Institute, which is launching today.

WORKS AS A VOLUNTEER

Susan now volunteers at the institute, a not-for-profit children's organization based in Toronto serving children aged one to 12 and their families.  Today it is announcing the official merger of The Creche Child and Family Centre and Earlscourt Child and Family Centre.

When Susan was still 17 she moved on to crack cocaine, left her parents and was lost in a drug-addicted fog.  A few years later she had a son but would leave him with her parents for days at a time to go on drug binges.

Susan didn't find her way to sobriety until her son, then 2 years old, was taken by the Children's Aid Society on Thanksgiving weekend, 1999.

"At first there was a lot of self pity.  I would say 'why me, why did they do this to me?' and then it finally hit me that I was going to have to do this for my son because he didn't ask for this," Susan said.

She has been clean for four years thanks to 21 months in a rehabilitation centre and the Family Reconnection Centre, where she is now a mentor for many other women.

"Things are going so well for me.  ( My son ) is happy and I have two wonderful daughters now.  If things ever get bad I just have to look at what happened before and I'm okay," Susan said.