Julia Barker’s experience with opioid use disorder began before she understood what opioids were or how powerfully they could change her life.

“I kind of stumbled into opioid addiction by accident,” she said. As an adolescent, Julia was already looking for ways to escape difficult feelings. One day, she found prescription bottles hidden in her father’s medicine cabinet. The labels warned, “Don’t take while driving, dangerous. These will make you sleepy.” Julia remembered thinking, “Perfect. That sounds great.”

At the time, she didn’t realize how much that moment would change her life. “I wasn’t aware that it was even something that was in the realm of possibility of what could help the feelings I was experiencing as a young adolescent,” she said.

The Long Process of Recovery

Julia started trying to get sober at 19, when she first had the chance to go to treatment. She hoped it would fix everything. “I thought that was going to be a one-and-done cure,” she said.

Instead, recovery turned into a long process with plenty of setbacks. “Little did I know that that was just the beginning of a really long, arduous road of cycling in and out of recovery centers,” she said.

Over time, Julia came to understand that lasting recovery often begins in a brief, urgent moment of readiness. “There’s a window of opportunity that happens when you are desperate enough to get clean and sober,” she said. “And it’s a very small window, and it’s just like you have to be just sick and tired enough to make the phone call for help.”

Taking the First Steps

That window opened for Julia and her partner, Ryan, when both had reached a breaking point. “We both just kind of happened to meet each other at a point in our addiction where we were both so sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she said.

The two got sober together in treatment, but the beginning was far from easy. “It was really messy. And it didn’t look very hopeful,” Julia said. Even so, they kept going. “The only thing we did right was not go back to that life, and we continued to put one foot in front of the other.”

For Julia, recovery became less about finding one perfect answer and more about taking the next step, again and again. “I don’t know when the switch happens where you no longer are like knee-jerk reaction thinking about drugs, but it does happen,” she said. “And it happens when you start putting in the work.”

She also wanted people to know that support may be easier to find than it seems. “You literally can just Google ‘meetings near me,’” she said. Even walking into a first meeting scared can be enough. “You just have to step your foot in the door,” she said. Online meetings can also help. “You can just log on, turn your camera off, and just feel it out.”

Building a Life She Wants To Keep

Today, Julia said drugs no longer feel like an answer. “I don’t have the obsession to use ever anymore. I have fleeting thoughts every once in a while, but it’s just no longer a solution to my problems,” she said.

Now, what excites her most is the life she has built in recovery. “Bettering myself, remodeling this house, what our future’s going to look like, planning a really cool vacation, doing really fun stuff with friends.”

After years of getting sober and “throw[ing] it all away over and over,” Julia said long-term recovery has given her something she fought hard for — a sense of safety. “To finally be at a place where I feel like I’m safe is like, I don’t ever want to lose that.”

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On MyOpioidRecoveryTeam, people share their experiences with opioid use disorder, get advice, and find support from others who understand.

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