At age 13 kids are usually beginning to acquire phones, make long-term friends, and enjoy the start of their teenage years. Years full of self-discovery and curiosity. Unluckily for some, this age could also be the start of unhealthy habits and the very first step down the wrong path. When I was in middle school just around 7th grade, it was just after COVID. As we know, these years were very challenging for many. Isolation is known to make people more hopeless, depressed, and blinding. For a good chunk of people including myself - the years of online learning, no social contact, and lack of real world skills would not only bring my life to a low - but more like a rock bottom. Obviously before I was introduced to substances and unhealthy habits, I was a thriving kid. I hardly knew what a grade under a B was, I was doing competitive dance along with competitive gymnastics, and I was a good honor student. Some would’ve said I had a very good balance going. But when adding substances to this equation, it would throw off that scale beyond repair. Throughout my 7th grade to around end of 9th, I picked up a few “habits” that unknowingly to me, would become major issues. As a very impressionable young teen I was going out of my way to do everything and anything I could to find and do anything. Unfortunately for myself and my family, a couple of things stuck. I was regularly frying my brain with things I should have never even known existed, and I was in an extremely dark place by 8th grade. Some people are better are regulating themselves than others. With myself being so young, I was not one of them. I was finding any way possible to get what I “needed” and making any way to do it. Unfortunately, this would end up taking over my entire life and crashing down what I had built up for so long. I was getting in trouble at school left and right, kicked off my gymnastics team, and most heartbreaking of all - I was expelled from my dance company of 6 years. As much as my family thought this would show me that I was doing wrong, it did quite the opposite. I became so angry and upset with the world that I just gave up. I didn’t care about ANYTHING except for making myself feel good. This nonetheless lead to more using and little to no focus on what actually mattered for me. Time and time again things were going wrong and I was getting worse and worse. Around 9th grade is when things got so bad that something had to be done. Obviously I had tried therapy, counseling, and all the basics that you usually begin when you’re a teen. With those not working - in the middle of my first year in high school - rehab was the last resort. Reluctant at first (as is everyone), I would go multiple times a week giving it a chance. Because deep down I always knew I needed help, I just didn’t want to ask for it. Time goes by and around 3-4 months into it, I finally got sober. I feel as though people see help and rehabilitation as a weakness, like you can’t do it by yourself. But in reality, I think that was the only way. Trying to navigate addiction and mental health while you’re so young is nearly impossible. Now I only encourage and speak good things about getting clean and getting help.