Toni VerMeer is a Pella resident who grew up in the Tulip City, and is fighting a daily battle that remains often misunderstood to those who never suffered what she has.
Two years and three months sober, VerMeer, 23, is recovering after years of drug use and addiction that dominated her late teens into her early twenties. She is sharing her story in hopes of helping others avoid the dangers associated with drugs and addiction.
What happened to her could happen to any teenager, and in her case, stemmed from family issues when she was in high school.
“My freshman year, I started to get a little brave and tried some different things and made a few different friends,” she says. “My parents were going through a bad separation and my older sister left for college, so it was just my mom and I at home, and my mom took it really hard. I felt like she didn’t even really notice I was at home anymore or I was even there. A lot of the questions I would get from friends or family is ‘how is your mom doing?’ Nobody really asked me, ‘how are you doing?’”
“I felt lonely and forgotten, so I started to try some different things and that would be drinking or smoking weed, which led to trying meth, and when I tried meth, I dropped out of high school.”
Drugs took over her life in a short amount of time, and fueled what she called years of bad decisions in an attempt to fill voids in her life she felt hopeless in facing. What was once marijuana, became meth, then pills, and eventually, at one of her lowest points, heroin.
“Towards the end of my heroin use, I had overdosed five times in less than three months,” VerMeer recalls.
During these years, VerMeer says she lost who she was — constantly asking, and at times, stealing money and possessions from family and friends to buy drugs, numerous run ins with and arrests by law enforcement–including prison time, and relapsing back to drug use after trying various treatment programs, some of which were court ordered. Many moments she doesn’t remember, outside of the pain she was desperately trying to get rid of.
“Being on the other side, it’s hard to think about how that was my life,” she says. “I was very depressed and angry inside, and I woke up every morning just sad and I knew there was more to life than what I was living–I wasn’t really even living. I missed my family, I missed my relationship with my mom […] I wanted more from my life, and I really missed that relationship I had with God. I didn’t have that anymore because all my priorities were focused on getting high.”
Vermeer shares that there were many low points over the time she spent using, including missing family events and watching her own generation pass her by as they went to college and started families.
However, at one point nearly three years ago, VerMeer found refuge in a treatment program at the St. Gregory’s Treatment Facility in Adair that finally worked for her, and with the help of her grandmother, who also had issues with addiction and became a parole officer herself, VerMeer found a path to recovery, which included time in a halfway house after treatment.
“I was emotionally in a place where I finally wanted the help,” she says.
VerMeer says while she still feels like others pass negative judgment for her decisions, she is focused on getting better and is sharing her story in hopes that others don’t suffer through addiction has she did — especially teens who are in vulnerable positions with emotions, their families, or experimental drug use. She encourages anyone in that place to seek help from a party beyond their family, including trusted adults at school or in the community.
Recovery is a daily battle for her, as addiction continues to try and swallow her up again. But, she remains hopeful and has found purpose to stay clean and to get to seeking a life she nearly lost several times.
“I have to remember I’m not perfect, and there is no normal. I have to learn how to deal with my emotions without getting high, because that’s obviously why a lot of people do get high, is because they can’t handle the stress or the sadness.”
“Even if it’s going to be a bad day, I have to remember one bad day sober is a whole year of bad days being high, and I can handle the one bad day sober.”
VerMeer was recently employed by Pella Corporation after spending time with admissions at Central College, and is seeking to rebuild her life in the Pella community. She shared her story during the August 1st kickoff meeting of the Pella Youth Coalition, and hopes to connect with youth struggling to find answers in their lives as she once did.
Hear her full story in the audio player below.