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RRP 106 — Six Years Clean: Megan C.’s Journey from Homelessness and Heroin to Leading Others Home
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From a Hole in Her Lung to Leading Others Home — This Is What Six Years Clean Looks Like
She was coughing up blood. Not a little — huge amounts of it. She was in an abandoned house with people she barely knew, and what had started as choking on a piece of meat had turned into something far worse: bacteria had entered her airway, traveled into her lung, and eaten a hole through it the size of a baseball. By the time she made it to the hospital, she was in quarantine ICU. She went into a coma. Doctors thought it was tuberculosis. She stayed there for nine weeks.
That is where Megan C.’s road to recovery finally, reluctantly, began.
We’ve sat across from a lot of people on this podcast. We’ve heard stories that stopped us cold, stories that made us laugh through tears, stories that reminded us why we do this every single Friday. Megan’s episode is one of those — and we say that knowing we’ve said it before, knowing every story matters. But there is something about the way Megan tells her own story, without flinching, without asking for sympathy, that just lands differently.
She grew up feeling like something was wrong with her. Big emotions, too much anger, too much sadness — always told to grow thicker skin. The first time someone gave her Adderall in middle school, she remembers thinking: oh, this is what normal feels like. That moment set a course she wouldn’t find her way off of for slightly more then a decade. Cocaine. Pills. A boyfriend with a stockpile of oxy that disappeared faster than either of them expected. Heroin — something she had sworn she would never touch, right up until the day she did. Methadone for six years. Violence. Homelessness. The streets of Portland in winter with no money, no connections, and no way home.
And through all of it, a daughter watching from a distance. A mother who wouldn’t let her sleep in the garage. A sister who set up a fake profile on an app to get the boyfriend arrested. You have to hear that part for yourself.
“Anything is possible. You get to a point six years in where you could never even see going back. And anything is possible.”
What brought Megan through — really through — was structure, accountability, and the willingness to give back before she felt ready. Oxford House gave her the foundation. Our House of Portland gave her a career. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, she walked into the Lunch Bunch AA meeting and found a room that didn’t judge her for any of it.
Websites Discussed
Lunch Bunch / Extended Family AA Online
Listen & Connect
Listen to this episode: https://mdcr1.com/106
Read the blog post: https://mdcr1.com/106b
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://mdcr1.com/newsletter
She’s six years clean now. She’s a program manager overseeing nurses, caseworkers, and peer recovery mentors. She has a three-year-old daughter who will never know the version of her mother that existed before. And her older daughter — the one who watched it all fall apart — is talking about moving in.
Episode 106 of the Real Recovery Podcast is available now at Listen.RealRecoveryPodcast.com. If this story speaks to someone you love, share it. That’s the whole point.
#RealRecoveryPodcast #RecoveryPodcast #SoberLife #HeroinRecovery #OpiateRecovery #MedicationAssistedTreatment #MAT #Suboxone #OxfordHouse #CleanAndSoberLiving #SixYearsClean #BreakingTheCycle #PeerRecovery #RecoveryIsPossible #RealRecovery #TraumaAndRecovery #PortlandRecovery #WomenInRecovery @RealRecoveryPodcast