I Drank For Almost 30 Years Before I Finally Got Sober

Holly Hiles has six years of sobriety and a story that’s almost hard to believe. Growing up she bounced through twelve schools, leaned on her twin brother, and lost her footing at fourteen when she got pulled off her cheer squad and fell in with a rougher crowd. What followed was a lifetime shadowed by loss — her grandmother, her father, her first love, and eventually her twin brother, a death she spent nineteen years calling a “motorcycle accident” until recovery helped her see it for what it really was.

Cadence came on Rise Above with a story that breaks the mold most people picture when they hear “sober.” She never drank in high school, never craved alcohol, and to this day doesn’t call herself an alcoholic — but her relationship with drinking still cost her plenty. She talks openly about the blackout years in Scottsdale: bartending and partying, hiding her boyfriend’s BMW from the valet after she caught him texting his ex, and a night that ended with her getting arrested. She also lived through the other side of addiction up close, watching a partner spiral into drug-induced psychosis and a friend overdose in front of her.

Tiffany Mercer flew across the country to tell a story most people in recovery have never heard put into words. She’d already done the hard work — sober from alcohol, years of meetings, treatment at Hazelden Betty Ford, rebuilding her life as a mom. Then, in the middle of a brutal divorce, a friend handed her what everyone called a harmless, non-addictive herbal supplement for anxiety and sleep: kratom. Within two months she was taking it around the clock just to keep from getting sick, buying powder scooped out of unlabeled buckets, and quietly losing the joy in everything she loved.

Amanda Lee grew up a privileged, straight-A overachiever in Birmingham who dreamed of becoming a nurse — but by 10 she was gripped by crippling anxiety, and her very first drink at 12 unleashed something she couldn't control. By 14 she was shooting Dilaudid and addicted to the needle; by her twenties she'd flunked out of college, written dozens of fraudulent checks, and fled across the country with an ex-convict, living out of her car, shooting $5 heroin, and panhandling on highway off-ramps. She survived seven years inside a group later exposed as a cult, a brutal relapse shooting heroin in Baltimore, psych wards, and a night so dark she nearly didn't make it. In the end, she racked up seven felonies and landed on Alabama's Most Wanted.

Lauren Latterell grew up moving from home to home around Palo Alto, never quite feeling like she belonged — and by middle school, she'd found that alcohol and drugs could finally quiet the chaos in her head. What started as sneaking drinks and lying for a thrill spiraled fast: by 8th grade she was spending her days drinking and using with homeless people in downtown parking garages, and her teenage years became a blur of juvenile hall, probation, and treatment centers. After high school came the rave scene, blackout drinking she thought was normal, cocaine she couldn't drink without, three DUIs, and finally a year of pure "oblivion" — paranoid, isolated, and convinced people were coming to hurt her.