Ashly

Missy, we’re so excited to have you on the podcast. It’s always fun when somebody recommends somebody else’s story that they know. And your brother reached out, and he suggested that you be on the podcast. He’s a listener, so, yeah, I’m excited. So if you want to give us a little bit of context, tell us a little bit about you, your family, maybe what you do for work if you work. Let’s start with some context, and then we’ll jump into your story.

Missy Lane  00:43

Sure. Yeah, I’m actually a single mother. I have been single for eight years now. I have four sons. I stay pretty busy with that, although two of my boys are older, so they’ve moved out. One of them is married. He just got married this past year. So for the last five years, I’ve actually been an executive at a company called Millennia. We do patient billing. We’re a white label patient billing service for hospitals and physicians networks. However, that company just went through a restructure last month, and so as of last month, I have actually been looking for a job for the first time in my adult life. The story that I’m going to tell and kind of how this all has transpired, I’m very glad I’m in the place that I’m at right now. You know, when you have something like this happen in your life, but you know, it’s been very recent and I’m well taken care of, so I’m not too worried about it right now. So that’s a little bit about me at the present day.

Ashly Stone  01:36

Awesome. Well, shout out to anybody that’s hiring right now.

Missy Lane  01:39

Yeah, right!

Ashly Stone

Let’s go ahead and jump into your story. We can start from the beginning.

Missy Lane  01:50

I’ll start kind of at the beginning. I feel like I could literally probably talk to you for six hours and still have stories to tell about where I’ve been and the parts of my life that have led me to where I am now, but I will not, so I’ll try to give some of the highlights and some of the main, pivotal moments that happened.

I think it starts off pretty similar to a lot of people, where I just wanted to be cool in high school, right? I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be a part of that crowd that everybody wanted to be a part of, and they accepted me, but part of being in that crowd was doing the things that they did, and so I found myself trying cigarettes for the first time when I was 14. It didn’t seem like a big deal. It was just like this little innocent thing. I still was going to church, my family was a very strong LDS family, very gospel focused and centered. My dad’s been a bishop numerous times in my life, things like that. So my core foundation was really, really strong, and it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. In fact, it was liberating in some ways, you know, because I was told my whole life, “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t.” And I’m definitely not a person who likes to be told what I can and can’t do, right? I’ve learned that about myself.

It started off there with just some cigarettes and things like that. You know, progressively through high school, I obviously got into drinking. By 15, I was drinking Zima. I don’t know if anyone’s old enough to remember Zima, and so that was the first time I ever drank. By the time I was 17, I was doing marijuana daily. I mean, definitely daily. I started actually selling it. So I worked at a fast food restaurant, which was my first job in high school, and a lot of the kids from my high school worked there. It was almost like the cool place to work, right?

So I actually, at a certain point, was putting bags of marijuana in customers’ bags and handing them out the window when I was working the drive-through sometimes. So I was doing that pretty consistently to the point that somebody got caught with some of the marijuana that I had sold them, and they gave the police my name. I was at my parents’ house, still, obviously. The police came there and they were talking to me about selling drugs, you know, in their house. And my parents were just beside themselves. I was 17 years old, still in high school. The person that I bought the drugs from called and gave me a death threat, saying if I were to give their name, you know. And this was marijuana. I mean, this was not like, big, massive stuff. It was just so much drama.

My parents didn’t know how to deal with me. They didn’t know what to do. At that point, they weren’t even drinking caffeine, they had just lived these wholesome lives, and they had no idea what to do with where I was at. I certainly wanted nothing to do with them or what they were saying at that point. So I decided to move out, and I got my own apartment with a friend. We were very young. I was still 17. That lasted a very short period of time, because people kept coming to our apartment to drink or whatever. My belongings got thrashed, people would do just the nastiest things, and people were urinating wherever they wanted, when they were drinking, when they were drunk, just high school kids. Being drunk, we got the police called on us. It was a horrible situation. I found myself back at my parents’ house. I returned like a dog with my tail between my legs, you know, like I wasn’t ready for this or whatever. My parents didn’t turn me away.

I skipped a part too, and I apologize, but I actually graduated high school early. I went to Brigham Young University on an academic scholarship, so I got a full-tuition scholarship. Not my room and board, but all of my classes and stuff were paid for with the presidential scholarship because of my test scores and because I graduated ranked number seven in my class. I was so high when I graduated, I don’t remember walking across the stage. You can see the pictures of my graduation night, and you can tell—I mean, my eyes were so red, it was like I was a demon. I was blessed to be somewhat intelligent and comprehend things pretty well.

I went to Brigham Young University for a semester, and I squandered the whole thing. I didn’t go to classes, I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. I did have a core group of friends that I’m still actually friends with to this day, a handful of them that would walk with me off campus so I could smoke my cigarette, or so I could get high, so I could do those things, and they’d walk back with me because they didn’t want me to do it alone. I got called into the bishop’s office countless times for reports of violations of the honor code, and so I lasted one semester, then I went back. And again, I was very young. I was still 17 when I was at BYU, and so that’s when I decided to get out on my own. I was ready for life. I thought I knew what I was doing, and all of those things.

So after the failed attempt at getting the apartment, obviously things just progressively got worse. I was doing ecstasy, and at that point, acid. I started selling acid as well. Things didn’t get better, right for me, and so I ended up eventually moving out again of my parents’ home, thinking that I knew better than them, thinking that I could do better. I didn’t want to have to go to church, I didn’t want to have to do any of those things. My life was exactly what you would imagine at that point. I thought, “18, I’m an adult.” I started getting tattoos. I mean, literally, on my 18th birthday, I got my first tattoo. I started everything that you can think of. I was stereotypical, “This is my life and what I’m doing.” When they say that those types of drugs and those things are gateway drugs, you kind of laugh it off. And I know that you’ve had your own kind of experience. I watched your episode, so I don’t know if it started that way for you, but for years, I was very content to just get drunk, get high, and drop acid every now and then. For years, that was kind of how I operated, and that’s how I lived. That was my life.

Well, in that time I got married. I met somebody with the same lifestyle, same everything. We got married. I had my first two sons, my two oldest boys. We were still partying a ton, he and I together. But also I was a waitress at that point in time. I was a waitress, and I met someone at work that I thought was cooler than my husband, that I got along with better than my husband. It wasn’t a great relationship, obviously, it was based off of being high together and whatnot.

And so I did have an affair. I started having a relationship with somebody from work, and my ex husband found out about it, and he obviously filed for divorce. Again, I’m giving you big glimpses of things in short moments here. This all happened over the span of three years. He filed for divorce, and I was beside myself, because that was never going to happen, right? I thought I could just keep doing everything that I was doing, and nothing bad was ever going to happen. There weren’t consequences. And so I called my parents, and my dad is one of the most amazing men that anyone could ever know. He said, “Just be honest. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Just, you gotta be a good person. You gotta accept the consequences. You need to tell the truth.” And so the truth was, I had been doing all these things, but nine out of 10 times I was doing them with my husband, and he was there doing the drugs with me in the house with the kids. All of the things that he was accusing me of, being a bad mother and whatnot, he was there with me most of the time. The only difference was, I admitted to this extramarital affair. And so we went to court. My parents paid for the attorney and did all these things to try to help me, and just told me to tell the truth. And I did, and my ex husband did not, and he was the shiny guy that was doing no wrong, and this great, wonderful, attentive father while I was just a degenerate, and he got my kids and he was awarded primary custody of my kids. We did have a joint legal custody situation, but I only had visitation nights. I’m sure anyone that’s been through divorce probably can understand how that all works in the court system. So I had a joint legal situation, which didn’t mean a ton, but he had the primary care and got to make those final decisions.

I was so resentful. I was so mad. I was not making all the best decisions in my life, but I told the truth, right? I was honorable about this. I owned it. I did all these things. I did what the church tells you to do, and I lost my kids, even though, in hindsight, I can look back and say I didn’t deserve my kids. At that point in time, I can openly acknowledge that now, but in that moment, I thought he was no better than me. And so that really, really spiraled me into a dark place. I was so mad at the Lord, I was so mad at the church. I was so mad at this, oh, “Have these great principles and whatever,” because it’s the people who lie that get what they want. And it just really kind of triggered me even further down the path that I had already been going on. I got involved in a relationship with somebody who was just completely unhealthy for me, completely unhealthy. I had a good job. I ended up going to work drunk because I drank with this boyfriend before I went to work, and I got fired. Not a big secret, not a big shocker there. I think back at that, and I’m just embarrassed about it. In my life now, I’m embarrassed. I literally went and tried to meet with clients, and I was using substances before work, and I thought they couldn’t tell. I was just not thinking straight, right? So that boyfriend and I were living together, and we were sharing an account, and I came home from work one day, and he was gone. He was gone. And the money, not that there was a ton of it, but the money in the account was gone. It was all gone. I had nothing, not a penny. I had bills coming up, rent to pay. I didn’t know where he went. I called my parents again. I was just beside myself. This was rock bottom. “I promise, this is rock bottom for me, Mom and Dad, please help.”

My parents had moved to Utah, and at that point in time, I was in South Carolina. That’s where my first husband and I had moved for his job, and my parents had relocated to Utah. My dad dropped everything, and he flew out to South Carolina, and they took care of my bills, and they paid off my car, and they drove me to Utah with the requirement that I would stay at their house and I was going to get my life right. And so when I did that, I had to make the most painful decision of my entire life because my children were in South Carolina, but I couldn’t be there. I had gotten fired from my job. I had nothing, and so I had to decide, what was I going to do? And so again, going back to the wise counsel of my father, “Get your life in order. Be the kind of mom they deserve.”

[Missy gets emotional.]

Sorry. As I’ve gotten more sober, I’ve gotten more emotional. “Be the kind of moment they deserve, and the Lord will help it all work out. It’ll all work out like in the Lord’s time.” I didn’t really have any faith in that, but I didn’t have any choice. I really didn’t feel like I had a lot of options. There was a part of me that wanted to get sober and wanted to change my life, of course, but I still wasn’t ready. And until you’re ready, it’s just not going to happen. But I tried. I went out to Utah. I moved into my parents’ house. I was going to church. I was reading scriptures. I was actually getting up early in the morning and reading with my mom for a little while, a few months that lasted, maybe less time than that. Maybe I’m giving myself more credit than I deserve there. But I was trying. I was doing the right things, but my heart hadn’t changed. I wasn’t different. I was just placating them, you know, I was doing what I needed to do because of what they had sacrificed for me and what they had done. I was waiting tables because that’s how I was making money, and that was obviously a job that I knew I could do. That’s a whole different world and lifestyle when you wait tables because you’re out at night, and everybody goes out drinking afterwards, etc. So inevitably, over a few months time, I started talking to people, I started becoming friends with them, and then the next thing I knew, I was right back. I pretended that I wasn’t doing it. I was trying to hide it from my family, like I did when I was still in high school, even as an adult, but I was doing all those same things.

I was in Salt Lake City after work one night, and I honestly don’t remember why it was offered or why it came to be, but I was with a group of people who got cocaine out, who put a lot of cocaine on a table and offered it to me. And I had never done anything to that level. I was already drinking, and I was just so mad at the world, so I did it. I don’t know how to put into words the way that doing cocaine made me feel the first time I did it, but I felt like Superwoman, like I could do anything. I could fly. It was the most euphoric, incredible feeling. And I’m not here promoting drugs or drug use, but there is a reason people do them. There is a reason that addiction exists. There is a reason that we have things like this podcast and people who have to come back from it, because if you didn’t enjoy it, if it wasn’t something that brought you some kind of brief, momentary, worldly, earthly pleasure, you wouldn’t do it. I mean, you just wouldn’t.

Ashly

Right. Mmhmm.

Missy

I was hooked after I did cocaine. Everything about my life became centered and focused on cocaine. That was it. That was where I lived. It was the people I hung out with. It was the world I knew. It was who I was dating. I was dating a dealer. I got to the point when I was living in Utah, between my parents house in Salt Lake City, where I was waking up and putting a line out on the back seat of the toilet in my parents’ home just to just to get up in the day. I wasn’t feeling high anymore. I was just feeling normal, so I could function. I did that within a year’s time. There are lasting effects. To this day, I have a deviated septum, and if somebody handed me a big hoop earring, I could put it through my nose, and I could attach it on both sides. It will never heal. My cartilage is gone. I just destroyed so many parts of my life in a year’s time because of that drug. I did crystal meth as well. I did smoke heroin, just all the big names started coming out. I never got into intravenous use, simply because I’m terrified of needles. I just don’t like it. But I really was just focused on cocaine. My boys were still young. I would get them in the summers, and I would get them on spring breaks, and I can remember my parents having to do so much to take care of my kids because I loved them. I mean, I love my sons more than life itself, and I felt that when I would see them, but I wasn’t capable of even taking care of myself anymore. I just wasn’t, because I couldn’t do anything without cocaine. I literally could not. I’ve given a talk since this time in sacrament meeting, and the way that I described it, addiction is like prison. I mean, it is prison.

Ashly

It is.

Missy

You’re not yourself, and no matter how hard you want to be yourself, you can’t really feel like that. And then, of course, because you’re there, at that point in time in my life, I was thoroughly and completely convinced that there was nothing that I could do to ever mend the wounds, to repair the bridges that I’d burned to get myself right. I mean, because with a life of drug use comes a lot of really despicable choices

Ashly

Yeah. Mmhmm.

Missy
and things that you’re just you’re so ashamed of, and you can’t believe you got to this point. “Oh my gosh. I was never going to do that.” I thought I would never have gotten to that level. You’re doing things that when you’re 14 and 13 and 12, you think, “Oh my gosh. How could anybody ever do that?” It’s so unfathomable, until you are an addict, until you can’t function without a drug, and you will literally do anything that you need to to get it. And that’s where I was.

There were pivotal things that happened during that time. My parents kicked me out of the house, rightfully so. I had brought cocaine home a couple of times. You have those moments when you’re high, where you feel like you just want to repent, and you want it all, because you still know, because the testimony and the upbringing is still there. I remember one time coming in and waking up my dad and my brother at about three o’clock in the morning with a bag of cocaine, saying, “Please take this from me. Please help me,” thinking that I was going to give it all up, and then two days later, I was looking for bags. I t’s just a never-ending cycle. A lot of that is the mentality that you can’t fix it, that you’re just too far gone. And you genuinely believe it. It’s genuinely the way that you feel. I got kicked out of my house. I was homeless. I was staying on friends’ couches. I just got to a point where I was watching people just do horrible things to themselves to get drugs. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself, but I didn’t know how to stop. What I did know was that if I stayed in Salt Lake, if I stayed in Utah with the friends that I had, I was not capable of leaving that group of friends by myself. I knew that, because no matter how many times I had tried to, I found myself right back there. Ironically, in all of this time that was going on, the same boyfriend that had caused me to have to leave my kids originally, who had taken the money, he had reached out years prior. He was just super apologetic. He kept perfectly in touch and this and that. And so we had been chatting a little bit, and he was basically saying, “I’ve got a great life. I’ve got a house, I’ve got all these things. I just want to make things up to you. I miss you,” etc. And he was still located in South Carolina. He started really working on me and trying to convince me to come to South Carolina. I didn’t really foresee him being something for my future, but I saw him as a way to get out of the prison that I was in, of just getting away from this group of people, not knowing, and just kind of being able to maybe start fresh and to maybe get off of the drugs. And so I decided to go. At that time, my first ex husband had relocated back to where his parents lived in Indiana. So my kids weren’t in South Carolina anymore, but they were closer, right? They were closer. But really, this was a way to try to get away from the drugs. So I went, I moved into his house.

One thing vividly sticks out in my mind. On the first night that I was there, I was watching a movie on TV, and in the very first scene, a man snorted a line of cocaine. And I physically got chills. I physically felt just from watching it on TV, a level of withdrawal and a level of craving and desire for something that scared me. I mean, it scared me that something had that much control over me. I did not actually end up finding drugs or getting into drugs, but what I decided to do in my really intelligent state of mind was to just supplement it with alcohol. Now I wasn’t doing narcotics. Now I wasn’t snorting lines of cocaine, but I was in a very, very unhealthy relationship with both the boyfriend and alcohol–extreme levels. Extreme levels. Just constant drinking, lots of fighting, lots of domestic violence, lots of those types of issues going on. I remember spinning out on the highway one night at about three o’clock in the morning. And I mean, had anyone been around, had anyone seen me, not only could I have killed them and myself, but for sure, I would have been in jail. I mean, just so many horrible things. I was trying to escape that house and the situation, but I was drunk doing it. The number of times that I put my life, and others in danger is countless. And that’s the part that really hurts me the most, putting others in jeopardy just by being on the roads and by doing the things that I was doing. It’s countless over the years. But that relationship escalated to a point after just a few months of just constant drinking and fighting that I couldn’t stand. I knew that. I put all of my things in the car when he was at work. He was a car salesman. I had called my parents, and my parents had really good friends that were in Indiana. My kids were in Indiana with their dad, and those friends who were lifelong friends of our family, but they had agreed to let me live in their basement to try to get my life together there, to try to do what I could do, but to be near my kids. I just drove from South Carolina up to Indiana and moved into their basement. Of course, I immediately reached out to my ex husband to say, “I’m now here. So every other weekend, let’s get to some standard visitations. I’m no longer living states away.” And he was adamant that that was not going to happen, that I was not going to have any more rights to my kids than what he deemed to give me, that until I could get him in front of a judge or go to court, and pay for it, and all of these things and attorneys or whatever, nothing was going to change. He didn’t care where I lived. That was just a really, really ugly situation.

I remember one time taking my son a birthday present, to his dad’s apartment, and he wouldn’t let me in. He wouldn’t let me give my son his birthday present because it wasn’t in the court order. Things like that. And I was so naive and I was so insecure, and I was so vulnerable because of my choices and because of the life I was leading, that I didn’t really understand my rights, and I didn’t really understand the things that I know now about a court system and how that all works, and what I could or couldn’t have done, but if there was something he didn’t want to take the kids to, he’d call me and say, at a moment’s notice, “If you want to be here in an hour, you can have them for three hours,” and things like that, right? So I had a really tumultuous relationship going on there with him and my kids, and in some ways, in a lot of ways, it made it harder. It made it harder because I was so close to them, but I couldn’t see them. I didn’t have that ability. So again, to supplement the pain and the angst that I felt for that, and the regret, I just drank. I drank more and I drank more, and again, same story. I was waiting tables, you know, those types of things. So I ended up in Indiana, getting arrested twice. I got arrested the first time for public intoxication. And the reason that it was a public intoxication was because I ran my car into the side of the road. It was just over on the shoulder of the road, and I didn’t know where my keys were, so I was just walking. So I wasn’t actually in the car when they stopped me and arrested me, but I was definitely driving drunk. I called my parents. They helped get me out of that situation. Obviously, they’re wonderful parents who really just didn’t know what to do with me.

The second time I got arrested was for a DUI. In that instance, I actually drove my car off the side of a road into a ditch, I completely totaled my car. I had to go to the hospital. I don’t really remember the pain or the injuries, they weren’t serious, because I was, you know, wasted, but it could have really, really been bad for somebody else on the road. Things that kind of stick out in your mind–I’m sure anyone that’s had similar experiences knows that there are just those moments that just stick out even though it’s so far in the past. But I remember being in the hospital, and I remember the officer that was there with me, and it was a female officer, and she was so mean. She was just really rude to me, and I just was so floored. And I remember asking her, “Why are you being so mean?” And she said, “My family could have been out on the road tonight.” In that moment, I think I said something like, “But they weren’t,” yeah, something stupid, because I was drunk. But when I think about it now, and I think about the cause and effect of some of my choices and the way that other people react to you when you’re making those choices. It’s embarrassing. I’m ashamed of that because she’s right, she was 100% right. Her family could have been out on that road. Anyone’s family could have been. I didn’t have any regard for those things, right?

So I got arrested for the second time, and then I called my dad again, and my dad hung up on me. That moment was a pivotal moment for me, because it was the first time that they didn’t help. It was the first time in all of my choices. I was in my late 20s at this point, I was not a kid anymore, and they were still helping me, because I didn’t know how to help myself, and because that’s what they had felt like they should do. And he hung up, and I was with other prisoners, looking at people, thinking, “He just hung up on me.” Nobody was shocked. But I was trying to talk it out with  people in the cell because, “You guys don’t understand, they don’t hang up on me.”

So it didn’t change me overnight, but it was a key moment for me in realizing there are consequences for these actions that I have to handle, I have to maintain. So I had to get myself out of jail that time. And it was not easy. I had to figure out a credit card. I mean, it wasn’t easy when someone wasn’t just doing it for you. And so it started me thinking differently again. It did not change me immediately, but it started me thinking differently.

I actually met my second ex husband at DUI school. So I court ordered DUI school that you have to go to for this. We were doing community service. We instantly clicked, got along. Of course, the relationship was based on just drinking, you know. I mean, we weren’t driving. We were at home, in our apartment, or taking a taxi, or whatever, constantly drunk. We were constantly back and forth—break up, go out, break up, go out. Just unhealthy, super unhealthy. But we ended up getting married. I ended up marrying him because I definitely thought that I loved him, definitely believed that that was where that relationship was at. In the good moments like this, we had a great bond. One weekend into the marriage, we got into a huge fight. I know that there were a lot of moments that I don’t have time for, or I’m just kind of forgetting in the timeline. It was a jumbled 17 years, 20 years of addiction. If I could really go into the details of some of the situations that I had created in my life, that should have been rock bottom. Or that should have been rock bottom. Or that should have been rock bottom.

Ashly Stone  29:46

Hearing the story with your parents, I was surprised how many times your dad came. My dad was my rescuer. So many times. And my husband’s parents, they were his rescuers so many times. As a parent, what do you do? This is your child! I don’t know. It’s so hard to know what to even do, but it does truly seem like once you get to the point where you let them fall, and let them experience the pain and consequences of their actions, that’s when things can start to feel real. Would you agree with that?

Missy Lane  30:34

I agree 100%. I have had an experience with my oldest child. He’s 22 now, but when he was 16, and he tried just a little bit of what his mom had done. (I’ll finish my saga here in a minute.) I’m actually very open with my children. My children are all very aware of my past. My two oldest boys remember my drunkenness and things like that. They thankfully do not remember the summer that I was on cocaine, when my parents were taking care of them. They were too young for that, but they remember alcohol and things like that, because I did that for years after I quit drugs. So he tried substances a little bit. He had a specific group of friends. He started vaping. He really didn’t go a lot further than that. And I found out about it really fast, because his best friend was my niece, and she was really worried about him. She talked to her dad, who is my brother, who emailed you. So anyways, it got to me very, very quickly. I just talked to my son. I didn’t yell. There were moments, I mean, I can tell you stories—and I don’t blame them at all. I mean, things got thrown. I will never forget the day that my mom threw a spatula with brownie batter on it and it hit me on the side, just because in those moments, you don’t know what to do. I completely understand that. I mean, my 13 year old is sometimes disrespectful, and I feel like that sometimes. So I get it, but I didn’t do any of that. I just sat him down, and I just said, “I understand that you want to make these choices. And frankly, it makes sense to me. I understand it, but you’re 16, you live in my house, you’re a junior in high school, and you seem to believe that you’re an adult. And so as an adult, here are the things that come along with being an adult. You have to pay your own bills. You have to do this and that …” And so I gave him what his bills were, what his rent was, what his phone bill was, his portion of electric utilities, etcetera. And simply said, “This is the dollar amount you now owe me, because you’re working, at the end of each month for your monthly bills. If and when you decide that you want to obey the rules of the house, stay in line with the things that I’m teaching you, the bills will go away because you’re my kid again, but right now you’ve become your own adult, and that’s how we’re going to handle this. I love you. I’m here for you,” etcetera. He paid the bills for a month, and then the next month, he had an entirely different group of friends, and he went on to serve his full-time mission.

Ashly

Wow.

Missy

And he never really struggled with that again. Coming out of the darkness and into the light—there’s a lot that you bring with you from that. A lot of those experiences teach you, and not only about yourself, but about how to deal with other people. My parents had never had anything to possibly relate to me at all. They couldn’t fathom what I was feeling or why I would be drawn to the things that I was doing. But I can, and it gives me a different perspective in parenting in those situations. My 20 year old right now is just the greatest kid. I just love him dearly, but he has no interest in the church. He has no interest in the gospel, and I don’t ask him about it, I just love him. I just love him, and I appreciate everything that he brings to the table. He is so obedient. He is so kind and such a good brother. And I mean, when I say obedient, I mean, if I ask him to do something, he does it. You know, when he’s here, he’s present, he’s with us, and when he’s ready and on his own time, he’ll come back. So it just gives you a different perspective, right?

And so yes, making them be an adult, and letting them have those adult choices and consequences as early as possible, is, I think, critical in how it’ll affect and impact their lives and where they’ll go with it.

So for my own experience, I got married, there was lots of drunkenness. I do actually think it was right before we got married, but regardless, we had just an absolute banger of a night, and we were just completely obliterated, and we got into a fight that was apparently (and I say apparently, because I don’t remember it) bad enough for my neighbors to call the police. We lived in town homes, and they called the police on us. I woke up the next morning, my husband, boyfriend, whatever he was at the time, fiance, he was not there. He was in jail. I was on the couch, and I didn’t have any recollection of what had gone on. I truly didn’t. I actually went to take a shower, and I had bite marks. I had visible bite marks all over my stomach,

[Ashly gasps]

my arms, and that’s why he went to jail. But I didn’t remember it. I’m sure I did my own things, and was a part of the fight and whatever. So the cops had come, the cops had taken pictures, and they had taken him away for domestic violence. Obviously, they had put a restraining order, said we couldn’t see each other, and all of those things. But for whatever reason, for almost 20 years of my life before that moment, that incident, seeing those bite marks and not remembering them happen because they were literally visible, like human imprints—

Ashly

Oh, my–

Missy

that was it. That was my rock bottom. And I made a decision then and there, to get sober. I’ll be completely honest. I did that whole thing where I said, “I’m giving myself one more night,” and I marked it. It was the next night he wasn’t around, you know? That was my farewell to alcohol or whatever. And I have never touched alcohol since. Since that night, since that moment, it was just that turning point for me. With everything else that had happened and everything that I had done to myself and all these things, it was these visible bite marks on myself that I could not understand at all. And to this day, I cannot remember it happening. That was my rock bottom. And so I decided to get sober. Either that night or the next night, I drank by myself. And then that was it for me. And I was still smoking cigarettes, I couldn’t give up that vice. That one took a year later, but I put down alcohol. I had quit doing drugs, like I said. I had supplemented the narcotics and stuff for a few years up until that point, and I have never relapsed, I have never touched it again, and I’ve never been tempted.

So it’s a very interesting way that it happened. Sobriety, for me, wasn’t immediately a switch to the gospel. I mean, it just wasn’t. I was so far gone and felt like there had been so many truly despicable moments in my life and nights where I knew I needed to be sober because you can’t have bite marks all over your body and not remember them and have that be a normal part of life. That just can’t be your life. But I wasn’t ready to come to the gospel because I didn’t feel like I could. I didn’t feel worthy. I didn’t feel like I could be forgiven. So they weren’t one in the same for me. Initially, they just weren’t. The sobriety was something that had to happen so that I didn’t die, you know? And I had two boys that I still loved dearly, that I talked to every day. I didn’t live near them at the time. But with sobriety, we actually ended up getting married. The restraining order got lifted, and he actually tried, he nearly got sober. He never truly got sober, but he was trying, he was trying sobriety. We ended up getting married.

For a period of time he was sober. I have two kids with him. To this day, he tries. He really does try. You know, addictions are demons. It’s a sickness. It really is. So, yes, the restraining order was lifted. I was pregnant with my third son within a few weeks of being married. I mean, immediately, which helped me, obviously, stay sober, right? I mean, that really helped me as I was going through this pregnancy, and as I was sober for the first time in a long time, and I really, truly, didn’t want alcohol. I just didn’t want it anymore, you know? I mean, finally, I didn’t want it because I didn’t like what it was doing to my life. I just took baby steps. My older brother was a bishop in Georgia. I was in Georgia at that time. He was a bishop there, in the ward where I lived. And so I started attending church. Slowly. I wasn’t making very good money. I didn’t have a ton of money or anything like that. And so I was thinking, “Tithing? What?” I was barely scraping things together here. I was not paying tithing, and I wasn’t going to church necessarily every Sunday. It was baby steps, right? It took some time. But as I got stronger in my sobriety, and as my son started to kick in my stomach, and I started to feel that, and I started to think about the fact that I was about to be responsible for this baby that wasn’t living in Indiana, that wasn’t far away, but that needed me and needed me to be better.  It made me want to be better.

And so the church connection started to come more naturally. I paid tithing for the first time. And as I did that, I didn’t have a sudden revelation, or a miraculous amount of money, I wasn’t immediately where I needed to be when I needed to be there. But I was able to save, about 50 dollars for the first time. And I couldn’t even tell you how many years, as I was paying money out that I wasn’t paying out before, right? And it was those incredible kinds of realizations. It was small and simple things that really led me to the gospel and to my testimony again. I had given a talk, I had given my last word about the Word of Wisdom—that was the subject that was given. So you can imagine, I’ve been told it was a pretty impactful talk. But, you know, “small and simple things” is really the way that I would describe it. So it wasn’t an overnight situation. It took a long time, but eventually, my desire to have the gospel and to have the Spirit and to have the Holy Ghost back in my life came, because I’ve been mad for a long, long time. Eventually that became a priority for me, you know. And I started talking to my bishop, who happened to be my brother, which is a pretty neat experience now. As adults, I started going through a repentance process that was, frankly a little embarrassing because I didn’t know exactly what all I had to reveal, and it was my brother, but at the same time, I didn’t want to leave anything out, because I thought, “If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it.”

Ashly Stone  41:29

All in. We’re all in.

Missy Lane  41:33

We were telling stories and glossing over things and trying to skirt around things that you hear about in movies and things like that. And my brother was listening to me, and I’ll never forget when I got refellowshipped into the church. And I guess I did forget that part. I had been disfellowshipped many, many years ago. I wasn’t there. My dad had told them what I was doing, and they disfellowshipped me. But when I got refellowshipped into the church, the spirit that I felt— it was in my brother’s office as a bishop, and he was sobbing, and I was sobbing, and when I walked out of that office, I have never felt so light. I never felt so good, just good, just peaceful and good. And it was a physical feeling, and that’s the best way I can describe it. And when this came to be, and my brother told me about your podcast and reached out, it was because he and I started recently having a pretty serious discussion. He was going to speak in church, and he started asking me some questions about my past and some of those things, and about what the Atonement means to me, and how and why, and how it’s impacted my life.

For me, there’s a lot of noise in the world right now, and there’s a lot of noise in the gospel, and there’s a lot of people that I know personally that are part of my family. My own son is not like that at all. There’s testament right now, you know, but just a lot of people that are making choices or doing things that aren’t in line with the gospel, that are way more part of the society that we live in. And this woke mentality and things like that, that have made them rebel against the church, people whose testimonies were once so strong. And for me, when you hear about all these things, there are so many ways that you can take any situation, you can interpret a situation, you can read into a guideline or a talk, any way you want to, any way you choose. Whatever you’re trying to get out of it is what you’re going to get out of it. It is so simple for me because I have felt like I have felt the Atonement take a burden off of my shoulders and literally remove it. It is a weight I didn’t even realize I had been carrying. It was a freedom and a light in my life that I just had lived so long without. And when you have a moment like that, when you have an experience, when you have walked in darkness, and then you come into the light, there is no going back. Sometimes you have to take a really hard, long road to get to that point. It was a really long, really sordid road for me to get to that point, but that’s what I was conveying to my brother when he said I’ve gotta reach out. “You’ve gotta tell your story.” It is that simple for me. There are 1000 things I could do better and could do differently, and I lose my cool with my kids sometimes, and I don’t read my scriptures every day. And sometimes when I say my prayers, I’m laying down because kneeling just seems hard in that moment. You know, I can pick myself apart when it comes to what kind of LDS person I am, or what kind of you know, Latter-day Saint I am, but at its core, in my heart, I am changed. I am different. I am different because of the Atonement of Christ and because I have felt that as an adult, not as an eight year old. I’m not undermining baptism whatsoever. It’s amazing. I don’t remember how I felt coming out of that water. I don’t, but I remember how I felt being refellowshipped into the church. I remember how I felt the first time that I stood in the celestial room in the temple. I remember how I felt and when you can vividly remember that, and when you know that the Savior is the only reason that you have hope in your life and that you are where you are, to me, it’s just easy. You know? It’s just easy.

Ashly

Yes.

Missy

Some say that there’s no recovery from addiction. I know that they say that, but I don’t know if I agree with that.

Ashly Stone  46:03

Oh yeah, I am on the same page as you, 100%.

Missy

Thank you!

Ashly

Some say you’re never fully recovered, but through the Savior, we can be new people as if it never even happened.

Missy Lane  46:24

Yeah. There’s no comprehension of how I could — I would never make those choices again. I am changed. I am new, and it’s only because of the Atonement, and it’s only because of the Savior. Had that not happened, I would not be here on this earth right now if I hadn’t been able to be clean, because that weight becomes so heavy and it can just wear you down to where you’re making choices to get rid of the weight that ultimately will lead to your mortal death. That’s exactly what we see with overdoses and all of those things all addicts are chasing, it is a catch 22. You’re trying to escape the demons and the evil that you feel and that are filling your mind and your heart and all of that. So you’re looking for the substances to get rid of the feeling and the escape. It just becomes worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and without the Savior, I know that I wouldn’t be here, but also without my family, without prayer, without temples, without temple prayers for 17 years and prayers every night, without love …

When I got sober, just to conclude my story, I still didn’t have my kids full time. I started working, and I was with the company that I just got laid off from for 15 years. And so it was a progression from mid-level management to the executive level to now. People used to know me as homeless, as a cocaine addict. We have a pool in our backyard. My kids wanted that. So we’re doing well. And it’s a real testament to what you can do with a lot of hard work. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve worked really, really hard, you know, to overcome and to make up for before. I feel like I had to make up for some of the things, you know, especially with my older kids, but I did try to get my kids again in court, and I didn’t win. I had been sober for about five years at that time, and my ex husband was still doing drugs and doing all these things, and I found out that he got arrested again for driving under the influence of alcohol. This was my first ex husband that had my two older boys, so I took him back to court. I paid for my own attorney this time, and was really optimistic that I was going to get my kids, and I didn’t, because they were getting good grades in school. His parents were helping quite a bit. He had good family support, and they seemed stable. And so it takes a lot to uproot kids. So the briefest moment, if there was going to be a time that I was going to relapse, or that something was going to set me back, it was going to be that, right? And I remember again, calling my dad, my mom, and just getting the whole “It’s the Lord’s time” message. It was so hard for all of us to comprehend and to see, even right now, with the job, I’ve never in my adult life been out of work for a month, right? And, you know, obviously we’re okay, and there was severance and all those things. But it’s still hard to comprehend sometimes, why it all happens, and the way it happens and whatever.

Ashly

Mmhmm.

Missy

But with that, a couple years later, I had moved out to Utah. I’d relocated to Utah, which is where I currently live. Most of my family’s out here, and I was still getting my kids every summer, and I called them every day. We talked every day. And my oldest son, who had just turned 15, was out here for the summer. He said, “Mom, if I was to go to high school out here, where would the high school be? Take me to it.” I said, “Okay,” and I was thinking, “How fast can I drive my car there?”

And I showed him, and we started talking, and he said, “Brendan (his brother) and I, we found drugs in dad’s house again. I don’t really like being there. I don’t like the way I feel there. I really like the way that I feel when I’m here. What can we do? How can, how can we change this?” And so, on his own, he decided that he wanted to live with me, and so that’s what we did. I called his dad and just said, “This is going to go one of two ways. You’re going to sign them over to me. They’re going to live here. I’m not asking for a dime from you. I will take care of them. Everyone’s going to be fine. They can come visit you whenever you want, etcetera, like open access. They want to live here. Or, we’ll go to court again, and this time, the boys have things to say. This time, they’re ready to talk, and they want to.” And so he actually heard it. Both of my sons–my oldest was the first one to say it, but both of my sons told him on the phone that they didn’t want to live with him anymore. And so it ended up he didn’t want to fight it, because there would have been no point. He’s a business owner. He didn’t want some of that news getting out. And so we signed a document. We did it all through one attorney, electronically, and then I got sole custody of my two oldest boys, which was a literal dream come true, but it happened on his time. My oldest son had the courage and the strength, but he also just saw the difference in his dad’s life and my life, and could recognize the different feeling, and the Spirit. And he’s such a special, special guy. And like I said, he ended up serving a full time mission and just got married in the temple this past year.

I don’t think that it would be the way that it was if it didn’t happen how it happened. When I look back now, I’m so grateful, and I’m so appreciative for how they came to be with me. No, I didn’t have their whole upbringing like I wanted to. And yes, I lost eight years because of my choices, not because of anyone else, but because of my choices. But when they came to me and the bond that we have and the spirit that they have, and even my son, who doesn’t really care about going to church, he stays away from all substances. He doesn’t do anything, because he’s seen it and he doesn’t want to. They both chose to be baptized. As soon as they moved out here, they both chose to be baptized. My dad got to do that.

We’ve had so many neat experiences that have happened since that, in the sobriety. When you look at it now, you can see it all lay out, and the Lord’s plan was the better plan. It was the better plan. But in that moment and in those times, it’s so hard to see that. Something that’s been a struggle for me, even, with the job situation was that my 10 year old just said a prayer the other night and just said, “I know my mom is going to get a job.” I know, and I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety because I’m a single mom and we have a certain lifestyle that we’ve grown accustomed to, that I need to be able to support and maintain. I was just telling my family today, I just feel so at peace, because I’ve seen this before in different circumstances, in different ways in my life, and it is on the Lord’s time. There is a plan. We’re making the right choices, right? I’m paying tithing, doing those things, and so I know it will work out. I have to just take a step back sometimes and think about my life and how many ways and times the Lord has shown me, when He’s ready, things are going to happen, right? Things are going to happen. But I’m grateful. I’m so grateful to know and have experienced it, so I don’t have to go on someone else’s faith this time, right? I know it. I just have to be reminded of it.

Ashly

Yeah.

Missy
Just because of the way that my life has gone and unfolded. Obviously, we’re in a great place now. We’re all doing really well, and the gospel is just a fundamental part of who we are. It’s not even something for me that I think about separately. I don’t know. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Ashly Stone  54:05

It completely makes sense. It is part of who you are, right?

Missy Lane  54:09

It just is. This is it. This is who we are. This is what we do. This is how we live. And like I said, I think all of us could criticize ourselves greatly, and I have 10 million things I could do better, personally, professionally, mentally, emotionally.

Ashly Stone  54:26

Me too. And I think everybody can agree with that. And you don’t have to be perfect to be living the gospel from your heart.

Missy Lane  54:37

I think the profound thought that I have a lot, I think about it often, is that it doesn’t matter how far on the path you are, it’s just the direction that you’re going. It’s just very simple, but the gospel is very simple. When I was younger, I remember watching a video. It was one of those simple church movies from a long time ago. It was a group of high school kids. And it was, you know, this one guy was commenting to the girl about how her religion is so restrictive, it’s so restricting. And it’s, you know, “Oh my gosh. How can you live like that? You have so many rules.” And I agree. Back when I saw it as a youth, I was like, “Oh yeah, they sure do.” And now that I’ve gone through where true restrictions and prison and lack of choice are–

Ashly

Totally.

Missy

Literal lack of choice. Now that I’ve done that, the liberating thing is the church. The freedom is the gospel. It is. It just is.

Ashly Stone  55:39

I agree so much. I have said something very similar many times. True freedom is living the gospel. 100%.

Missy Lane  55:52

Yeah, yeah. It’s the lightest, best feeling that I’ve ever had. It doesn’t make me perfect, doesn’t even make me close to perfect, not even close. But you know what? I try. I really do try every day to just be the kind of person that when I look at my Savior and when I talk to Him again,  I’m trying to do right. I’m trying to be good, you know?

Ashly

Yep.

Missy

So, yeah, that’s my story.

Ashly

Love it.

Missy

That’s where I was and where I’m at.

Ashly Stone  56:25

So amazing. What a powerful testimony. I am so happy that you came on the podcast. I love stories of addiction and recovery, because obviously, I connect with my own story, but I love hearing somebody’s change of heart and how somebody can completely change, fully, 100%. And I don’t know, your story is so beautiful, and so many things you said just really resonate with me. I’ve seen it in my life, and I’ve seen it in my husband’s life, how it’s one thing to get sober, but it’s another thing to have your whole life completely transformed, as if that was another person in another life. You know?

Missy Lane  57:12

It really feels like that, doesn’t it? I mean, it really, really does. You know, we all have our own struggles. I am a single parent and those things. And those are some of the questions my brother was asking me when we were having that conversation about his talk, just how do you deal with it? How …? I don’t deal with it. I’ve been promised an eternal companion that I’ll work in a temple with. I don’t deal with anything. I’m just living. I’m just living the way that I need to, to get the blessings that I’ve been promised. And I know that they come. To take that one step further, you know, talking to my parents as we’re adults, not only is my story evident, but I was that person. At a certain point when my parents just kind of accepted who I was; I was calling them while I was drunk, just goofing off. You know what I mean? I was thinking I was just the funniest. I’ve talked to my sisters and all my family, just drunk. We joke about it now, right? But I’ve asked my parents, “How did you get through it? I know what I did to you.” I feel deeply what I did to them and how that must have been for them. And, you know, my mom said at a certain point, “We just had to think about what we’ve been promised, and we just had to take a step back, and we just had to keep living our life the way that we knew we were supposed to live our life. Because we were promised that our kids would be [inaudible].” And that’s all of it. It takes all of us just accepting and having that peace of knowing that you just need to be and to live, and to just keep going forward on the path. And some days you might take three huge steps, and some days it might literally be a shuffle, but just keep moving. We’re all going to have the blessings that were promised, He doesn’t fail us. We fail, but He does not.

Ashly Stone  59:06

Missy, you are amazing. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to meet with you tonight and have you on the podcast. Are there any final thoughts before we wrap up?

Missy Lane  59:17

You know, before I came on here, I was told by people who know my story, that it’s impactful and that there’s someone that needs to hear it. I said a prayer before I came on here, that whatever was supposed to come out of my mouth would, and whoever was supposed to hear it that they could. I really do hope that in some way, this helped someone, somewhere. If it did, then I just feel amazing. And I appreciate you so much for this interview.

Ashly Stone  59:40

Well, I know that it made a difference for me, so I know that so many people will be impacted by your story. So thank you so much, Missy. Thank you.

Missy Lane  59:50

Okay, appreciate it.