Julie fought drug addiction for over thirty-eight years. She came to ATS's outpatient program because she was “ready to face reality.”

She began coming to ATS per her probation requirements and admits that in the beginning she was only coming in order to satisfy those requirements. “I don’t think I was ready to accept what I could be.”

She was in a therapy group at that time and had a few one-on-one sessions with a therapist. Upon satisfying the requirements of probation, she moved to Florida to be with family and “isolate herself” from a co-dependent relationship with a man in Traverse City. However, she returned to that relationship in June of 2010 and, at the same time, began doing weekly one-on-one treatment sessions in the ATS outpatient program. She told her therapist that she was ready to “let go of living in a fantasy world and face reality.” 

She says that one of the most powerful things about ATS was “having someone here who grew to know me and could call me out on my shit.”

Julie has now achieved more than eighteen months in recovery.