Long road to clarity
By EMILIE PHELPS Special to the Daily Press
PICO BLVD. — For nearly Jennifer Carslake’s entire existence, drugs and alcohol have been her passion. For the first half of her life, it was about abusing them. Now, at 41, it’s about helping others become free of them.
After nearly three decades of addiction and the effects of it — living in abusive relationships, numerous run-ins with the law, losing custody of her daughter and living out a truck, Carslake has spent the past three years sober. She hopes to soon be a drug and alcohol counselor at the CLARE Foundation in Santa Monica — the rehabilitation center that helped her clean up her life.
The CLARE Foundation is a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center that has facilities throughout Los Angeles, but primarily in Santa Monica and Culver City. The facility specializes in programs including detox; 30-, 60-and 90-day rehab; a men’s recovery house and women’s recovery house; sober living; an outpatient program and a thrift store.
Even though her mind was clouded from crack and alcohol, Carslake remembers vividly the day she stood outside CLARE on corner of Pico Boulevard and Ninth Street waiting to take a giant leap of faith in her attempt to get sober.
“There was booze left in the bottle and drugs left in the pipe and I didn’t want to let those go; those were my true love, at that time. That’s what I thought,” she recalls. “I was convinced that was it — that was the end all, be all, great love affair of my life, but that was all just a big lie.”
Carslake successfully went through detox at the Santa Monica CLARE facility and went to live at the foundation’s women and children’s facility in Culver City where she learned how to live life sober and take responsibility for her own actions.
Born in Long Beach in 1965, Carslake has meandered over much of Southern California to feed her addiction. Beginning at 10 years old, Carslake was getting drunk and high with her mother and stepfather at their Malibu Canyon home.
After her mother split from her stepfather, she and Carslake moved to Venice.
“I was going to John Adams Junior High in seventh grade, and I was still getting loaded, taking acid in math class,” she said.
At 13, her mother, who was in the throes of her own an alcoholism and drug addiction, moved them to San Diego in an attempt to Carslake away from the substance abuse. The move didn’t change much, but a frightening four-day blackout after her 16th birthday triggered something in Carslake and drove her to fight for sobriety.
Carslake successfully tested out of high school in San Diego, and moved away from her mother at 18. After four years of sobriety, a prescription for Percodan from oral surgery put her back on the edge. She hit the drugs and alcohol hard throughout her 20s and 30s.
Even after being arrested numerous times, getting thrashed in abusive relationships, and having her daughter taken from her, Carslake still had an unquenchable thirst for “getting loaded,” as she put it.
Carslake recently sat down with the Daily Press in the administrative offices of CLARE, the place that helped save her life and hopefully will now help build her future career as a drug and alcohol counselor.
How did your mother feel about your drug and alcohol addictions when you were young?
“I either stole them from her or she taught me how to use them. She was of the mind that if you’re gonna do it, do it at home, at least it’s a safe environment, and let me get them for you so you don’t buy bad drugs on the street. Whatever. Makes perfect sense, right?”
HOW AND WHY DID YOU BECOME SOBER AT 16?
“My mom took me drinking for my 16th birthday and I had a four-day blackout, and I called her best friend and started going to (AA) meetings. That scared the hell out of me, yeah. I mean, I had had blackouts before, but never for four days, where I didn’t remember anything that had happened, and apparently I was still up and running basically the whole time, which is really quite frightening... I was sober for between three and four years after that.”
HOW DID YOU FEEL WHEN YOU WERE SOBER?
“I felt good. Yeah, life was better. Where I was in north county San Diego, I was like the youngest person, I was like 16 years old, and at that time, you know this was in the early ’80s, at that time recovery isn’t like it is now... There were not young people in the rooms of AA and Narcotics Anonymous. So I felt still a little isolated, but good, you know I was sober and of course I was quite sure that I was cured and had it down, therefore I was quite sure I would have no trouble taking Percodan, and then having a glass of red wine because I never liked that, and then we can fast forward and I moved back to LA in 1989 when I was 24.”
WHAT HAPPENED ONCE YOU GOT TO LA?
“So I came up here to go to bereavement therapy, which was four weeks... and I’m here still, 17 years later. I got stuck. I got that counseling, but what happened was I moved back in with my mom, so I started using heavily again. I mean I was using in San Diego, but it’s a lot easier when you have a partner in crime, you know... (I) got involved in a very, what turned out to be a very abusive relationship, had a child with the man — I have an 11-year-old daughter right now — and was with him for seven years on and off. This whole time we were getting evicted from apartments. Before I got pregnant with my daughter we were living in the back of a truck, you know, bathing out of a bucket with cold water from a faucet in a garage — just not pretty stuff at all.”
WERE YOU OK WITH THAT KIND OF LIFE?
“Life completely sucked but I couldn’t really see that. I felt like I was treading water and every time I could get up to take a breath someone was pulling me back down... I really had a very heavy battered woman’s syndrome thing going on... It was kind of like I had abandoned myself to protect myself, and I was physically there, but emotionally and spiritually I wasn’t present.”
DID LIFE CHANGE AFTER YOU GOT PREGNANT?
“I stopped doing everything except for smoking pot and drinking the occasional beer when I was pregnant. So the cocaine was not there, I wasn’t selling drugs anymore, I went and got a regular job. I think I was doing market research at the time or something... It was like my first 40-hour-a-week kind of job where I was stuck in an office, that kind of thing. (I had my daughter) just before my 30th birthday. She’s born in January of ’95, and her dear old dad almost killed me in June of ’97, and that put us back in the position of being on the streets because we had to leave, because he really seriously almost killed me. I was like yellow and green from head to toe, and I had stab marks.”
HE BEAT YOU?
“Yeah, like six hours of it. My daughter was present in the house. He hadn’t done anything since I had been pregnant. I was like, ‘Oh, now he’s Mr. nice guy,’ you know, but he was-n’t. Because when (the violence) came back, it’s like alcoholism. It’s progressive. So she witnessed that, but I was able to get away from him that day.”
HOW MANY YEARS DID THAT LAST?
“About three. Eventually what happened was I got a job as a production assistant, working with these musicians, and I got involved with one of them. My grandfather died and I inherited of $100,000... The guy I was with, after two years of being OK, he turned into kind of Mr. psycho, because we had enough money to spend $1,000 a day if we wanted on drugs... I had started catching cases, like I got a DUI. Oh, for a while, here was another great career choice: I was transporting marijuana to Memphis, Tenn., across country, and I got busted for interstate transporting at one point.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 3, 2006. Read the original PDF.