Oregon law to decriminalize all drugs goes into effect, offering addicts rehab instead of prison – By Lindsay Schnell (USA Today) / February 1 2021
PORTLAND, Ore. – For Janie Gullickson, rock bottom came both slowly and all at once.
A long time drug and alcohol addict, Gullickson pushes back on the idea that one terrible day on the street leads to an epiphany and a climb back to normalcy. That’s what happens in movies, not real life.
“I lived in the bottom for years,” says Gullickson, now 52. “For me and people like me, I laid there and wallowed in it for a long time.”
But if she has to pick the lowest point – one that lasted years, not days, she says – it came shortly after she hit 30 in 1998. At that time, Gullickson had five kids by four different men, ages 5 to 11. She came home from work one day as a locksmith to find that her ex-husband had taken her two youngest and left the state. Horrified, devastated and convinced that this was the beginning of the end, her life quickly spiraled: She dropped her other son off with his dad, left her two daughters with her mom and soon became an IV meth user.
