No stuffed animal goes unloved in Jill's household.

First in a seriesJill began buying pain pills at age 18, the same year she graduated from Butler Senior High School.She did not have a prescription.Life got worse before it got better for Jill, whose real name is not being published in this article to protect her identity. She describes the home she grew up in as abusive, and in the process of beating her addiction she uncovered repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. In her early 20s, life felt bleak.“Truly, I thought I was going to be dead by 30,” she said.Getting sober At 23, Jill finally managed sobriety with the help of a rehab program. Six months clean, she moved into a shared living space for women recovering from addiction. Jill was pregnant during her stay at that home. The father was another addict who she met in rehab. Right after moving out, she gave birth and moved back in with her mother. “I didn't want to raise my daughter in a three-quarters house with a bunch of other women,” Jill said.Four months into motherhood, an argument with her mom got both Jill and her infant kicked out. Her relationship with her mother is rocky. Jill still doesn't speak to her father. The couple went through a divorce when she was young. Jill said it was an old boyfriend of her mom's who molested her. The path to recovery forced her to deal with those old feelings, along with other trauma.“I was molested when I was 4 or 5 years old,” Jill said. “My parents were divorced. I just grew up in an abusive home.” For so many, addiction arrives as the world's worst hand-me-down. Molestation, neglect or even just childhood exposure to substance abuse can throw a switch in the brain, rapidly stacking the odds against a child. So often, society's next generation to be lost to addiction is raised by those with their own substance problems.

This is an excerpt of a larger article that appears in Sunday's Butler Eagle. This article is also the first in a series. Subscribe online or in print to read the full article and have access to the rest of the series when those articles are published.