Fifteen-year-old Cathy Som’s life changed in 1968 when she became the victim of a hate crime. Although the police offered her psychiatric help following the incident, her mother insisted it wasn’t necessary. Cathy went from being popular to feeling ugly and ashamed to return to school.

She began smoking marijuana, and after the age of 21 started drinking. Her two marriages involved excessive drinking, and yet treatment for the alcoholism did not deal with the internal anguish she was experiencing. “I knew something was wrong with my brain. I felt mentally tormented and confused. But, in the 1980s there was no such thing as dual diagnosis, and treating the substance abuse didn’t treat the core problem.”

Cathy had been sober for four years when a series of intense life stressors confronted her over an 18-month period, and she began drinking again. Eventually, the drinking turned to even more serious drug use, including a dependence on amphetamines. In 2001 she decided to kill herself and was placed in a locked inpatient psychiatric unit. A referral to Kitsap Mental Health Services teamed her with a therapist she could trust and who recognized and addressed both her drug and the mental problems, especially the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that had begun 33 years earlier.

Today, Cathy has celebrated three years of being clean and sober. She holds a job, bought her own home and, most importantly, she has a purpose – to help other people know they are not alone and that help is available. She still has moments that are rough, but she knows she can get through them. “I’m okay now and never thought I would be. I don’t want to forget where I came from, but I don’t want to go back there. I feel like I cut off from life at 15 and now I’m starting to live again.”