Stephanie Roberts
Jim Killackey, Staff Writer
Published: July 27, 2008
Now in her 30s, Stephanie L. Roberts of Oklahoma City doesn't have much in her troubled lifetime to brag about.
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Sexually abused as a child. Binge drinking in high school. Shoplifting. Purse-snatching. Three children by three different men. Domestic violence. Stripper.
Addictions to cocaine and marijuana, and living on the streets.
“I haven't been relationship material,” Roberts said of her past.
In 2005, she hit rock bottom. She pleaded guilty to child neglect. Her children were gone.
Jailed and suicidal, her life was primarily redirected by the Sister to Sister program of the Oklahoma Citizen Advocates for Recovery and Treatment Association in Oklahoma City.
The group of women gave her recovery tools and gave her a support system she'd never had before.
Long-term sobriety was the goal, and she achieved it.
“If they could do it, I could do it too,” Roberts said of other women in the program.
Drug addiction, she stressed, is a disease. “I thought my addiction would go away, but it didn't.”
Now sober, Roberts urges all Oklahomans with drug addictions to seek assistance. “Ask for help. There is help out there,” she said.
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