It was so much more than winning a National Championship...

Mar 8, 2017, 11:41 PM

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It wasn’t ‘just another game’….

My mother is one of those 'extremely passionate' Clemson fans. You know the ones that pop in the 1981 National Championship VHS tape on a rainy day and get just as excited as the day it actually happened and she can recognize the likes of Perry Tuttle or ‘The Fridge’ in a grocery store 30 years after they played their last game for Clemson. I have absolutely no recollection of our first game together for the simple fact that I was 6 months old when she took me to Blacksburg, Virginia for Clemson's season opener against Virginia Tech in 1985. I hear that Clemson scored on the very last play of the game of that game, making it a thrilling victory for the Tigers.

In that moment my mom could have never fathomed that her precious Clemson clad daughter would go on to live a life of booze filled days and drug infested nights. She raised my brother and me to love the Lord and always do the right thing so she never thought she would receive one much less multiple calls from various jails informing her that her daughter had been arrested again. My mom didn't prepare herself to go months without knowing where I was or even if I was alive or dead. Nor did she know that she would have to raise her granddaughter when the state deemed me unfit to parent my own child.

While in active addiction, we sever lifelong meaningful relationships with friends and family in pursuit of our high. We shut out the ones we once loved and shun the people that care for our well-being. One of the people that I cut the most ties with while using was my mother. We had become opposites. My love for booze and drugs had surpassed the love I had for my own mother. Her disapproval of my lifestyle drove a wedge between us and I refused to care. The fact that my mother cared about me was threatening to my lifestyle and I resented that. Familiarity breeds contempt, a statement never so true to an addict.

After agreeing to enter a treatment program, I thought my life was over. I was filled with self-doubt and self-loathing and the only antidote to these feelings that I knew, drugs and alcohol, had been ripped from me. It was heart wrenching. After completing treatment, I slowly began to mend past positive relationships, even with my mother. This took time and effort on both of our parts and trust was eventually regained. I began to enjoy my mother's company and she mine. Early sobriety is the time of our greatest confusion. While we are still in that peculiar state of expecting everyone to congratulate us, we learn quickly that is not the reality of life but my mom was able to look within me and see something worth believing in, long before I believed in myself.

In January of this year, I was in a place I never fathomed I would be. I stood with my mom at a stadium in Tampa Bay watching our beloved Tigers play. We watched while Clemson methodically moved down the field to score on the very last play of the game with 1 second remaining, claiming the coveted National Championship title. Tears streaked down our faces, we hugged, we cheered, and in the midst of the deafening crowd noise and the confetti swirling around I couldn't help but think of the road that led me right there to that moment. In sobriety, ordinary life becomes extraordinary and there's no better high than a life you're proud of. A tradition that started 31 years ago in Blacksburg, Virginia was still going strong because by the grace of God I was alive and thus far sobriety had made true on all of its promises. That night in the back of our minds, we were not only celebrating a Clemson victory but a victory over addiction that brought a mother and daughter back together again.

Written by Ashley Hiers; sober for 5 years and currently working at a treatment center in Rock Hill, SC which provides the opportunity every day to spread the message of HOPE to those still suffering from the insidious disease of addiction.

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