Alaina Knox

From a moment of clarity to a life of purpose

Alaina Knox was first prescribed pain medication in her early twenties during a difficult chapter in her life. What began as physical relief quickly took on a deeper role.

“I was prescribed pain medication and was also in emotional pain,” Alaina says. “As soon as I put it in my body, I felt a sense of relief I hadn’t felt in my whole life. In the beginning, I was a functioning addict. I functioned until I didn’t anymore.”

Her substance use escalated over time, leading her through cycles of treatment, recovery and relapse. She experienced housing instability, sometimes staying in shelters and other times sleeping outdoors.

“Finally, the universe intervened and put me in a position where I had to sit with myself,” says Alaina, adding that she was incarcerated for two years for drug related felonies.

As the time behind bars was concluding, Alaina was “dry” but hadn’t been part of a recovery community or gotten to the roots of her addiction. She couldn’t go back home, where her much-younger sisters were still minors. And she was resistant to the idea of going to sober living.

A Moment of Clarity Behind Bars

Then, while Alaina was still in prison, someone offered her drugs. At the last minute, an inner voice told her not to do it.

“The following day, I was randomly drug tested,” Alaina says. “I had this freedom that I now understand to be a Higher Power. If someone would have offered me that chance at that time, I was later paroled to a long-term sober living community and agreed to stay for three months and go back to her previous life in Pennsylvania, being the ‘well version’ of herself.

“Instead, the three months went by, and the change that I felt in myself was so profound that I decided to stay for another three months,” Alaina says, adding that she ended up staying 14 months in total. “It created a good foundation. I needed to stay in sober living long enough that it became a part of me, and I could create structure in my own life.”

While still in sober living, Alaina started a new “get well” job at a pizza restaurant with other members of the recovery community, and she was amazed to be given a key to the safe. “People in my life trusted me with small things,” she says, “and I wanted to do right by them, because my addiction was no longer making me things that I didn’t want to do.”

Alaina eventually rented an apartment with a friend she met in sober living and began supporting other women in recovery, even some who are still incarcerated today and are eager to learn about finding a solution. Life continued to grow from there. Today, she lives in Portland with her husband, Dylan, who is also a member of the recovery community, and their two cats, Nugget and Muffin.

“I made these changes slowly,” she says. “Finding the life I wanted didn’t happen overnight.”

After prison and sober living, Alaina tried several other jobs. Eventually, she landed at Sweetser, where her friend had coordinated training for the grant-funded Peer Training Network that equips people with lived experience to work in peer support roles. Six months later, Alaina was promoted to Director of Recovery Services, a role in which she supports people with substance use, mental health challenges and life-interrupting trauma.

“I get to work closely with professionals who have lived experience like me,” she says. “I never thought I’d find a job where I could share in a group of people in leadership about my lived experience and have that be a valuable contribution.”

At 36, Alaina is five years sober and living a life she loves. “I would be embarrassed to even ask for this life,” she laughs.

A key to her sobriety has been connecting with others, holding each other accountable in a loving way, and sharing not just recovery but all of life’s ups and downs.

“I have a community and a life now that I don’t want to give away to a substance,” she says. “My life is not a glittery today because I’m not entirely obsessed with how I feel and what’s happening with me. That’s how I stay well. I used to think that if I lost all of this, that I wouldn’t be okay. And then I lost those things and was still okay. Now I know that the only thing I can’t live without are my sobriety and my Higher Power. Instead of focusing on what I don’t have, I’m trying to cherish what I do have.”