"I've been addicted to alcohol, then pain killers, flu tablets and cocaine. I accidentally shot a little girl, had a mental break down in front of my co-workers, lost my job, got a boyfriend, went away to rehab, found out my boyfriend was using drugs, got attacked by my boyfriend in his sleep and my co-workers found out about the attack before trying to beat him up; all in the space of about a month.
I think it's safe to say they were the toughest few weeks of my life.
Nobody ever once told me that quitting drugs was going to be easy and obviously there is a really clear reason for that. It's not.
Add in the pressure of being a cop and you've pretty much got a recipe for failure. And that's what I believed I was; a failure. And I know that many of you sitting in this room will feel the same as I did. But your not. The fact that you are able to admit that you have a problem is amazing. It's your first step on the way to success.
Throughout my ordeal I felt alone, I felt as if nobody could understand what I was going through. I sat where you are sitting tonight and I looked up at these people and said how can they help me? They don't know what I feel. But I was wrong. They may not know the struggles you face at home or school or work but they know what it is like to be fully dependant on a substance that takes over your life.
I had someone offer me their hand, they were going to guide me through my journey and help me make the best decisions I could and I threw their guidance right back in their face. Frankly, that's the biggest regret of my life.
To sit here and say that you a stronger than everybody else and that you don't need someone to help you along, is one of the most selfish decisions a person can make. I unfortunately had to find this out the hard way. Most of my time I thought I was fighting a losing battle. That giving up drugs was impossible and could not be done. And most of the time, I know you will feel the same.
You see, it can be so easy to just give up and go back into bad habits. What does it matter? It's not like you're hurting anybody right? You're hurting yourself and in doing so, you're hurting anybody that ever trusted you, anybody that ever stood up for you and believed in you. You're giving in to everybody that thought you were a failure and letting them win.
Giving up drugs is not easy but…but it can be done and I am living proof of that.
I have been clean for 11 years now and if you met me 11 years ago, you would not know I was the same person.
The man who offered to help me through my addiction, who I let down was also my boyfriend. 2 years later he was my fiancé and now he is my husband and the father of our 2 kids.
For a moment in my life, I believed I had no future. There was nothing worth living for. Until he came into my life. He was a broken down, recovering addict suffering from post traumatic stress disorder who one night almost beat me to a pulp because of his night terror. But throughout everything we went through, we went through it together and came out on top.
After 4 years I was able to get my job back and back onto the team who witnessed my break down thanks to Cocaine.
I'm not going to lie to you, I was lucky. But my luck had a lot to do with what I learnt at NA and from my experiences at rehab.
It's not going to be easy but…if I can do it, believe me…so can you."
Jules stepped back from the podium as the hall erupted in cheers and claps. She walked over to Sam who placed his arms on her hips and kissed her passionately.
Jules was once a woman afraid of failure. Now, she realised that in order to succeed in life, you need to have learnt from your failures. And she had done just that.
Thank you to every single person who ever reviewed, favourited, alerted etc! This was my first fan fiction EVER and i enjoyed it so much.