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InvisibleBridgeburner
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One Day At A Time: Drugs and alcohol became Katie Toro's escape from reality.
    #8552546 - 06/22/08 11:15 PM (15 years, 10 months ago)

http://calibre.mworld.com/m/m.w?lp=GetStory&id=311437551

This life story has all the earmarks of a made-for-TV movie: drugs, alcohol, handicaps, abandonment, lies, rocky relationships, twists and turns -- and a happy ending.

Katie Toro may be petite and in a wheelchair, but her story is powerful.

Now the Decatur resident is making a difference by telling it to others in group therapy sessions at Quest Recovery Center in Decatur.

Katie, 27, was born in Miami with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. She had to stay in the hospital for weeks, and her adoptive family was told that her parents left her at the hospital because they did not want a child with health problems. Katie learned that harsh truth around age 10.

She was adopted by Mary and Frank Toro, who lived in Miami before moving to Decatur when Katie was in high school. Their family included six girls and three boys, most adopted after their youngest biological child was born with spina bifida.

"I had a lot of anger toward my adoptive family and thought they had played a part in it," Katie recalled. "I started doing little things to hurt them before I started doing drugs and drinking at age 13."

When she was 14, they learned what she was into and asked why. "Because I know you're lying to me," she said, referring to her background. Her adoptive mom then gave Katie the information they had been given about her biological family names and country of origin: Columbia.

Katie's original name was said to be Lorena Osorio. "I kept that in my mind my entire life, through all my using and drinking," she said.

"My adoptive parents did the best they could, but I had a lot of abandonment issues," said Katie. "I felt unwanted and unloved."

When a friend asked if she wanted to try some stuff, Katie did, and she liked the numbing effect.

"First there was LSD and a six-pack of Budweiser. I did LSD for a long time," she said. "And I smoked marijuana every day, all day long."

She had been taking narcotics since she was a baby for health reasons, "so that was an automatic addiction for me. Then I tried cocaine, but I didn't like it, and I did meth a few times, but I liked amphetamine pills better. The only thing I haven't tried is Ecstasy and mushrooms.

"I drank a lot of whiskey, going back and forth between Jack Daniel and Crown Royal," said Katie, who was known as a "double shooter." And to get her drugs, she participated in a lot of "unsafe behaviors."

"Somebody would call and ask me to hold their dope, and I'd say sure and then smoke or swallow some," she said.

Hitting bottom

For a time she lived in a drug house, leaving the week before a bust, and she ended up living in her car.

Katie never seemed to have any money, though she had been on disability and Supplemental Security Income and received financial aid to go to college for a while.

"I didn't go to class much, but I was a very good manipulator, with my wheelchair and my sweet, innocent, childish look," she said.

Her adoptive parents didn't know the whole story until she went into substance abuse treatment. After confrontations, they had asked her not to come around anymore, considering the impact on their household.

Road to recovery

Katie arrived at Quest Recovery Center for the first time four years ago.

The center, at 4110 U.S. 31 S., is affiliated with the Mental Health Center of North Central Alabama and provides outpatient substance abuse treatment and prevention for those in Morgan, Limestone and Lawrence counties, based on ability to pay. Inpatient programs also are available, and Katie sometimes wonders whether she should have chosen that route.

"I hit a few bumps in the road," she said. "I left to taste the waters again, and then came back three years ago. That time I stayed with it, probably because I was very depressed and didn't want to live."

Suicide attempt

She took an overdose of pills and later found herself in a hospital. That 2005 suicide attempt was when she hit bottom.

Katie still remembers her counselor's assessment: "If you don't straighten up, you will die." Cherie Lytal was new at Quest herself then, but over three years they have bonded and become old friends.

"When Cherie told me I was going to die, it came to me that I had totally lost myself. I don't know how I got to the hospital the day of my overdose," she said.

"I was a very angry person, and I call that the demon of drugs and alcohol."

Today she lives independently in her own apartment and drives a van with hand controls.

The 2000 Austin High graduate completed her associate degree at Calhoun Community College after getting clean. Now she is working on a bachelor's degree at Athens State University, and she hopes to become a therapist.

Helping others

"My passion now is helping others," Katie said, so she volunteers for Quest, speaking to groups, helping facilitate sessions, handling copying, shredding and clerical work, and helping with a research survey.

"One day at a time" is the motto she and many others follow. Though she has made it through the struggle to deal with her birth situation, she knows not to become complacent. She continues to attend 12-step meetings two or three times a week, as well as church. She was raised in the Catholic Church and now attends Beltline Church of Christ.

'An inspiration'

"Katie is an inspiration to so many people coming in and out of this building because of her perseverance despite surgeries and other obstacles," said Lytal.

She has had nearly 10 surgeries for shunts because of the hydrocephalus she was born with, including three shunt revisions in four months a few years ago. Because she wanted to be off drugs entirely, she refused painkillers even after brain surgery, taking only Tylenol.

She is not on anything today, and laughs when she says she has become a homebody, rather than the party animal she was for several years.

"The main thing I had to do was get honest with my innermost self," said Katie, who at times used her diagnosis of depression as an excuse, too.

"Today my problem is I have a drug and alcohol problem and I can't put any of it in my mouth, because it brings out the monster in me."

Want more?


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InvisibleDickhead
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Re: One Day At A Time: Drugs and alcohol became Katie Toro's escape from reality. [Re: Bridgeburner]
    #8552948 - 06/23/08 02:05 AM (15 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:


Today she lives independently in her own apartment and drives a van with hand controls.





Sweet!


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Multiplied

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InvisibleTTT
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Re: One Day At A Time: Drugs and alcohol became Katie Toro's escape from reality. [Re: Dickhead]
    #8554317 - 06/23/08 12:51 PM (15 years, 10 months ago)

LSD has a numbing effect? And did she really put Budweiser and acid in a sentence that almost makes them sound like equal things? whatttt

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OfflineIrieforester
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Re: One Day At A Time: Drugs and alcohol became Katie Toro's escape from reality. [Re: TTT]
    #8554673 - 06/23/08 02:44 PM (15 years, 10 months ago)

Who the fuck offers LSD to a chick in a wheelchair?
Quote:


    Quote:

    Today she lives independently in her own apartment and drives a van with hand controls.




Sweet!




I lol'd


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I am still and forever learning

Apollyphelion said:
You can learn A LOT from shitting in the right set and setting!:thumbup:

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OfflineDragonChaser
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Registered: 04/27/06
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Re: One Day At A Time: Drugs and alcohol became Katie Toro's escape from reality. [Re: Bridgeburner]
    #8555084 - 06/23/08 04:49 PM (15 years, 10 months ago)

Sounds like spina bifida, being rejected by her birth parents, and some other things are the source of her problems here, not drugs and alcohol.


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My name is Mud

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OfflineKatieAT
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Registered: 07/03/08
Posts: 1
Last seen: 15 years, 10 months
Re: One Day At A Time: Drugs and alcohol became Katie Toro's escape from reality. [Re: DragonChaser]
    #8591385 - 07/03/08 12:28 PM (15 years, 10 months ago)

To answer some of you guys questions, I am Katie.. I drank a six pack of budlight and LSD, as far as the effects of acid yes the beer didn't do much.

Just, because I am in a wheelchair does not make me not human and like other people, I made decisions on my own no one made me do it.

drugs and alcohol was and is a symptom of other problems, at least in my case, I was the problem, I made poor decisions we all do. I won't blame anything on anyone or anything.

Just to clear up some curiousities.

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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
Re: One Day At A Time: Drugs and alcohol became Katie Toro's escape from reality. [Re: KatieAT]
    #8591402 - 07/03/08 12:35 PM (15 years, 10 months ago)

Thanks for posting, Katie. Best of luck to you in the future. :cool:

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