Ericka Alston: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told (Transcript)

But not that me, like not this me, like the me I used to be, like the me I was on May 26, 1996, like the homeless, hopeless, broken me.

See, I am an addict, addicted to crack cocaine. I was passed on the streets. Like you’ve seen me. You’ve talked about me and you roll your windows up and you put your purse out of the passenger seat on the floor when you see me.

So I want to talk to you today about dispelling the myth, that once an addict always an addict and they can do better if they want to do better. It’s easy to get off drugs. They only get high because they want to get high.

So on May 26, 1996, like I threw a suicide attempt — I no longer wanted to be her. I didn’t want to feel like that anymore, I didn’t want to look like that anymore. I didn’t want to smell like that anymore. Like on May 26, 1996, I was like finished, like living the life of getting and using and finding ways and means to get more, like and then I never found anything. Like being a crack at it your full-time drug is getting and using and finding ways and means to get more. Like I wake up and I come to in the mornings, and my only responsibility is to get one more.

And in my getting and using and finding ways and means to get more and more. I was often the last person outside when the street lights went off. And you were in your homes and your lights were coming on. And you were getting ready for work and you were waking your kids up for school. You were giving them breakfast and putting clean clothes on them. And I was outside, like, by myself pretending to be you.

Like, what would it be like to be like mommy? What would it be like to be like this professional woman with a job and a career and people to come home to? Like I’m standing outside pretending to be you. Like I just don’t want to be me anymore. Like I just want to close the gaping hole in my gut. Like I don’t want to be outside but I don’t have anywhere else to go. Like I’m homeless, hopeless, and broken. So I am – she, not me, because surely I’m not her, because if I were her like you wouldn’t invite me to your networking events. I wouldn’t be on your boards. I wouldn’t volunteer at your kids’ schools. You wouldn’t ask me to mentor your students if I told you my real story Facebook lady.

And when I wanted to close the gaping hole and I didn’t know how to stop using drugs because no one ever told me that you could stop using drugs, remember you roll your windows up and lock your doors. No one told me that I could go somewhere and learn to live a new way of life. Remember you cross the streets because I stink.

So while I’m pretending to be you and waking your kids up for school, I’m forced to remember the mommy I tried to be. Like I’ve got children, the women that you pass outside used to be mommies. I’ve been a mother since I was fifteen years old, but getting and using and finding ways and means to get more, I lost the ability to be nurturing. I’ve got to find one more, by any means necessary.

So in the beginning, I would tell my children I’m going to get you something to eat, and I’ll be right back. And in the beginning, I came right back. And the right back turned into hours and hours turned into days. So imagine one moment being the mother who tells her kids I’ll be right back and you never come back. Hmm, or you come back and your children are gone. But because you suffer from a disease that has no known cure, it’s fatal, because you’re suffering from the disease you have no ability to even knock on a neighbor’s door and say, “Have you seen my babies?” I wanted her to die.

So she took a 5600 milligram Motrin. You never told me I could stop, you rolled your windows up and you locked your doors. You crossed the street when I was walking next to you. You clutched her purse when I asked you for money to get something to eat, you said, “No, she’s just going to buy drugs” and you didn’t help feed me.

So this conversation — my talk today is about dispelling the myth that once an addict, always an addict, that we don’t recover, that we can’t do better, we won’t get better, we won’t go anywhere. We are stuck in this endless vicious cycle of active addiction. So I go to Penn-North. There, they’re 12-step meetings there. I never heard of a meeting; no one ever told me to come go to a meeting, a meeting. Meetings were for business people. I wasn’t a business person. I was the person stuff outside, pretending to be you.

So at Penn-North — 600 people a day come into Penn-North for 12-step meetings. Did you know that you were passing 600 of us every single day? And I didn’t steal your money.

So many of you told me how pretty I was today. Thank you. I used to look like JJ from Good Times, not Thelma but I suffer from this thing that, like every time I saw my reflection in the car window in my homelessness and my hopelessness and my brokenness, I was beautiful. Crack is something. I was supermodel fantastic with that afro, not this afro, that afro.

So I go to Penn-North nineteen years ago and in the interim I’ve become a publicist and I’m this professional person. I said I’m on your boards. And Penn-North opens a community resource center. So while I’m at my foo-foo job at the radio station, you’ve heard me, you’ve seen me. You didn’t know my story.

So I got this foo-foo job at the radio station, I make a whole lot of money. I’ve got a great life. I hang out with people that look like you — you people and your boring lives. And I laugh at jokes that aren’t funny and I hang out with people that I really don’t like because that’s the kind of stuff that you have to do to be in that circle.

So when I want to be around real people, I go to the hood. So I go to Penn-North every day because they – like, there’s a cook there and he makes homemade soup and it’s $2 and it’s cold outside and every day I leave my foo-foo job and I leave from hanging out with you people, boring people. I am going to laugh at your corny jokes because I go to Penn North and I get $2 soup. You can go to Boat & Hill and get your fancy $12 sandwich.

You didn’t know who you were talking to yesterday; did you? So I got this $2 soup and I’m going in and out of Penn-North every day and they’re – they’re young addicts, they’re there 18 to 25 years old and they are magnetically attracted to me. They could — these girls keep coming to me and they keep talking to me, because I don’t look like addiction. I work at a foo-foo radio station. I’ve got this fancy job but I’m just like them.

And they talk to me and they tell me all their problems. I’m like, ah, I never had any interest in being in human services ever. Like you make no money helping people. I am hashtag team six-figures. Be a teacher, be a social worker, me? I’m working for the radio station, eating $2 soup every day at Penn-North and these girls keep talking to me. And it’s one o’clock in the morning and I get a text message and it says, “I’m not pretty enough. I’m not smart enough. Nobody loves me”. And I pick up the phone and I call the number back and they don’t answer.

She texts me back and she says, “I don’t want to talk. I just want to vent”. Well vent and she proceeded to vent and I called the number back and she doesn’t answer. She said, “I said I don’t want to talk”.

So three o’clock in the morning my phone rings from that strange number and I answer the phone. And I say, “Who is this?”

She says, “It’s me. You’ve met me at Penn-North. I talked to you”.

I said, “How old are you?”

She says, “I’m 23.”

I said, “What’s your drug of choice?”

She said, “Molly?”

“What the hell is Molly?”

She said her drug of choice was Molly and in that moment I knew that there was a huge disconnect, like a 23 year old goes to Penn-North at a 12-step meeting and she goes and she hears old people tell their story about shooting heroin and smoking crack and she only does Molly. So how — where will she hear her story? How is she comparing? Will seek an opportunity to stop using drugs like I got an opportunity to stop using drugs.

So I knew right there that there was something I needed to do but I am team hashtag six figures, I’ll help you from a distance little girl because I’ve got money to make. And I went to work one day at the foo-foo radio station I got fired. I got fired.

And a month before I got fired, the conversation that I had with that girl, the last words that I said to her was: “You are extraordinary” and in that moment The Be Extraordinary Project was launched. It was a support group for young women in recovery ages 18 to 25, for them to meet with people just like them, where we set goals, realistic goals, and we identify the steps needed to reach the goal, because my thought was if we have some accomplishments we feel better about ourselves. When we feel better about ourselves we make healthier decisions. When we make healthy decisions, they don’t include drugs and alcohol.

So I created The Be Extraordinary Project and I got fired. I have no money. The Be Extraordinary Project, I get paid a stipend, $50 a week. And I show up early and I stay late. That foo-foo radio job, I got there late and I left early. So I’m making 50 bucks a week and I’m helping these girls and I get fired and I go home, Eddie. And Eddie says, you know what you have to do now?

“Team six figures, yeah. I’ll find a job with a whole lot of money”.

He says, “No, you need to dedicate 100% of your time to the girls at Penn-North. You need to be the extraordinary project, you need to do it. So I had a plan. My friend Jerome — you don’t know Jerome. Jerome looks like me and he has 22 years clean, you wouldn’t hide your person in Jerome either, because we’re tricky like that.

So Jerome says, “You need to meet Blaize.”

That’s Blaize. That’s Blaize. Blaize is the Executive Director of the Penn North Community Resource Center.

So in my less than 18 minutes, I need to tell you that we had a plan to bum-rush Blaize. He says, “We’re having a meeting at Penn North. You need to be there 1:30. I’m going to text you. We open the door, bum-rush Blaize. Okay, Plank did it, got there. Before I met Blaize, this crazy little white lady with purple hair came to talk to me. And she says, “Who are you?”

Well, I lost my job. I didn’t know who the hell I was. So I said, “Hey, I’m the executive director of The Be Extraordinary Project. My name is Ericka Alston”.

She says, “Slow down. Say it again”.

I said, “My name is Ericka Alston. I’m the executive director of The Be Extraordinary Project”.

She said, “Say it again.”

I said, “My name is Ericka Alston. I’m the executive director of The Be Extraordinary Project.”

And she said, “Yes, you are.”

So I met Blaize, and Blaize said that he wanted to meet me at twelve o’clock on Friday, and to come and tell him my plans for The Be Extraordinary Project. And I met Blaize at twelve o’clock on Friday.

And Friday, when I talked to Blaize, he said, “What’s your plan for Be Extraordinary”. And before I met with Blaize, I met with Eddie and I said, “Eddie, if I go and I talk to Blaize, and I tell him I just want $300 a week, hashtag team six figures, do you think that we could live off of $300 a week?”

Eddie said, “Hell, yeah that’s $1,200 a month.”

Eddie just wanted something at that point because they’ve been three months — and all night look we had nothing. He was like hell yeah go get that $1,200 girl!

So I thought I’d meet with Blaize and I keep the $300 a week in my head but I’m talking to him and Blaize says, “Well, I’ve got visions for our organization and I want to do A, B and C.”

I said, “Well, you should try EFG.”

He said, “Well, I would really like to do TUV”.

I said, “Well, you need to meet Elemental P”.

And he says, “Well, how do you know this stuff?”

And I said, “Well, I used to be a publicist. I don’t want to be that anymore because now I’m extraordinary, I just want to help people.”

So he said, “Sometime over the weekend I need you to send me an email and in the email I need you to tell me how much you want to help us do what I need to do for the Penn-North Community Resource Center.”

And I sent him the email on Friday night at 11 o’clock. And a 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, I became the director of public relations, marketing and business development for the Penn-North Community Resource Center.

And one month later, Freddie Gray was murdered. And I said he was set on fire. And I’m the publicist for an organization at Penn-North. You were watching it on TV. Well, you’re watching on TV I’m saying excuse me Mr. National Guard, I got to go in that building. And every person that I had an opportunity to speak into a microphone said, “Our children need resources. Our children need recreation centers.”

And I said to Blaize, “Why can’t we be it? Why can’t we be the wreck?”

And Blaize handed me a key to 1,000 square feet and we became it. So while I am here talking to you, they’re laying the carpet into a former vacant laundromat. You showed up and you donated everything. We have flat-screen TVs, we have Xbox gaming systems. We are a safe place for children of Sandtown-Winchester. We’re the place that kids go when they get home and mom has said I’ll be right back and we know she’s not coming back. So they can come and watch TV.

We’re the place that they can kind of watch the Disney Channel because the utilities will shut off because mom is getting and using and finding ways and means to get more. We’re the place that kids get to go when they come home and mom and dad are fighting, and they don’t have a bed to hide under. So they come and hang out with us.

And people that don’t look like me, people that no longer put their purses on the floor and lock the doors, show up with $800 cash to buy flat-screen TVs, purchase their first snowball. I saw you buy our first snowball from our snowball stand.

So now when I tell my kids, “I’ll be right back” I’m just going to go to a TED talk. They know I’m coming back. They know I’m coming back. So I hope in this you’ll rethink what addiction is. You rethink what recovery looks like. Maybe when you pass me by, you’ll stick around long enough to hear the answer if you ask me how I’m feeling. So through self-love, self-acceptance and self forgiveness, I fell in love with her on May 26, 1996 and no one in this room can dispute that it’s been the greatest love story ever.

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