Kristen Johnson: From Addiction to Advocacy

From Stability to Spiral

Kristen Johnson grew up in what she calls a “really good family.” Her dad walked through the door every day at four o’clock like clockwork. No abuse, no alcohol, strong values. But Kristen felt different from early on.

“My whole life, I didn’t know what it was and I had nothing to compare it to, but I was just super sped up, like super fast,” Kristen told me. “I was in the gifted program. My mind was just always working a million miles an hour.” She brought home violins, guitars, joined the band. Her parents would ask if she ever got tired.

Right out of high school, she started partying and met a guy in a bar. She had no idea he had a drug problem because she didn’t know what it looked like. When she got pregnant, she stopped using. He got sober for three or four years. They ran a business together, had another baby. Things looked stable.

Then he relapsed hard. “Somehow we’re running a business. He went to Phoenix one time and somehow got hooked back up with somebody and he’s just off and running,” she said. The law was after him. He went to jail, came out paranoid and dangerous. One night, he took the doors off their house, had a knife, was in what Kristen now recognizes as meth psychosis.

She called her dad with $11, no shoes, no clothes. Her husband kept calling, threatening to come down. Then the calls stopped. Six months later, DPS found his skull where he’d been missing for 18 months.

The Long Stretch of Legal Pills

After her husband’s death, Kristen says she “consciously chose” to go off the deep end. She got involved with another guy who was even worse. They got busted together. While she was in jail, a different man kept showing up at her house when she got out. He’d been a federal corrections officer and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Six months later, when she went back to jail, she called him. “I’m going to get clean. I need $500.” He came and picked her up. That’s her husband now.

For what Kristen calls 15 to 17 years, she stayed mostly clean. Her husband raised her kids like his own. But she had debilitating neck pain and spinal stenosis. A doctor prescribed her pain pills and Valium. She knew she was addicted, but it was legal.

“Pain pills really speed me up. Alcohol really speeds me up. So I don’t drink much,” she explained. But by her late thirties, her mental health was declining. She kept telling her husband, “I’m going to lose my stuff.” The marriage started suffering. They stopped talking completely.

The Bag on the Floor

One day, Kristen walked into the back of the business she managed. There was a little baggie on the ground. Meth. She knew exactly what it was.

“I pick it up to take it and flush it down the toilet. That’s not what happens. I go in the bathroom after all these years and I snorted it,” she said. After years of being legally medicated, she was off and running on street drugs again.

She used for about a year while her husband had no idea. They still weren’t speaking. She felt completely separated from him and started talking to someone from high school on Facebook. Nine days after kicking her husband out, she moved to California with this guy to grow weed and make wax.

Death and More Trauma

In California, Kristen tried to get off pain pills and Valium by using “natural” weed. But she didn’t know you can’t just quit benzos cold turkey. She had horrible withdrawals. Her boyfriend, an alcoholic, convinced her that a couple shots of vodka would help. “I told him I will become an alcoholic. I can’t do that,” she said. Within two months, she was a raging alcoholic.

She left him and moved to Sierra Vista, Arizona, where she had an uncle. By this time, she’d lost her house and her car. Her fall from soccer mom and business owner to barefoot woman buying wine at Dollar General was very public and very fast.

Then her nephew Bradley showed up, struggling with meth and mental health issues after military service. One night she fell asleep sick, and when she woke up, he’d left with someone. She couldn’t find him and called her family. Her niece told her to turn on the news.

Bradley was in a high-speed chase, saying he was suicidal, that he wasn’t a harm to anyone. “All of a sudden they throw the spikes out. He goes off a cliff. He dies,” Kristen said. It was devastating. She’d lost a younger brother in a drunk driving accident years before, and now Bradley, who was like a son to her.

The Arrest That Changed Everything

After Bradley’s death, Kristen was carrying large amounts of drugs around town. She had weapons because “with large amounts of drugs come weapons.” She was completely out of her realm but running with what she calls “the gangsters” in town.

One day, driving back from getting her nails done and shopping at Victoria’s Secret, she saw a sheriff in her rearview mirror. She knew immediately she was going to be stopped. When she pulled over, six police cars surrounded her. They found a weapon with one in the chamber and a meth pipe next to it.

They couldn’t find the drugs during the initial search, but Kristen knew they had her. “Before I get there, I’m like, well, I’m going to jail. So I just hand her. I just reaching my shirt and hand her these drugs.” She thought cooperating would get her a break. It didn’t.

At the jail, they found three more baggies in her shirt during the strip search. Now she had transportation of dangerous drugs for sale, misconduct involving weapons, drug paraphernalia, and promoting prison contraband charges.

The Moment Everything Changed

The prosecutor offered five years flat. No negotiation. Kristen kept drinking and getting into more trouble, including a DUI crash that seriously injured someone while her grandson was in the car. More felony charges piled up.

Finally, her brother Chris connected her with Andre Norman, who insisted she go to rehab before he’d help with her case. The rehab helped some, but when she went to court, the prosecutor recommended seven years on top of her five-year sentence.

The day of sentencing, her whole family showed up, including relatives who hadn’t spoken to her in years. The judge was someone who’d been her lawyer 20 years before. She’d written him a letter about wanting to go back into institutions and help people.

Then her brother Chris stood up. “There’s a quote by Victor Frankel that says, what is to give light must endure burning,” he told the judge. “My sister’s done some burning. She absolutely deserves to be in prison. But my sister has a light to give other people.”

The judge took a ten-minute recess. When he came back, he looked directly at Kristen: “I’m going to do something that’s going to not make me popular today. But I believe you.” Instead of the additional seven years, he gave her five years of probation.

“I knew I was blessed that day,” Kristen said. She went back to prison to finish her original sentence, but now she had hope and a second chance waiting for her on the outside.