Love and Life After Lockup – Brittany Dodd-Santiago Talks About Addiction

 

Addiction is real and does not discriminate. Anyone can fall deep into it and become an addict. While others escape its grasp, not many can say the same thing. There are so many people out there who are suffering from addiction, fighting their way into recovery. Brittany Dodd-Santiago was one of them. Brittany Dodd-Santiago became a reality star when she appeared on Love after Lockup and Life after Lockup. Her memoir, One Woman’s Journey: Surviving the Streets, tells about her struggles with addiction and what she learned. In this episode, she joins Julia Lazareck to share her story from when she was a young, innocent woman introduced to drugs to overcoming addiction.

You’ll not only hear Brittany’s story, you’ll also learn about the tools that helped her and what everyone should know who has a loved one with an addiction. She’s blossomed since she’s been released and is happily married with three beautiful children. Listen to Brittany’s back story, the current story, her passion for helping people understand addiction, how important support is, and what you can do to help your loved ones.

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Love and Life After Lockup – Brittany Dodd-Santiago Talks About Addiction

There are all kinds of hidden sentences that we serve, whether it’s an actual prison or our own internal prison. In this episode, we’re going to meet reality star, Brittany Dodd-Santiago, who served both. We’re honored to go on her journey with her through her story. It’s her incredible story of being an innocent young woman who was introduced to the drug. She describes how it made her feel and how she overcame her addiction. Brittany met her husband while incarcerated, and her releasing union with him was filmed on Love After Lockup.

They continue to follow their story on Life after Lockup. She tells her story in her memoir One Woman’s Journey: Surviving the Streets. She’s blossomed since she’s been released and is happily married with three beautiful children. Brittany gives back through the nonprofit, After Orange. They provide support to help ex-offenders get acclimated back into society so that they can be successful. She’s taken what she’s learned and providing them with what she didn’t have. Learn about what she learned, and what you need to know about addiction from the inside out.

Learn about how prison changed her life. Listen to the back story, the current story, and her passion for helping people understand addiction, how important support is, and what you can do to help your loved ones. You can contact Brittany at BrittanySantiago@AfterOrange.org. Brittany’s book One Woman’s Journey: Surviving the Streets and my book, Prison: The Hidden Sentence, can be purchased on Amazon. Let’s meet, Brittany.

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Brittany, thank you so much for being here.

Julia, thank you so much for having me. I’m honored to be here.

We’ve got a lot of things to talk about. I know something that’s near and dear to your heart and also will help people understand what addiction is, not only from the person that has been through it, but also to help people on the outside understand.

Addiction is near and dear to my heart. It is a topic that I’m extremely passionate about. Addiction is real. It does not discriminate whatsoever. Anyone can become a drug addict or have an addiction of their own. I know a lot of people come from a mindset of saying, “No. I would never use drugs. I would never do this.” There are also hundreds of people out there that have said the same thing that are now either recovering addicts or heavily addicted or in the middle of their addiction. I ended up using methamphetamines for the first time when I was twelve years old. I ran away from home and didn’t know where to go. I was scared and had run into a group of people. They offered me to use drugs. I didn’t know what it was or what I was doing, but I knew that I didn’t have anywhere to go.

I ended up using methamphetamines for the first time. I did not like the way it made me act, but I liked the way it made me feel, and that was the problem. I ran away because of a lot of childhood trauma and a lot of pain at home. I knew that if I would run away somewhere else, I could find somebody who loved me because I never believed anybody at home ever loved me. When I was on methamphetamines, I didn’t feel anything anymore. I didn’t feel any pain and I liked that. I did everything I could to stay high. I was off and on homeless teenager all the way up until eighteen when I was incarcerated for my first time. It’s very difficult.

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I never thought that I would become a drug addict. I was a very sweet young girl. I always tried to do the best I could in school and to be the best friend and sister because I have three younger sisters. Here I was, a homeless teenage drug addict, living on the streets, being abused, being manipulated by people who knew how old I was but teaching me how to commit crimes. While I do take accountability for my part in everything in my life, I was very young and naïve. I was manipulated into things that ultimately landed me in prison.

Your first time in prison, you’re eighteen years old. You were saying, when you came out, you thought you would never go back. Put some light on that too for the families, for people on the outside when their loved one comes home and if they do re-offend.

One thing I want to make clear is that when I went to prison at eighteen years old, I did not have any friends or any family support in the system at all. I was fighting the 25 to a life sentence on a felony that I did not commit. I was present at that time, but I did not commit. I’d reached out to my mother, father, grandparents and never got a response. I became very depressed, bitter and lonely. You got to understand at eighteen years old, I’m detoxing heavily for methamphetamines, and the prison system does nothing to help you with your detox. They throw you in a cell. They don’t care if you get dehydrated or you are for drinking water. They don’t care if you’re eating. They don’t check your vitals.

They throw you in a jail cell and that’s it. That’s how I detox from drugs. I am not ashamed about going to prison. I ended up getting a five-year sentence. Prison saved my life because I knew that I didn’t want to be high anymore and I didn’t know how not to be high. I needed to be in a situation where I could be forced to get sober so I could have a second of clarity to try to think and map my life out. I would look around at the other inmates in there. No judgment, most of the people in there are not ashamed to be in there in a negative way. They’re almost proud of it and boast about it a lot. When you’re trying to change your life, and you have a family at home that loves you, misses you, supports you, wants you to come home and be a good person, and all you want to do is try to change, but you’re surrounded by people that want you to do bad, it is difficult to change.

When I realized that, I knew that if I didn’t do something that changed my life in prison, that I was going to go back. I did everything I could to change, but I grew up in prison. I was a child when I went to prison. I didn’t get out until I was 23 years old. I was so self-driven and motivated to succeed. When I got out, I did not have an example of success to follow, but I was not going to allow that to be an excuse. I got out. It was the very first time I was an adult in the free world. I was sober. I never had somebody teach me how to cook or how to get a job or how to do any responsible things that adults do in this world.

I had no idea, but I knew that I never wanted to go to prison. I knew I never wanted to sleep outside or cry over an addiction that I didn’t know how to get off. I ended up going to a reentry program out here in Las Vegas. I never went to high school a day in my life because I was a homeless teenager. I didn’t let that stop me. I went and got my GED. I went and got into college. I was studying Psychology. I was hoping to become a counselor or give back and help people because I felt like I had a lot to offer. I got my first apartment. I ended up getting my first car. I felt good and so successful.

Everyone around me was proud of me and all of my accomplishments. I ended up getting into a committed relationship. I do now have one son from that relationship. He’s the apple of my eye. He’s such a sweet little boy. I never, in a million years, thought that I was ever going to go back to prison. My significant other at the time had been to prison as well. He had kept talking about wanting to cook methamphetamines and sell them so he didn’t have to work. He could have money and we didn’t have to want anything. Instead of judging him, I continue to try to support him and encourage him to do better.

Time progressed, it was, “If you don’t want to do meth, let’s do coke.” It was peer pressure. I had never been around peer pressure before. I never went to high school. I was never in any of these situations. I ended up doing cocaine with him and that was the beginning of my relapse. Meth use started happening when we couldn’t find any cocaine. One thing led to another. It led to a toxic relationship. I remember being alone, ashamed and depressed because I never wanted to relapse. I never wanted to use drugs.

After telling somebody that I trusted over and over again, “I don’t want to get high, please.” You found me in that one moment when I was weak, and I said yes. I was in that same situation I was in when I was a little girl. I didn’t know how not to be high. I didn’t have anybody trying to help me get sober. I didn’t know what recovering meant. I didn’t know what programs. I didn’t have any of that knowledge. I wanted to be a good mother.

I’ve a question about the first time that you were incarcerated and you went through detox. Were there any programs in the prison at that time?

There weren’t a lot of programs available. I can talk to you about when I was in prison the first time and I went through detox because I’m knowledgeable on the topic now. At that time, I didn’t realize that I was going through detox and there were programs available. I kicked meth in a cell by myself. I didn’t have any of that knowledge under my belt at the time of my relapse.

That’s an important point that what you learned is going to help people that are reading. If they have a loved one or if they themselves are incarcerated if they have an addiction that there are programs out there now to be aware of that will help them.

There was a little bit of infidelity at the end of my relationship. The betrayal I felt from that on top of being heavily addicted to meth, once again, caused me to go on a self-destructive path. I ended up hanging out with people that were on drugs, in bad areas, committing crimes. I went to prison again for being in the area or being surrounded by people who committed a crime because I was there and didn’t report it. I got charged for the crime that was committed. I ended up going to prison the second time. Before I get into that, I want to make it very clear that one of the biggest things that I learned from going through all of the childhood trauma, a drug-addicted, homeless teenager, in prison the first time, trying to be successful and having a relapse a second time is that if you know better, you will do better.

If you need to put a nail in a piece of wood but you don’t have a hammer, how are you going to get it done? That hammer is missing. What I realized was that I needed to work on my toolbox because if I had the know-how to have boundaries for myself and to respect myself, then when he asked me to use drugs, I perhaps would have said, “No. Because you’ve asked me, I know that you are not somebody that I can trust any longer.” Instead of being codependent, naive and believing that, “He loves me. He trusts me. He has all good intentions for me.” No one that has good intentions for you are going to encourage you to use any kind of narcotic. That is my own personal opinion. When I felt that betrayal from him, alone and ashamed, if I had different tools in my toolbox to know how to deal with that emotional trauma, then I would have been emotionally mature enough to deal with it instead of using it as an excuse to relapse on drugs.

That was the first time that you experienced love or that you thought somebody loved you. You were in a situation.

I was in only one other relationship prior to that. I don’t even know if I should even be referring to it as a relationship because when I had run away at age twelve, I had met someone who was almost 30. I was with him for years. It was a lot of pedophilia going on, sexual abuse and things like that I’ve talked about in my memoir. That was the only and that wasn’t real love. When I came home from prison the first time and I was in this relationship, I was proud to be with him. I was proud to tell my family that, “I’m pregnant. We’re having a baby. I’m in college. We have our own place. We’re doing all of the things that society deems successful.”

That was a point where you had every right to be proud of where you came from, coming out and working on making a good life. It was, unfortunately, somebody that didn’t have your best interests. You’ve got a beautiful baby from it, so you move on.

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I am sad that I did re-offend, but at the same time, I’m not because that two years I did on my second prison term was crucial and detrimental to the woman that I’ve become now. When I re-offended, I was angry, bitter, mad and I blamed everybody else around me. I blamed my parents for not ever helping me or being there for me. I blamed him for talking me into using drugs and cheating on me. I blamed everybody. I realized in that moment that I had to get out of a state of blame and out of a state of anger or else I’m never going to have room for growth and never going to change. What I decided to do now that I knew I was going to have a little bit of time to do and I knew from my first prison experience that there weren’t a lot of programs for self-change.

What I did was I did get on a pen pal website and people that I was corresponding with because I didn’t have a lot of family and friends support for my second term. I was writing to strangers and we were having a good conversation. The only thing I ever asked them for is self-stimulating, motivational books or self-help books. Instead of going downstairs and hanging out with other inmates and playing cards, I sat in my bunk. I read these books because I knew if I knew better, I would do better, but I didn’t know how to do better. I didn’t have anyone around me pouring knowledge into me. My whole entire life, I’ve had people pouring negativity into me and always encouraging me to do the wrong thing.

I don’t know where I got all of the willpower to do it on my own and find the knowledge, but I’m happy that I did because that second term in prison, I fell in love with myself. I got to know myself. When people ask me, “Who are you?” I had an answer. I didn’t just give my name. I was able to become a better woman and a better person. I took every single class that I could. I had this little saying I like to say, “Take the meat and leave the bones.”

Not everything is always going to pertain to you, but if you’re trying to learn about something, take the knowledge that you can. You don’t have to always agree with everything. I took any classes. I went to AA classes, I read every single book, and I didn’t care what faith-based it was. If it was something that I followed or not, I still read it because it was still wisdom, power and knowledge. I did everything that I could to succeed. I am happy to say that I have been out of prison for a few years. I do consider myself to be very successful.

It’s something that I hear a lot and we talk to people about, especially families on the outside to talk to their families because whoever’s in the prison system, it’s their choice what they do with that time. They can help themselves make themselves a better person. You’re a prime example of that.

It’s hard.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but you’ve got to have that inside.

If there is anyone that has loved ones in prison, my advice to them would be to definitely send books that help with self-care. People need to learn how to love themselves because people don’t love themselves. Going quick back to addiction, if an addict doesn’t learn why were they using drugs to begin with or what their voids are in their hearts that they were filling with drugs, they’re more likely to relapse and re-offend than if somebody deals with and acknowledges those issues or those reasons for addiction. The biggest thing for me was breaking free from the mental obsession. I do think that recovery centers are helpful, but I will say from experience and from what I’ve learned that a lot of them are based on getting your body to physically detox from a drug.

If your body could be free for X amount of time, then you’re more likely not to relapse. However, I believe it’s all a mental thing because my body can be free of drugs for years. All of a sudden, I’ll be in a situation because I haven’t dealt with my mental obsession with the drug even though I don’t think about it every day, I could be in a situation that triggers me. It’s my mind that’s going to tell my body, “Get high. You want to do that drug. You can handle it. You’re in control.” Do you have to overcome the mental obsession in order to break free from chemical dependency?

 

That’ll help a lot of people understand it too, especially to somebody that has a loved one that’s re-offending or relapsing. It’s hard.

I was dealing with my best friend. She had a terrible heroin addiction. She didn’t get high because of the reasons I did. I got high because I was sad and I didn’t want to be sad. Now I know that it’s okay to be sad and allow yourself to feel that, and it’s healthy to feel that once in a while. She got high simply because she enjoyed the drug. She liked it. I don’t know what to do for that particular situation besides trying to find more happiness outside of it than in it because addiction is not fun. Everyone’s reason and life are different. Everyone’s path is going to be different.

My mother is having a problem with pain pills and has a bad pain addiction to opioids. Dealing with her in the beginning was difficult for me because I was trying to force my will upon her. I want to encourage anyone else out there to remember it has to be their choice. You can’t force your will upon anybody, but I was adamant like, “I can save her. I can help her. I can change her because I did it. This is what I did. I know this is going to work for her.” Not everything works for the same person. If somebody is like, “Go to AA,” but AA doesn’t work for them. Instead of still trying to force somebody into something that doesn’t work for them, we have to try to find other areas, other options that work for that particular person.

I hope that people that are reading out there keep this advice because it is the cure for everybody. The way for people to improve, to get better is different because you don’t know what the root is. You have to get to the root of the problem. Let’s talk about your second time coming out. The second time you came out, they filmed it. What was it called?

I’m a television personality on Love After Lockup. I’m on the spinoff of that, which is Life After Lockup. That whole adventure was crazy. As I said, I was on a lot of pen pal websites. I had gained a lot of friends. About a year before I was released, I received a letter from my now husband. When I received his letter, I instantly knew he was different. We started corresponding and then over time, started dating. I know that it sounds funny to be dating an inmate, but he would come to visit me. We were on dates. He came to every single one of my court dates and supported me.

It was the first time in my life that I had a support system. For anyone out there, that is somebody else’s support system, and you feel like it doesn’t matter or you’re not doing enough, you were doing wonders because I’d never had a support system. When I felt what it felt like to have somebody believe in you and love you, it made a world of difference in my life, a huge, significant difference. He and I planned to be together upon my release. It was about a month before I was getting ready to parole. I had called him to say good night. He was bugging out about this show he had seen and how it was all based upon people dating pen pals that they met in prison. He was like, “They’re looking for new cast members.”

I was like, “Send them an email.” I always knew that I wanted to share my story. I knew I had a lot to offer with things that I have been through mostly because I’ve somehow found a way to overcome them. I knew I had something to give to people. I was like, “Send them an email and see if they’re interested in our story.” He did. They did a couple of phone interviews with me. They loved our story. The day of my release, it was 7:00 in the morning.

I was still handcuffed and shackled. When I stepped off the bus at the Parole and Probation Department, they were there. A whole camera crew, lights, camera, action, producer and audio man. It was real. It was very intimidating. We’ve been doing good ever since then. I’ve been home for a few years and they’ve been continuing to follow our story. Our ups and downs because no one is perfect, and no relationship is perfect. I’m happy and honored that I’ve been able to share my story for this long.

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That was Love After Lockup.

Also, Life After Lockup on We TV.

People can always go back and see Love After Lockup and Life After Lockup. See how beautiful Brittany is and her story. I know there are ups and downs. You have a beautiful family now.

I’ve had two more children since I’ve been home. As soon as my husband met my son, they instantly had a connection. My son wouldn’t know any difference. It’s like, “That’s his daddy.” He has Giovanni now. I’m happy that I was able to give him his own son and his own daughter because he didn’t have children prior to our relationship. We are a busy family of five.

I wanted to also talk about your nonprofit. You are the vice president of After Orange. That’s how you give back now.

I’m proud of this because it is such a huge accomplishment. I am the vice president of After Orange. It is a nonprofit that is working hard to help ex-offenders get acclimated back into society. One of my dearest friends, Cassandra, has been branding After Orange and trying to turn it into a community to try to have community support the same way as you have. I encouraged her, “Let’s turn After Orange into a nonprofit. Let’s do this and start making a difference.” She did. Now she’s the president. I feel honored that she made me the vice president. We’re doing everything we can to get awareness to our nonprofit and start working toward getting transitional facilities open so we can help people that are getting directly out of prison and give them the best opportunity that they can have to succeed.

I have firsthand experience and then her sister was incarcerated for a long time. She knows what it feels like to be on the outside and I know what it feels like to be on the inside. We’re thinking about all of the reasons why somebody could fail coming out of prison. We’re trying to find a solution to resolve and solve all of those problems. We’re not going to save everyone, but we’re going to try. We’re going to do our best. I’m proud and honored to be a part of After Orange.

This is for men and women. You’re providing them with what you didn’t have when you came out the first time. You are teaching them skills and showing them how to be in society.

The first facility that we’re trying to get opened, we’re trying to get it to be an all-women’s facility. We’re getting it P&P approved for inmates to live there.

 

P&P is for Parole & Probation.

To get Parole & Probation-approved for inmates to live there together, it goes a lot better if it’s not necessarily co-ed. To my knowledge, there are a few transitional living facilities in Nevada for men, but there’s none for women. There might be one. We’re going to focus on getting the one for women open up first and then branch off to getting other transitional facilities open to help men and women. What our goal is to implement a program, so people aren’t just in a sober living house, not doing anything, trying to get a job and then not working on getting those tools in the toolbox that they need to succeed. We’re going to implement a goal sheet and a structured program. Anything that we could do to help the inmates succeed and not fail.

That’s important for the family too because a lot of times when people come out of prison, the family isn’t prepared for housing somebody. It’s not the same person that’s coming out. Having a place where they can come into society, assimilate, learn new skills and even technology changes. There are so many things to get people assimilated when they come back that not only benefits them but benefits their family if their family’s around. It benefits the community because you’re going to have somebody that’s coming back into society. They’re coming back into your neighborhood and you want them to be healthy. You want them to be able to be successful. This After Orange is going to help many people. Your book is also going to help people. You did a memoir, One Woman’s Journey: Surviving the Streets. It’s your first of your trilogy.

That was such a huge accomplishment. The hardest part about writing a book is writing the manuscript. Get the manuscript done and then everything else is a cakewalk. I knew a long time ago that I always wanted to tell my story, but I never knew how. Once I became in the public eye, being on television, my social media platforms blew up. I got more positive responses than negative, but there were the negative people that were judgmental and criticized like, “You’re a prisoner. You’re a nobody,” and whatever else they were saying. Instead of being offended by it, I realized that they think that I’m just an inmate or I’m nobody or a low life because they don’t have any understanding.

If they understood, maybe they’d have a different opinion. It inspired me to tell my story because people do not wake up one day and say, “I want to be a drug addict. I want to be a career criminal.” There was always a chain of events that happened in occurrence in someone’s life. A lot of very wrong decisions along the way that gets them to where they’re at in life. I told my backstory because people only knew that I was coming home from prison. I wrote my memoir, I told my backstory to give people an understanding of what people go through that end up in prison and in places like that.

Some of the things we spoke about are in your memoir, in some of the work that you do and in your talks are helping people understand what it’s like when you’re going through addiction. You did touch on things that people on the outside can do. Is there any other advice you have or helping family members to understand what the person is going through that has the addiction that ends up re-offending?

I have a lot to say, and at the same time, it’s hard to find anything to say because that’s difficult. The first words of encouragement I would have is never to take anything personally. You never know what kind of battles or what kind of demons someone is fighting. Not everyone’s story is the same. I’m dealing with my mother’s addiction. I could easily be crying and feeling sorry for myself like, “Why doesn’t my mother loved me? Why doesn’t she want to spend time with her grandchildren and me?” Instead, I’m coming from a place of love and understanding and I’m not taking it personally. I understand that she is fighting battles and demons inside of herself with her addiction that prevented her from being able to be the person that perhaps I need in my life.

Right now, it’s not about what I need. People have to sometimes get out of their own way of wanting their needs to be met and get out of the idea of wanting somebody to be somebody so bad. If we could all step back and be like, “This person in my life is an addict.” It doesn’t mean they’re going to be an addict forever but if you find true acceptance, then you come out of that place and you stop judging people. You come from a place of purity, of love and you can start trying to help without criticizing and putting them down. How many times have you tried to help your son or your daughter or your significant other get sober and you can’t? Now you’re at a place in your life where all you do is yell and scream or try to force your will upon them.

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We have to get out of that cycle because it’s not going to go anywhere. A person will change when they want to change or they know how to change. I’m learning this with my mother, and it’s not easy. I don’t have the answers for everything, but what I’m learning with my mother is I have to accept her for who she is because, in the very beginning, all I would do is yell and scream at her. We would fight because I didn’t want her to be the way that she was. Once I realized that I was trying to have control over the situation, I had to let go of control. I had to accept my mother at that moment for who she was.

She doesn’t just have a pill addiction. Her pill addiction drives her to do things like steal from her children and the list goes on and on. Here we are still in her life, trying to help her recover and have some happiness in her life. The first step is to accept somebody and then try to find solutions. You never have a problem as long as you have a solution. If everyone’s answer isn’t the same, then find the correct answer that’s suitable for the person struggling with their issues.

You provided a lot of awesome information and it’s going to help a lot of people. I hope people read your book, listen to your podcast and provide whatever you need for After Orange because that’s going to help a lot of people. We can reduce recidivism. We can keep people from re-offending because you don’t know, one of those people coming out of prison might be somebody that saves the world. If people want to get in touch with you, do you have a website?

If they have information about the nonprofit, they can go to AfterOrange.org.

That’s a good way to learn more about that. They can go to Amazon to get One Woman’s Journey: Surviving the Streets.

They can also get my personal email at After Orange, which is BrittanySantiago@AfterOrange.org.

Thank you so much for your time. It’s wonderful speaking with you. I’m excited to see what you’re doing and maybe we can do this again once you get those facilities up.

Thank you so much for having me. I would like to further our partnership and work together. I feel like what you’re doing is an amazing thing because people need support, understanding and help. I’m excited about the future. I appreciate you for having me.

Important Links:

• One Woman’s Journey: Surviving the Streets
• After Orange
• BrittanySantiago@AfterOrange.org
• Prison: The Hidden Sentence

About Brittany Dodd-Santiago

Brittany Dodd-Santiago became a reality star when she appeared on Love after Lockup and Life after Lockup.

Her memoir “One Woman’s Journey: Surviving the Streets” tells about her struggles with addiction and what she learned.

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