Amy Brune: Finding Recovery and Becoming the Person She Needed

Growing up alongside addiction

Amy describes growing up in Hazel Park, Michigan, in a family shaped by her father’s substance use. She remembers him as funny, charismatic and adventurous, while also describing the instability that addiction brought into their home. Holding both truths at once is important: a person can be deeply loved and still cause real harm while unwell.

By her early teens, the family’s situation had deteriorated. Her father lost his business, the family home was lost and Amy struggled to sleep, eat and stay engaged at school. She began smoking and experimenting with substances while moving between friends’ homes. Her account connects substance use with pain, fear and a lack of safety rather than presenting it as a simple bad choice.

When substance use took over

As a teenager and young adult, Amy’s access to alcohol, prescription drugs and other substances increased. She writes about unstable relationships, arrests and repeated treatment episodes. Short periods without drugs showed her that change was possible, but she had not yet found lasting support outside controlled settings.

Motherhood brought a period without substance use during pregnancy. After her daughter was born, prescribed opioids and a return to other substances were followed by heroin use. Amy describes how quickly physical dependence developed and how obtaining, using and withdrawing from heroin consumed her days. The drug no longer offered relief, yet stopping felt beyond reach.

A turning point through drug court

Following an arrest, Amy asked her attorney to help her enter drug court. Her decision was influenced by someone she had met in treatment who had shown her that sustained recovery could exist in ordinary life. That example mattered because Amy says she had grown up without seeing people recover in her community.

Drug court involved accountability, treatment and a structured recovery environment. Amy entered a women’s treatment program and marked her daughter’s second birthday while in recovery. Her story does not frame one moment as a cure. It shows how willingness, legal accountability, clinical care and visible recovery role models can work together.

Building family, purpose and community

Amy later married a man she first saw participating in the same court program. In her published account, she describes ten years of recovery, another daughter and a life rooted in the recovery community. She went on to work as a recovery coach in local drug courts and as a recovery community coordinator with a nonprofit.

Her father also experienced a decade in recovery before dying after a return to use involving fentanyl. Amy writes about the relationship they repaired and the years her children had with their grandfather. That loss strengthened her commitment to reducing shame and helping families talk openly about substance use disorder.

• Seeing another person recover can make change feel possible.
• Treatment and accountability can provide a bridge, but community helps sustain recovery.
• Recovery can include grief while still making room for family, purpose and joy.
• Speaking without shame can help the next person ask for support sooner.