SATURDAY December 21, 2019 BARTOW COUNTY’S ONLY DAILY NEWSPAPER 75 cents Childhood friends journey through substance abuse recovery BY JAMES SWIFT friends off the fi eld. “Everybody had it when you
[email protected] By the time they were high were cruising through town,” school freshmen, Proctor and Proctor said. “We had a bunch At fi rst glance, Bartow Coun- Gordon found something else to of rave days … I don’t know how ty natives Lauren Proctor and bond over — substance use. we got away with the things that Jessica Gordon seem to be exact Gordon said she started drink- we did.” opposites. ing when she was just 14. She Proctor grew up in a well-to- became an intravenous drug user Trauma and Treatment do family and spent her child- at 17. The “good” times, however, hood in some of the community’s Proctor described herself as a didn’t last for long. ritziest, upscale neighborhoods. “garbage pail kid,” who used just Gordon wanted to join the Air “Everything was handed to me about “anything and everything,” Force after high school. Instead, on a silver platter,” she recollect- starting with cocaine. Marijuana, she turned to hardcore drugs ed. “I wanted for nothing, I need- Naturally, they attended rival methamphetamine, acid, GHB post-graduation. ed for nothing, everything was schools. While Proctor was a and heroin use followed. Over the next 17 years, she was always paid-for for me.” proud Cartersville Purple Hur- “I just thought it was fun, I in and out of jail, prison and boot Gordon, meanwhile, grew up ricane, Gordon was an equally had a blast,” she recollected.