THE terror didn’t hit Jana Brown until she looked in her mirror and realised her 11-year-old son was sitting in the back seat while she was blind-drunk behind the wheel.
After a day-long binge, she had driven him to get a haircut and back home, completely intoxicated and barely in control of the vehicle.
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For years, Jana had managed to hide a lethal double life. Racking up six police arrests and surviving two near-fatal overdoses from smoking cigarettes laced with illegal drugs – she had thought she could control her habit.
The 44 year old mum from Texas, US, first began experimenting with drugs after her parents separated, when she was just 13-years-old.
Things quickly spiralled and by the time she turned 17, Jana had left her family home and suffered her first overdose after taking too much of the illegal drug GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate).
She overdosed again two years later after mixing alcohol with what she describes as ‘dip’ – a cigarette dipped in the synthetic drug PCP (phencyclidine).
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“I was addicted to being high,” she admits.
For years, she struggled with substance abuse and finally hit rock bottom when she drove her young son while under the influence.
Jana, now an entrepreneur and faith-based women’s health and wellness coach, would take anything she could get her hands on to get high.
“I used marijuana, alcohol, pills, ecstasy, acid, GHB and cocaine – anything that let me escape is what I gravitated to, and I didn’t really care what it was,” she says.
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“I’d roll out of bed and smoke, then do whatever I could get my hands on that day, and just repeat it the next day.
However, she admits the relentless need to be intoxicated only left her feeling “worthless” and like she had “no control”.
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Despite her parent’s split, Jana’s childhood had been happy, with her parents keeping her and her sister busy with sports.
By the time she was 17, she was going to parties with friends where she would drink quantities of GHB so large that she would no longer be able to stand.
On one occasion, she woke up in hospital with charcoal coming out of her nose after doctors pumped her stomach.
Two years later she overdosed for the second time which put a massive strain on her relationship with her mum.
“I didn’t speak to my mum for two years,” she recalls.
“I had friends tell me flat out they weren’t going to hang out with me as long as I was drinking. It bothered me, but it wasn’t really a wake up call.”
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Despite the near death experiences, neither overdose immediately stopped her drug use.
Jana went on to be arrested six times, all in connection with drugs and alcohol.
She never served a prison sentence, but spent around six to eight weeks in jail in total.
Jana says: “I honestly didn’t care about being arrested repeatedly. Now I feel ashamed.”
Her life changed in 2001 at the age of 20 when she met her husband Tremayne while taking a drug awareness course as part of her probation.
The pair initially partied together, but later became Christians and stopped using drugs and went on to have two children.
But tragedy struck in 2008 when her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident, aged 29.
“I didn’t believe it, I was in shock,” she recalls.
She managed to stay sober for around six months after his death before beginning to drink again.
“At the height of my addiction I was very isolated and no one knew,” she says. “I was buying alcohol from multiple locations to hide the frequency and my children had no idea.
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“I’d spend maybe $200 (£147) a month on alcohol.
Luckily though, Jana was in a financially stable enough place so as to not let the habit get in the way of caring for her children.
“I did very well financially and also collected social security death benefits which helped me provide for the kids so they never went without anything,” she says.
“My alcohol binges typically took place when my kids were visiting family on the weekends, so thankfully my drinking didn’t have much of an impact on my parenting [until later].”
But because she could “function” with her addiction, no one had the slightest idea how bad things really were.
Jana says: “My children often spent time with their dad’s family or my parents so I drank when they weren’t home or while they were at school during the day.
“I managed to hide it well until near the end of my struggles when I could no longer control it.”
Her children would often be away at school when she would drink, and she would always hide it from them.
“However there was one situation where I had to have a friend pick them up because I couldn’t drive and another where they missed school because I was too hungover to drive,” she says.
In 2018, she feared she would die if things didn’t change.
She realised how out of control her addiction had come when she found herself driving her 11-year-old son to school while drunk.
“I remember that morning deciding I was going to drink that day, and I couldn’t even wait for the liquor store to open,” she says.
“I don’t recall every stop I made that day, I just know I was drunk the whole day, and my son was in the car with me at some point during it.
“When I realised what I’d done, I was scared, terrified.
“My friend had picked the kids up from school for me but I still drove my son to get his hair cut drunk and drove us home drunk.
Fortunately, it was the only time Jana ever drove drunk with her children in the car.
It scared her so much that she knew she had to change there and then.
She started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which helped set her free from drinking and drugs, which she said she no longer has any desire for.
“I don’t think about alcohol, I don’t think about drugs, I have no desire and no temptation,” she said.
Jana now runs a ministry called RISE and works as a faith-based women’s health and wellness coach.
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She has a much better relationship with her mother and her kids, and is no longer “at risk of hurting” anyone.
“Now, a normal day is peaceful. It’s quiet, it’s calm,” she says.