Pregnant woman seeks treatment for heroin addiction after her mom gets clean

Kaitlyn's addition began with an opioid prescription

ROANOKE, Va – As we continue our series on the Faces of Addiction we introduce you to another young woman in treatment in Roanoke.

Her name is Kaitlyn Bertka and she's followed in her mother's footsteps from addiction to recovery.

Unlike Annelise Frey, the woman we introduced you to in the first story of this series, who had a "charmed life" in the suburbs of DC, Kaitlyn ended up at Bethany Hall by way of West Virginia, ground zero of the opioid epidemic. 

She spent much of her younger years bouncing between her dad in Ohio and mom, Trish Mitchell, in the U.S. Army.

“My dad was too strict on me and my mom wasn't strict enough, I never had the in-between life,” Kaitlyn explained.

Life got even more complicated when she was a teenager.

Kaitlyn was pretty much on her own.

“I was like 15 when I smoked weed and 16 when I started going to the bars, I was drinking a lot. Every weekend I wasn't at home like I lived with friends for years.”

She was couch surfing with friends and pregnant by the time she was 18.

After the baby, Kaitlyn had back pain and doctors wrote the young mom a prescription.

“I couldn't take care of him by myself and my mom had to help me. They gave me muscle relaxers, they didn't help. I started taking Lortabs and then basically I guess it got in my head that I needed the medicine,” Kaitlyn said.

The pills turned to powder and she was facing a full-blown heroin addiction.

“When I started shooting up and I didn't have a home. I lost my son. I didn't have none of my family, because I messed it all up with everyone. I slept with people for their money. I did anything to get what I needed, it was bad.  Everything just crumbled real quick."

Kaitlyn's life was falling apart.

It may come as a surprise, but it's her mom who most could relate to her struggles after an injury in the military.

“They prescribe me pain medication for it and over the years I just got addicted to it. I moved up to OxyContin after the Lortabs didn't work anymore. I was an addict for 10 years,” Trish said.

She had a head start on drugs and her daughter was following with the same story line.

Trish describes her harsh reality.

“At one point in time me and my boyfriend at the time, we had no electric,” she said. “We went probably eight months without electric, but we had to have the drugs so it was more important it seemed at the time. Just drinking and doing drugs, it was pretty bad.”

Three years ago, Trish entered a 28-day program at the Salem VA and has been clean ever since.

With encouragement from her mom, Kaitlyn moved to Roanoke to enter Bethany Hall's recovery program in March.

“She looks a lot better. She has color in her cheeks, you can tell she's a lot happier,” Trish said.

Happier and healthier, good news since she's expected to deliver a baby girl any day now.

“I'm not making the same mistake. Which I mean I'm going to struggle daily with my recovery, with my addiction, but I can make it up with this little girl and be a mother I'm wanting to be again and have the family with my little boy I'm getting back, like I'm given a second chance at life, at everything and I don't want to mess it up,” Kaitlyn said.

Her mom might be the greatest example of how sobriety can change your life.

“I have money in the bank, I have a savings account and I'm buying a house, so it just makes a big difference,” Trish said.

Trish is moving into her first home while her daughter seeks the path to the American dream, in the Bethany Hall house.


About the Author:

After working and going to school in Central Virginia for over five years, Lindsey’s made her way back home to the mountains.