CLEARLAKE — Drug and alcohol counselor Pearlina Drummond traveled an arduous road in order to put herself in position to celebrate six years clean and sober last Sunday.
The 30-year-old from Clearlake is now a proud mother working in the field she loves and on track to graduate from Yuba College, Clear Lake Campus this spring with an Associate of Science degree.
“All the things I thought I couldn”t do, like go to school and be a mom, I overcame that,” Drummond said. “I know I can do anything I put my mind to, anything, because I proved it time and time again.”
But becoming a redemption story wasn”t always something she envisioned for herself.
Born in Humboldt County to a mother “addicted to men and money,” Drummond battled drugs from an early age.
“The first time I ever smoked meth was at the age of 7,” she said. “Drugs were a way out for me. It was a way of coping with everything that was happening.”
Drummond spent her childhood shifting from group homes to foster homes to juvenile hall to her biological mother”s care. She said she was beaten, molested and raped growing up.
She moved to Lake County as a teenager and eventually graduated from Richard H. Lewis School of Independent Study, despite an undiagnosed learning disability and distinctly low educational skills.
“When I was doing home study (in high school), I paid someone with drugs to do my work, so I didn”t have to do it,” she recalled.
After graduation, Drummond temporarily relocated to Sacramento at the behest of her Lake County foster mother.
She was also in a relationship centered “basically around drugs and violence” with the man who would father her son.
Drummond”s baby boy was born in July 2003, and she stayed clean for about a year and a half before reverting back to the drug lifestyle.
“I didn”t know how to live in society without drugs helping me cope,” she recalled.
Her struggle reached a tipping point on Nov. 4, 2006, when Clearlake Police arrested her for a handful of drug-related charges and child endangerment.
“Because of my drug use, my son was so malnourished, he couldn”t digest food,” she said.
It wasn”t the 310 days in the Lake County Hill Road Correctional Facility or the criminal conviction that compelled Drummond to turn her life around; it was the reaction of her 3-year-old son upon her release from jail.
“He didn”t want anything to do with me. He didn”t want to look at me. He didn”t want to talk to me,” she recalled.
Drummond said she shared her story at an addicts” support group in 2007 and then was accepted into a residential women”s treatment program. “I slowly started building a relationship back with my son,” she added.
The high school graduate completed the program but couldn”t find work afterward, hampered by her deficient skill set. “I couldn”t read or spell enough to fill out an application,” Drummond said.
She decided to go back to school, enrolling at the Yuba College campus in Clearlake in the summer of 2008.
“She had a high school diploma, but when she took the college placement test, she didn”t even score into our remedial courses. So, I recommended she go into the GED program,” Yuba College counselor Pamela Bordisso said.
From there, Drummond moved on to basic math, reading and English courses.
“And class by class, step by step, she developed the skills,” Bordisso added.
Drummond found she had a knack for schooling. “The more I worked and got good grades and reached out to people, the more I got self-confidence,” she said.
Instructor Douglas M. Harris praised Drummond”s approach to college.
“No student I have had in 14 years of teaching in Yuba”s Chemical Dependency Counseling program has demonstrated the level of commitment she did,” Harris said. “She worked hard, sought out help when needed, always took responsibility and never complained.”
In addition to her own efforts (which included studying about four times longer than average students), Drummond credited the support she received from peer counselors and programs offered at the college, such as the Extended Opportunity Programs and Services and Disabled Students Programs and Services.
“I thought it was going to be like high school. I thought people were going to make fun of me because I have a learning disability, because I”m different. But everybody seemed really, really helpful,” she said.
Having already completed the drug and alcohol counseling certificate program, Drummond is on the precipice of earning her Associate of Science degree. She plans to take her final class during the spring semester.
“It was hard work, but it was worth it. Every sleepless night, every rainy walk (to school), every day was worth it,” she said. “There were lots of times I thought, ”I can”t do this. It”s too much.” But I just pushed through it, took it one day at a time, took it one test at a time.”
Drummond, now a counselor at the Hilltop Recovery Services Women”s Center in Lucerne, said she enjoys holding a position in which she can give hope to those battling addiction, just as people gave to her on her journey to recovery.
“It”s the fact that I get to see the light bulb switch on in people”s mind and I get to see the changes that they make. That”s the best reward I could ever ask for,” she added.
Jeremy Walsh is a staff reporter for Lake County Publishing. Reach him at 263-5636, ext. 37 or jwalsh@record-bee.com. Follow him on Twitter, @JeremyDWalsh.
