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“The bottom left is me the day I was arrested, 12-6-12, and coincidentally the day I finally surrendered to God,” she writes, referencing a mug shot where she looks dazed and disheveled. “With the help of God, I am completing my BA and hope to one day be a prison minister. I have a beautiful 18-month-old and every day I thank God that I am not where I once was! Sobriety is possible.”
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Now, Hall looks happy and healthy—and people are responding to her message. “Girl, I was there!” one wrote. “It was the best day of my life when I got arrested!” “I was addicted to cocaine and loved the party life,” another said. “On the verge of divorce and losing my kids I didn’t even care! One night I knew I was OD’ing and I heard God loud and clear. ‘I’m gonna save you but just this once.’” (Transform your health and heal your body with Rodale’s 12-day power plan!)
Dejah tells Us Weekly that she first started abusing prescription pain medication when she was 17 after her mother was sentenced to four years in prison for fraud. “It was just supposed to be a party drug,” she said, but by 2011, she had developed a $240-a-day heroin habit.
“I couldn’t stop,” she says in an interview with the Daily Mail. “All I wanted to do was numb myself. I wanted it so desperately that nothing else mattered. Every minute of the day I just wanted to get high.”
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And, unfortunately, she says it made her a “monster in every way” to the people around her. “I didn’t care who I hurt—I didn’t care about anything anymore,” she tells the Daily Mail. “I didn’t have anyone else or family to look to at that point.”
Dejah says she finally decided to get clean after celebrating her grandfather’s 91st birthday. “I gave him a hug and told him I loved him and then I started crying and locked myself in bathroom,” she tells Us Weekly. “I looked at myself in the mirror and was like, ‘What are you doing to yourself? Look at who you’ve become.’ I said, ‘God, I don’t know if you’re real, but if you are. I really need you to save me.’” Just a few hours later, she was arrested for drug possession and sentenced to prison for two years. “It literally happened within two hours of praying to God to save me, and I think I knew that was his way of saving me,” she says. Dejah says quitting drugs wasn’t easy, but she managed to do it by going cold turkey.
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Now, she tells the Daily Mail that she’s glad so many people have been inspired by her story—and she hopes that it will help save lives. “Don’t give up if you are fighting for sobriety,” she said. “There are avenues and outlets and it’s so important to ask for help.”