I Was Taking 10 Xanax Bars A Night At 17, Stabbed A Woman At 37 Weeks Pregnant & Sat On A Sidewalk Ready To Die | 11 Years Sober

I Was Taking 10 Xanax Bars A Night At 17, Stabbed A Woman At 37 Weeks Pregnant & Sat On A Sidewalk Ready To Die | 11 Years Sober

From Rise Above with Kevin Lanning by Kevin Lanning

May 29, 2026 · 2h 6m

About this episode

Crystal Meliea shares her harrowing journey from addiction and violence to recovery and rebuilding her life.

Crystal Meliea grew up alone on 183 acres of North Carolina mountain property with a narcissist mother who left her unsupervised with music industry men in Los Angeles at 16. No protection. No parents. Just a bottle of Xanax she found in her mother's purse that made everything quiet for the first time in her life. By 19 she was running marijuana from Mexico to Texas to North Carolina on a massive scale. She was taking 10 Xanax bars in a single night — enough to black out most grown men. She was fighting so violently that police would call ahead and ask her to just turn herself in so they didn't have to find her. She went to jail three times in one week for physical violence alone. At 37 weeks pregnant she broke into a woman's house and stabbed her in the face with a broken beer bottle — leaving her with 40 stitches. Two weeks before her daughter was born the FBI, DEA and ATF swarmed her home. Then her daughter's father went to federal prison. She had her baby alone. And discovered opiates. What followed was years of IV drug use, meth, crack, halfway houses, relapses, a lesbian relationship that ended with a domestic battery charge, and finally — sitting on a sidewalk in Fort…

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