Shontelle Scott

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Shontelle Scott From heroin addiction to rebuilding my life 🤍
Recovery • Health • Fitness • Real life
Sharing the beautiful, brutal & everything in between.

16/09/2026

I want this documented - at almost 10 months clean.

This was my experience of seeking help through Auckland Hospital — arriving by ambulance, spending hours in hospital, and ultimately being discharged home when I desperately needed medical care.

I was told Auckland Hospital couldn’t admit me, and that North Shore would not take me. Throughout this experience, I felt that my history of addiction changed the way I was viewed and treated.

I was in excruciating pain, had 2 seizures and still refused help.

I am in recovery. I am also a human being. A history of addiction should never make someone less deserving of dignity, compassion or appropriate medical care.

New Zealand’s health system is under enormous pressure, but we also need to have a serious conversation about the stigma people with addiction face within healthcare.

I’m documenting my experience because silence changes nothing.

We need to do better. And we need to start seeing the person before we see the addiction.

National Business Review Stuff The New Zealand Herald Christopher Luxon

This is what I’m fighting for. 🤍Not a perfect life. Not some extraordinary version of myself.I’m fighting for the ordina...
12/09/2026

This is what I’m fighting for. 🤍

Not a perfect life. Not some extraordinary version of myself.

I’m fighting for the ordinary things I never realised were extraordinary at all.

For being strong enough to train. Driving with nowhere I need to be. Getting dressed because I actually have somewhere to go. Travelling. Laughing with the people I love. Being independent. Feeling like myself.

For a life that, once upon a time, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be here for.

Recovery gave me something I never expected — the desire to live. And being sick has shown me just how badly I want that life now.

So when I wave from a hospital room at the end, I’m not saying goodbye to that girl or that life.

I’m fighting my way back to her. 🤍

08/09/2026

I used to think gratitude belonged to the good days.

This chapter has taught me otherwise.

These clips were all taken in the same hospital stay. Some of them hold moments where I felt hopeful, loved and genuinely happy. Others were taken on days where I was exhausted, scared, frustrated or wondering how much longer I could keep doing this.

And somehow, they all belong together.

Because gratitude doesn’t mean pretending something isn’t hard. It doesn’t mean I have to be grateful that I’m sick or find some beautiful lesson in every painful moment.

It just means that even here, I can still notice what is good.

The people who showed up. The nurses who made me laugh. The messages that arrived when I needed them. A little bit of sunshine through the hospital window. Progress I almost didn’t notice. The fact that after everything my body and I have been through, I’m still here to experience all of it.

I wouldn’t have chosen this chapter.

But I can choose what I carry out of it.

And alongside the pain, I’m carrying a hell of a lot of gratitude. 🤍

Recovery used to mean one thing to me: getting clean.But the longer I live it, the more I realise recovery doesn’t have ...
06/09/2026

Recovery used to mean one thing to me: getting clean.

But the longer I live it, the more I realise recovery doesn’t have one definition — and it definitely doesn’t have one finish line.

I got sober and started rebuilding a life I actually wanted to be here for. Then my health changed, and suddenly I found myself learning how to recover all over again — just in a completely different way.

This chapter has humbled me. It’s taught me how much of a privilege an ordinary day really is. It’s taught me that accepting help doesn’t make me weak, that gratitude and sadness can exist at the same time, and that strength doesn’t always look like smiling through something difficult.

Sometimes strength looks like admitting you’ve had enough. Sometimes it’s crying and trying again tomorrow. Sometimes it’s advocating for yourself when you’re exhausted. And sometimes it’s simply staying.

I don’t know exactly what the next chapter looks like yet.

I just know I’m still learning.
I’m still here.
And I’m still rebuilding. 🤍

If you’re rebuilding something in your own life too, I hope you give yourself credit for how far you’ve already come.

A hospital room has a strange way of changing your definition of a good life.I used to think the things worth being grat...
02/09/2026

A hospital room has a strange way of changing your definition of a good life.

I used to think the things worth being grateful for were the big things — achievements, milestones, exciting plans, the moments you’d actually think to take a photo of.

Now I find myself dreaming about things I barely noticed before.

Sleeping in my own bed. Going outside because I feel like it. Driving somewhere with nowhere particularly important to be. Making my own coffee. Going to the gym. Having plans that have absolutely nothing to do with doctors, medications or procedures.

Even being busy. Even being bored.

The ordinary parts of life I once rushed through are the exact parts I’m desperate to get back to.

I don’t think I’ll leave this chapter grateful for being sick. But I do think I’ll leave it with a completely different understanding of what it means to be well.

Turns out, a beautiful life isn’t always made up of extraordinary moments.

Sometimes it’s simply having the freedom to live an ordinary Tuesday. 🤍

What ordinary thing are you grateful for today? 🤍

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