They say that addiction is a disease. In reality, it is the “dis-ease” that drives us to addiction in the first place. It’s a symptom of a larger problem. That’s why sobriety is never enough; addicts need to find recovery. After ups and downs (and a few lefts and rights), Allyson Nimoy. has found much more than just clean time. She’s found serene time.
Allyson has always felt things deeply. Even as a child, she could never quite shake the feeling that something inside her worked differently. That her heart beat louder, her emotions rang sharper, her reactions felt too big for the world around her. “I always wanted things my way. I didn’t know how to deal with anything else…I was a brat.” She’d scream and cry for what she wanted, and if her parents didn’t give it to her, she’d call her grandfather, the most beloved person in her life, and he would.
Loving home in the Valley. Oldest of three children. Hard-working parents—she had what can only be described as an idyllic childhood. She had everything a kid could want, but still wanted more…and would throw a fit if she didn’t get it. The conflict she felt inside, that bled into her outer self, often impacted her family—her wildly loving family. That was just one symptom of Allyson’s struggles. School never made sense. She felt stupid, out of place, and overwhelmed. “I probably had a learning disability. They tried medication, but I didn’t take it. I didn’t want to believe there was something wrong with me.”
Instead, she looked elsewhere for comfort. At thirteen, she began smoking weed. At sixteen, it was cocaine. This only heightened her rebellious nature. Once in high school, she had become a menace. Skipping class, throwing parties, disrespecting authority—she did everything in her power to avoid sitting in that classroom and doing what she was told. All the while, her drug use was getting worse and worse. She even started snorting her brother’s ritalin (ironically, she believes this was most likely the medication she refused to take as a child). By tenth grade, she dropped out, opting to go to continuation school. When she flunked out of continuation school because of truancy, she was left to finish her degree with homeschooling.
When 18 hit and she was finally free, everything changed. This marked the beginning of a party life that would last eight years. Eight long years of neon lights, strangers in nightclubs, and unmarked party pills. She was riding a high…but everything that goes up must come down…and boy did it. By the time she was 24, she had discovered meth—and it was love at first hit. “It made me feel good. It made everything else quiet.”
Now, I don’t know if you have heard anything about methamphetamine, but it isn’t the most sustainable drug to be on. So, within the next two years, Allyson’s seams started to rip. She was cracking and, at some point, realized her lifestyle was leading her to take her own life. “ I was so low, I wanted to drive my car into the ocean.” At the beach, she thought the cops were coming to get her. So, she buried her pipe in the sand. Once the coast was clear, she searched for the pipe again. “I was digging on my hands and knees, looking for the pipe, found the pipe and was smoking sand out of the pipe. I knew that there was a problem.” So, she picked up the phone and called her family—her greatest support system. First, her aunt, who had been through Beit T’Shuvah years prior. Then her parents. Finally, she called her Uncle Leonard, who was very involved here (yes, that Leonard).
Allyson came to Beit T’Shuvah for the first time in 2008, barely hanging on. But something clicked. She got sober, enrolled in cosmetology school (because of the direction of her therapist, Elaine Breslow), and for the first time in her life, found her calling. “Hair became everything.” She stayed at Beit T’Shuvah for two years and gained five years for sobriety. Within those five years, she dove fully into her love of cosmetology. She built a full book of clients, worked on music videos, and eventually opened her own salon. “I was building an empire,” she says with a mix of pride and sorrow. “I poured my soul into it.” But, after years of success, the stress of her kingdom on her shoulders started to weigh on her. As her program began to slip away, she started drinking and smoking weed again. But when a boyfriend reintroduced meth into her life, she was back to getting high in full force. “I was off to the races.”
The relationship spiraled into abuse. Her business unraveled. Her grip on reality slipped. “I lost my salon. I lost my apartment. I lost my mind…all within a year.” Allyson fell into a deep psychosis. She believed she was being drugged, watched, trafficked. The family that once enabled her behavior had learned to stand their ground. When she made calls to everyone in her contact list asking for help (not to get sober but to get the snakes out of her walls, and the people watching her off her back, etc.), her dad checked her phone records and told them all not to help her. A rare, tough, strong, and loving move from a parent who had had enough, who just wanted to see his daughter survive this. “I was even writing letters to Oprah!”
After a lawsuit with her landlord, she was evicted and found herself living on the streets of Los Angeles. Drugs, tents, and bare feet were all Allyson knew for two years. From where she came from to here…she didn’t know how it happened so fast. Girls like her don’t live on the street…or so she thought. Eventually, when she smashed a few windows, she was arrested for vandalism and spent three months in jail.
Jail wasn’t real—not to Allyson, not at first. She thought she was in witness protection, that the whole system was part of some bigger plan designed to contain or control her. She was still deep in psychosis, convinced the world was conspiring against her, not realizing that the real war was happening inside her mind. But the bars were real, the sentence was real, and eventually, so was the heartbreak. Her family had done everything they could—interventions, tough love, silence. And now, all they could do was hope. When the court ordered her to Beit T’Shuvah, she was released into our care. Still in psychosis, Allyson was convinced that Beit T’Shuvah was built for her. Built to keep her trapped and locked away for all time. “I thought the world was conspiring against me. I thought Beit T’Shuvah was a prison built to keep me.”
Within the week, she ran away to use again. The cops quickly picked her up, and she had to serve another three months. Again, she was sentenced to BTS. This time, in the dead of COVID. Right as she was arriving, she got word that her grandfather was about to pass. In a moment of clarity, she knew she had to be there for him and for her family. So, she begged Carrie Newman in alternative sentencing if she could see him. In an act of love, care, and trust, Carrie let Allyson say goodbye to the man who meant so much to her—the man who once stood between her and the chaos, the one who used to call her parents and say, “Keep her happy.” She looked into his eyes, then into the grief on her mother’s and sister’s faces, and something cracked. Not all at once. Not cleanly. But enough. “I wasn’t ready before, but now I was.”
Riddled with debilitating depression, Allyson struggled through her first few months here. She barely left her bed, too tired to fake it, too broken to pretend. But slowly, reality began to return. Not the twisted, paranoid version she’d been living in, but the real one—where pain was real, love was real, and healing was something she had to choose over and over again. But she did the most important thing. She did what we yell at every new resident every Friday night: she held on. “The one thing I have done right is that I stayed, and I am still a part of Beit T’Shuvah. I need Beit T’Shuvah. I need to be here.”
Today, Allyson is rebuilding. “They gave me the job as an Overnight PF when all I was doing was sleeping all day. It changed my life. Doing the overnight position started me back into life again.” She shows up to work. She does her hair. She helps people. And though she still struggles to see herself clearly, those around her see her light. They see the woman who’s learning to give, not take. To trust, not fear. To create, not destroy.
If you ask any of the residents what they think makes Beit T’Shuvah different from other treatment centers, they will tell you this: “The staff care about the residents. They want to see us do well.” No one exemplifies this more than Allyson. She is the staff member they are talking about. They might as well be saying, “Beit T’Shuvah is the best because Allyson is here to love us, care for us, and nurture us to a place we didn’t think possible.” How is she able to have this sort of effect on so many residents? Because that monumental change is exactly what happened to her. Sure, she isn’t perfect. Who is? But she uses her struggles to help people in ways that she may never fully grasp the significance of. Allyson came into Beit T’Shuvah, shaking, scared, and desperate. Now, she is warm, loving, and hopeful. Through all her paranoia, Allyson was right about one thing. Beit T’Shuvah was built for her…and she was built for us.