Stacie from New Orleans
I struggled with opium addiction for years bc of an abusive childhood and feeling unloved. Being a musician brought easy access to beautiful people who had substances that made the past hurt less. When I became involved in Anonymous, doing peer support for jailed hacktivists, the stress was unbelievable. Even as the founder of Free Matt DeHart and as an activist for Free Barrett Brown, I was still struggling to stay clean. It was only after Matt (who is my biological cousin) won the Courage Foundation Award, that I had time to look at my life and realize my potential to create real change in a suffering world was being stifled by heroin. I went to rehab and have been heroin free since October 2014. I am in school and plan on going to law school and continuing my activism in surveillance, defense, and intelligence reform.