HILLSBORO, Ohio—Sitting in a jail cell alone, separated from her husband and teenage son, Candice Mueller said she was confronted with a decision that would alter the rest of her life: make changes, or likely face an early death.
Mueller had battled substance abuse for more than two decades. In 2021, she was convicted of operating a vehicle while impaired and then never completed the assigned treatments, so there were warrants for her arrest. Before her scheduled court appearance, Mueller recalled, she asked God for grace.
“I said to Him, ‘I don’t know what it’s going to take. I don’t know how you’re going to change my life, but I cannot do this anymore.’ And when I went to court that morning, the judge said, ‘I’ve watched you go downhill, and I’m not going to watch you die on my watch,’” she said.
Mueller received a jail sentence in Cincinnati, underwent treatment while incarcerated, and fully turned to her faith.
“God sat me down where I was unable to run anymore. I couldn’t go anywhere to get drugs. I had to face my addiction head on, and that’s when I surrendered to the Lord,” she said.
“In a cell all alone, I was able to spend a lot of time reading the Bible, praying, and examining my life. I started to see God heal me and change my desires.”
Mueller was 38 at the time. She vowed to lead a better life for her teenage son and her husband.
“Most people didn’t know that I had a problem with pills. They didn’t know that I had a problem with drugs. I hid that as well as someone can, until I couldn’t, until life was completely unmanageable and out of control,” Mueller said.
“I was dealing with the stigma, of not wanting people to know, and dealing with anxiety and depression. That is the furthest I’ve ever been away from God. I didn’t want to lose my son. I was the mom who volunteered at school and coached basketball. I didn’t want people to look at me differently. I was hiding from myself to escape the person I had become.”
Mueller said she started drinking alcohol when she was 12 years old to escape family problems.
She said she stopped drinking at age 22 when she was pregnant with her son, but after her son was delivered, she was prescribed opioid medication.
“I didn’t think about how it would affect me, having been an alcoholic and how I was prone to addiction,” Mueller said.
“I was on pills from the time he was a baby, and I struggled off and on until he was 10—and then it led to heroin and fentanyl,” she said. “With addiction, you’re trying to escape something. Alcohol was my escape from trauma, and I didn’t confront that trauma, so I had the same result with pills.”
Mueller became physically dependent on the pills at first, she said. Then it impacted her emotionally and mentally.
“When you have physical dependency, you get trapped in dealing with withdrawal. It chemically alters your brain, so you get where you don’t think you can live without it in your mind,” she said.
“Physically, you go through withdrawals. Mentally, you are in survival mode. You feel like you need that drug to survive. Your body and your brain think it can’t live without those drugs.”
In July 2021, she was released from jail after serving 105 days.
“I was scared. I was nervous because I knew that there wasn’t a fence and barbed wire to hold me accountable anymore. I knew that I was free to make my own choices, and it was all on me. I had to make sure that I stayed connected to God,” Mueller said. She said she was baptized two weeks after her release.
“I was excited to be back with my son and my husband, but I also knew I had so much to repair,“ she said. ”Things were different for me, but I left everyone holding onto those things I had done and said. I don’t remember most of them, but they did, and I knew I had a lot of work ahead.”
Her husband, Ed Mueller, said he wasn’t concerned about the couple’s relationship because they had been married for 11 years at the time and had a strong foundation. He acknowledged that what scared him the most was the possibility of a relapse.
“I didn’t want the rug pulled out from under me again, but our faith and our bond is what pulled us past those initial months, and stability set in,” he said.
The story of Vice President JD Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, has offered inspiration. She was a single mother who was addicted to alcohol, prescription drugs, and heroin, and had multiple suicide attempts and rehab stints, before recovering and living sober.
Former presidential candidate and current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. openly talks about his recovery from a 14-year heroin addiction.
At a drug addiction conference in April, Kennedy said he felt that he had been born with a hole inside of himself that he needed to fill.
“Every addict feels that way in one way or another—that they have to fix what’s wrong with them, and the only thing that works are drugs. And so threats that you might die, that you’re going to ruin your life, are completely meaningless,” he said.
After several unsuccessful attempts to quit his heroin use, Kennedy said, he eventually read a book by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung that stated people who believe in God recovered faster and had more sustainable recoveries, so he rekindled his faith and started attending 12-step meetings.
Candice Mueller, whose addiction advanced from heroin to fentanyl before her jail sentence, applauds public figures and lesser-known people alike who share their recovery stories.
“When I was trying to recover, it was inspiring to see other people who made it to other side and to see how God had changed their lives,” she said. “It gave me hope, and hope is everything. If you don’t have hope and you’re lost in darkness, what reason do you have to change anything? It’s almost like you’re waiting to die.
“The fact that I’m sitting here breathing is a miracle, because I did overdose. I could have died, but God had a different purpose for me.”
Ed Mueller said he smoked marijuana for 17 years before he became a born-again Christian. He said he didn’t recognize his wife’s addiction to pills during the initial stages of their relationship.
“It wasn’t until it progressed from pills to something stronger that things started to become an issue,” he told The Epoch Times.
They are asked at times how they survived as a couple.
“God, absolutely God,” he said.
Candice Mueller nodded in agreement.
For a fresh start, the Muellers moved from suburban Cincinnati to the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio.
“We didn’t want to stay where all those bad memories were and all those old behaviors took place. God moved in our lives, and we were led here,” Candice Mueller said, adding that remaining sober is “something that you have to work on every day for the rest of your life.”
“Self-care is important, and for me, that means prayer,” she said. “That means reading my Bible and abiding. That means self-reflection and checking my character. It’s really important that my faith is always front and center in my recovery. If I’m not right with God, I’m in danger of everything unraveling.”
Mueller has dedicated herself to service. She volunteers at a local faith-based food pantry and is a board member of Strangers Helping Strangers, a nonprofit that provides disaster services and performs community projects for people in need in Highland County, where the Muellers live.
She is now a case manager at a local recovery center that provides mental health and substance abuse treatments. Drug use is rampant across southern Ohio in the rural Appalachian foothills. Candice Mueller said she believes that it is where she is meant to be.
“I want to be able to show them that I understand, that I care, but mainly to show them hope, show them that God can change any circumstance. I want them to see what’s possible,” she said.
Her husband called her “a beacon of hope” because when patients “sit down with her and they’re across from the desk, they know that they’re looking at somebody who was sitting in that same seat that they are.”
Candice Mueller also owns A Taste of Grace Bakery, which specializes in sugar-free cakes and cupcakes. The name, she said, reflects her recovery journey.
“I’ve gone from hopeless and serving time in jail to living the life I had prayed for a long time for, and that has everything to do with God’s grace. That’s why I’m still here. He’s why I’m still here. I no longer feel I have anything to escape,” she said.
