A Story of Divine Intervention: Dr. Leiticia Pestova on Ten Years of Addiction and the Night It Ended
The woman who survived addiction, violence, and a shattered past, then transformed her healing into the work she was born to do. In her own words.
The Day the House Went Silent
My story begins in Penn Valley, Northern California, where life was rooted in family, faith, discipline, and creativity.
We were a homeschooling family. Sundays were for church. Saturdays meant pancake breakfasts. We studied music, language, reading, math, and spent breaks outside in the garden. My mother was a musician, and by the time I was fourteen, our family band was touring.
We appeared on television, created records, sold merchandise, and volunteered in our community. I helped raise my younger siblings and believed our family bond could never be broken.
I had a beautiful childhood.
Until everything changed.
One afternoon, my mother called me while I was out. She told me she was leaving my father and wanted me to go home and change the locks.
I remember walking into an empty house that no longer felt like home. The walls felt darker. Time slowed. I looked through family albums, then collapsed on the floor crying in my parents' room.
Soon my mother remarried. My father moved. My siblings scattered.
And I was left carrying a grief too heavy for a young woman to name.
So I buried it.
Achievement on the Outside, Pain Within
I graduated high school at sixteen, entered college, pursued real estate, started businesses, and kept moving.
Then I became a mother.
The birth of my son was the happiest day of my life. But after a traumatic labor and medical complications, I was prescribed pain medication.
That prescription became a ten-year opioid addiction.
I did not know then that I wasn't chasing pills. I was chasing relief. Safety. Numbness. Escape.
The Slow Unraveling
The years that followed were marked by pain, chronic illness, emotional wounds, and choices made from broken places.
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and scoliosis. I battled insomnia, anxiety, weight fluctuations, depression, and relentless pain.
My marriage ended. I entered abusive relationships. I drank to cope.
I spiraled into arrests, shame, and self-destruction.
From the outside, it looked chaotic. From the inside, it felt like drowning.
The Night Everything Broke
In 2021, after mixing medication and alcohol, I blacked out.
When I woke, I experienced something I cannot explain except to say this. I was surrounded by bright white light.
And I heard a voice say: You're not done.
Moments later, I was back in my shattered home surrounded by law enforcement. I was injured, hospitalized, jailed, and facing criminal charges that could have changed the course of my life forever.
That night was the lowest point of my existence.
And strangely, it became the doorway to everything that followed.
The Rebuild
When I got out, I was wounded physically, emotionally, spiritually.
But I was alive.
I went to work. I attended meetings. I entered treatment. I gathered certificates, references, proof that I was serious about changing.
I quit alcohol, drugs, and medications.
The withdrawals were brutal. But pain became my teacher, and discipline became my medicine.
Discovering a Different Kind of Healing
Desperate for answers, I began studying plant medicine, nervous system regulation, red light therapy, cold plunging, movement, breathwork, compression therapy, detoxification, and holistic recovery.
For the first time, I saw the body not as broken, but as intelligent. Not as the enemy, but as an ally.
I learned that healing is often less about adding more and more about removing what harms us.
That knowledge changed everything.
Purpose Found in the Ashes
As my health returned, something else returned too. Hope. Then purpose.
I realized the darkest years of my life had given me something priceless: compassion, insight, and the ability to guide others through suffering.
Today, I run a thriving practice in Scottsdale. I have written books, helped clients reclaim wellness, and dedicated my life to sharing what truly helps.
I'm a mother first. A healer second. A woman forever grateful.
My Message to Anyone Struggling
You are not too far gone. You are not disqualified by your past. You are not what happened to you.
Sometimes collapse is not the end. Sometimes it is demolition before rebuilding.
I know now that healing is possible. That God never left. That purpose can grow from ruin. And that becoming healthy, clear-minded, and free may be one of the boldest acts of rebellion left in this world.
Some women inherit ease. Others inherit fire. And some become light anyway.
From the Editor
Dr. Leiticia Pestova is a holistic practitioner and the founder of Pestova's Merkaba. She is a woman who listened when something did not sit right in her body, and instead of turning away, she chose to lean in.
Through her work, Dr. Pestova is devoted to creating spaces rooted in restoration, safety, and healing. Her initiative, Pestova's Safe Haven, is a growing vision centered on supporting individuals who have experienced deep trauma, including survivors of human trafficking, offering a path back to wholeness, dignity, and self-trust.
What stood out most was not just what she is building, but why. There is a level of responsibility she carries when it comes to awareness, to action, and to not looking away.
There is a quiet power in the way she moves. Not everything is meant to be seen. Not everything is meant to be explained. But you can feel when something is being built with intention.
This is not just about healing. It is about sovereignty. It is about creating space for people to return to themselves, on their own terms, in their own time.
She was not meant to break. She was meant to remember.
If you are struggling with substance use, the SAMHSA National Helpline is free, confidential, and available 24/7 at 1-800-662-4357.
This piece first appeared in the May 2026 issue of The Oracle. Read the full issue here.
