BreakPoint –
A Story About Erika Sandor-Zur and Her Journey Through the Impossible
or some of us, even rock bottom isn’t low enough to learn from our mistakes or appreciate the life we’ve been given. Sometimes, it takes losing everyone and everything, even our will to live, to regain perspective and heal from the inside out. “I found myself in a crack house watching a mother trade sex with her child for a hit of crack. I lived in abandoned apartments that had no water or electricity to get high with other crack addicts. I started selling my body for a hit.” It takes a massive amount of heart, grit, and determination to not only make it to the other side of addiction but to then excel to the heights of elite sports on the international stage. Well, Erika Sandor-Zur never really does anything halfway. Before her downward spiral into the depths of drug and alcohol abuse, Erika was a recognized high school tennis player, ranked number one in northeastern Ohio as well as nationally ranked. And then, in a poof of smoke, quite literally, everything fell apart. “At 18 years old, in my senior year, I worked in a coffee house. A busman invited me to a party… so I went across the street… and they put a $30 hit of crack on a pipe. They showed me how to smoke it. The exact second that I inhaled; the feeling was so good that nothing else mattered. That first taste of crack ended up destroying everything around me. I literally chased that high from coast to coast for the next 15 years.” That first experience with drugs started Erika on a very slippery slope and changed the trajectory of her life. “By the time I turned 37, I was a single mother of two boys and had been in and out of 19 rehab centers. I was arrested more than 25 times. And I was getting physically abused every single day.” For years, she towed a very dangerous line without regard for the repercussions. Her addiction to crack cocaine led her to be raped, beaten, shot, and left for dead. “I didn’t want to live anymore, but – strangely — I didn’t want to die, either. And I didn’t want to get high anymore, but I didn’t know how to stop. ” It is here where Erika’s story can get misunderstood. The legal system took away her two sons which many believe is the reason Erika was finally able to stick to a sobriety program. Getting her kids back was a factor but if she’s being extremely honest, her kids were not enough of a reason to try again. That fact is shocking for some and a known truth for other addicts. Then something just clicked.
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I N S P I RE D S U CC E SS MAGAZINE | SP RING/ SUMME R 2022
ER IKA SANDO R-ZU R
SPO RT S
