Bushwick woman goes viral on TikTok while overcoming drug addiction

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A Bushwick woman is going viral on social media by being brutally honest about her two-decade long struggle to overcome a crack cocaine addiction. Kim Quidone, known as Kracking up with Kim on TikTok, has gained more than 198,000 followers since posting her first story on the social media platform through a friend in June. "I said 'Rizz, how did that video come out?' And he was like, 'you wont believe it, so many people liked the video,'" Quidone said. While Quidone shares bizarre and sometimes embarrassing stories about her experiences while on drugs, she says what her addiction cost her is no laughing matter. "I was a mother that was not involved in my kids life at all because I was on drugs and drugs was more important than my kids at the time," she said. Each story she posts gets thousands of likes and hundreds of comments by TikTok users who send love and support. Quidone said that led to something she thought she would never be able to do - get sober. "One day I woke up and I said 'I'm not going to have one today,'" she said. At the time of this interview, Quidone said she is 71 days sober. "It's not a walk in the park, don't get confused," she said. "Everything is hard, like you have to be determined and motivated to stay clean." Finding sobriety has led her to rekindling her relationships with her children and grandchildren. Quidone has also reconnected with old friends and found thousands of new ones on social media. "All the comments are like, 'you can do better with yourself,' 'you can do this and that different,'" she said. "Seeing people say they want me to do something different with myself, really made me want to do something different for myself." Quidone is now living with family as she fights to stay sober and hopes to one day get dental work done to replace her missing teeth. "I want to be able to smile like, 'Hey, hi!'" she said. "I just want have teeth in my mouth." "