Sunday, February 20, 2011
By ED RUNYAN
runyan@vindy.com
VIENNA
When you work with women who have spent much of their lives addicted to drugs, you spend a lot of time exposing them to things many people take for granted.
Things like taking a daily shower, brushing teeth, having a healthy relationship with a family member, coping with difficult situations, or having fun without drugs or alcohol.
“When you’re in addiction, your life basically revolves around that addiction. So when you wake up, you feel like you have to use the drug,” said Michelle Beauchene, director of Hannah’s House, a 12-month faith-based substance-abuse treatment facility for women on state Route 82 in Vienna Township.
“You don’t care if you have a job. You don’t care if your kids need to get up for school. A lot of times the drug just takes over, and you don’t understand what it is to have structure, to have rules.”
Hannah’s House, which the Warren Family Mission acquired in 2008 from New Life Maternity Home and now runs, spends the first couple months of a woman’s stay focused on giving her life structure.
“Although they’re grown women, it’s as if you’re dealing with a child, just going back to basics of ‘Hey, we need to get up. Hey, we can’t use those words. Hey, we don’t handle things like that. Hey, we don’t dress like that,’” Beauchene said.
“What happens is when you’re in addiction, you lose out on life experience. So when they get off the drug, it’s almost like dealing with a 15-year-old.”
Among those experiences are learning how to cope with life.
For example, Hannah’s House, which began operation in October 2009 and graduated its first class of three women in December, received donations that enabled it to provide an exercise room with fitness equipment — a good place to “work off some of the steam” generated while trying to get “clean.”
Hannah’s House doesn’t charge the women living and recovering there. The funds to pay for the center are generated by the Warren Family Mission.
Another way the women learn to cope is through talking to someone, Beauchene said.
Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.