Tough love, treatment turn former Canfield addict’s life around

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN

alcorn@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Sitting in a Franklin County Jail cell, Michael R. Senchak was despondent.

So deep into his addictions to prescription drugs and heroin, he decided he had only one way out: killing himself.

Something his strict Catholic grandmother told him, however, most likely saved his life.

“She said anyone who committed suicide would go to hell,” he said. “That stopped me.”

The irony of his son’s situation was not lost on his father, Michael S. Senchak, who is executive director of the Mahoning County Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board.

After a “tough-love” session with his parents, treatment began at area drug-services agencies.

Today, the most important date in the younger Senchak’s life is not his birth date or even his upcoming wedding date; it is Nov. 21, 2007, what he calls his “sobriety day.”

When he and his father were interviewed together recently, the younger Senchak could tick off the specific duration of his sobriety down to the exact years, months and even days.

At 32, Michael is now a clean-cut, 175-pound Youngstown State University business administration major planning to marry his fianc e, Kelley Geiser, also a YSU student, next May, right after both of them graduate.

But before he finally went into treatment, he weighed 127 pounds and had seriously considered tying a jail sheet around his neck.

His trek down the road to addiction began innocently enough at 14 by having a few beers with a group of friends. That escalated into experimentation with marijuana and, then, hallucinogenic mushrooms.

This story is part of The VIndicator’s two-day special report on prescription-drug abuse. Read it and other stories Monday in The Vindicator and Vindy.com.