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Woman gets 30 days on drug charges
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Most parents want better lives for their children – especially if one of the parents is a heroin addict.
Angela Viglio, 35, told Judge Elizabeth Kobly on Tuesday in municipal court as she was being sentenced on charges of possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a drug abuse instrument that she does not want the same fate to befall her two daughters, 16 and 4.
“I don’t want this to happen to my kids,” she told the judge.
City police arrested her Oct. 10. When asked by the judge how she started taking heroin, Viglio said she began when she gave birth and was given painkillers because of a caesarian section she received. She said when she couldn’t get more painkillers, she turned to heroin.
Viglio said she was sober for six months and then relapsed when a series of upheavals took place in her life and she failed to seek the support system she had and instead tried to deal with them by herself.
“I got really prideful in my program, and I just refused help,” Viglio said.
Judge Kobly asked her how she could think she could take heroin and not get addicted to it. Viglio said before she started with the pills, she never had any idea what addiction was.
“I didn’t know what an addict was,” Viglio said. “By the time I was addicted to the pills, I didn’t know until I didn’t have them.”
Judge Kobly said life does not fare well for the children of addicts, especially the 16-year-old daughter Viglio has, because often they become addicts themselves.
Viglio said she has been in the jail for 10 days sober and “it gets better every day,” she said of trying to kick her habit. “I put myself there so I have to go through it.”
Viglio was sentenced to an additional 30 days in jail after she pleaded no contest and was found guilty of both charges. She will be on probation for 18 months and will undergo random drug tests. She said she wants to get in a treatment program and finish it.