Tales of addicts vary at Hope for Recovery program tonight at Kent Trumbull

CHAMPION

The nearly 200 people who attended tonight’s Hope for Recovery from Addiction program at Kent State University at Trumbull got the kind of hope the program promised from a young woman named Abby.

Abby used heroin for three years, ending May 30, 2014.

“I was spending all of the money I earned and that I stole on heroin,” she said at the third annual event sponsored by the Trumbull County Alliance for Substance Abuse.

Abby was close to finishing college to be a teacher and lived at home with her mother when her mother asked her to watch her two younger sisters.

“I did it – high – and I passed out, and I left my blood-filled needle, my bag of heroin and my burnt spoon on my mother’s coffee table,” she said.

“Because I was passed out, I didn’t hear her come home. I woke up in a panic and I couldn’t find my stuff. She came home and acted like everything was fine, and then I saw two cop-car SUVs pull up in my driveway, and I knew I was going to jail.”

She spent a week in jail and was very angry with her mother.

“I knew that I would never be able to get a teaching job with a drug charge and an arrest on my record,” she said.

Read her happy ending and less rosy scenarios for other attendees in Sunday's Vindicator or Vindy.com.