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Trumbull program gives addicts hope for recovery
By Ed Runyan
CHAMPION
The nearly 200 people who attended Saturday night’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.
She went to an in-patient drug-treatment program, then lived in sober houses in Warren and Niles, got a sponsor and worked a 12-step program.
“While being sober, my life has changed dramatically. It’s amazing now,” she said. “As a side note, never give up on your loved one with an addiction. My mom never gave up on me, and I probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.”
Since becoming sober, she graduated from college and got hired in Pennsylvania as a therapeutic-support staff. She got her record sealed, “so now I can teach,” she said. She also has a home with “the love of my life, and we’re expecting [a baby] in November. Life is so amazing sober, and I wouldn’t want it any other way,” she said.
The scenario isn’t that rosy for several others who spoke, including an audience member whose son buys suboxone on the street in an effort to rehabilitate himself but without the help of a counselor or 12-step program. The father admitted he enables his son’s drug use because he also buys suboxone for him.
Dr. Joseph Sitarik, medical director at Neil Kennedy Recovery Clinic, in a presentation about suboxone as a medicine-assisted treatment for addiction, said an addict can’t successfully self-medicate an addiction with suboxone and expect a good result.
Anyone who thinks they can “run the show” in managing their addiction is wrong, he said. “Step 1 [of a 12-step program tells me I’m powerless,” Dr. Sitarik said.