In recognition of Recovery Awareness Month, the Link for Hope Coalition will offer the citizens information regarding hope and recovery. This is the third true story of recovery to be featured during the month of September. This is a modified rendition of Ken’s story, which he originally testified to in front of the legislature regarding the eligibility requirements of MaineCare benefits.
I am a recovering addict. To me, recovery is the return to health after sickness, the return to strength after weakness, the return of hope after despair, the return of love after a total absence of feeling, the return to the path of a better person after having strayed from the path, all loss by gain, and sorrow by joy — that is the way. My name is Ken and I am a recovering addict.
I was born in Providence, R.I. to a heroin addict. I was two months premature, weighed only three pounds, six ounces, and like my mother, I was born addicted. I grew up looking for a way out, some escape. When I was a kid I was sexually abused by a man for two years when he killed himself with a shotgun. I was the one who found him, and I just sat there with him in the same room, slumped over and dead, for eight hours. When I was 19, I lost my little daughter Naveah Dawn; she was just 2 years old when she was stung by a bee and died in my arms.
After that, my depression overwhelmed me and I no longer cared about anything, least of all myself. I simply gave up and ran. For the next 16 years, I was on a run of addiction — my drugs of choice were opiates, because they killed all the pain, but I would take anything I could get my hands on. My addiction led me to jails and institutions. DHHS had taken my daughter, and again I felt the pain of my losing my daughter before she was two. I was broken — physically, emotionally, spiritually, and I was still in my early 30s.
But then I had the opportunity to go to Wellspring (a residential treatment center located in Bangor) and at the time I did not realize that this would be the hardest six months of my life. I had to realize that drugs and alcohol were not my problem. I had to learn that I was my problem. By working a program of recovery I gained a new sense of hope and the chance to live a life second to none.
Today, I am active member of society. I have held a good job for a long time and I pay my bills. I am in a healthy relationship and we own our own home. But most important, I have had my daughter returned to me and I have become the father I have always wanted to be. Because of the break I was given to go to treatment, I am now able to give back and bring other men into the workforce to gain the strength and hope that comes from being a productive member of society.
Addiction hits close to home for everyone, I sometimes wonder who gets to pick and choose whose life is more important than another? From what I have been through, I could never imagine being able to say to another human being that their life is not worth living and that they don’t deserve the opportunity to be shown another way. Addicts need tools and support to be able to build new lives for themselves. Without treatment and support for their recovery, addicts will never be able to learn how to live any other way and their life of addiction will continue, along with all that lifestyle entails. In our society, which has so much focus on addiction, the focus should be on treatment and recovery, learning about relapse prevention and how to build support for your recovery. I was lucky. At the time I was ready for help. I was a childless adult, but I still had Mainecare so I was able to go to treatment. If I had not had that opportunity, I would not be an active participant in my life and society. Today, if my circumstances were the same, I would not have been given that opportunity to change because the state rules have changed. Instead, the state would be paying to house me in one of their correctional facilities and my daughter would be being raised in the child welfare system.
I am a recovering addict, and my life now serves as testimony to the power of opportunity and hope that recovery offers. But everyone should know that I could never have done it on my own. Nor can any other addict who is still suffering.
In the calendar year of 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services received reports of 59 drug affected babies born in Aroostook County.
Next week, information will be provided for treatment facilities and support groups.
