Bleak images of addiction were painted by survivors during a forum in Jaffrey Monday, but glimmers of hope were also present.
Monday marked Reality Check’s third annual Stories of Recovery forum, an opportunity for three people to share how addiction affected themselves or those around them.
“If I’m not helping someone or working to provide for my family then I’m really not fulfilling my soul,” shared James Holloway of Hancock, who has been in recovery almost two years. “I feel like my primary purpose is to spread the message of hope to people that are still recovering.”
Holloway’s entry into the world of drugs and alcohol began at a young age. And was fueled, he said, by a childhood in which he watched family members drink and use drugs and by a feeling he had of never really fitting in at school.
“I always had the addiction of more,” Holloway said. “My mom would say five minutes at the park and it would be 20 minutes at the park.”
By the time he was 19, Holloway had already been to jail two times and was still trying to graduate high school.
Holloway had his first child in 2006, something he thought was going to stop his drug and alcohol abuse, but he had moved onto selling and using cocaine. He would also start abusing pain killers after his mother died after a car accident in 2010.
“I felt like my whole life was turned upside down in one day… I didn’t know how to handle life,” Holloway said.
Holloway said his strong relationships with his wife, two daughters, God, and friends, as well as his drive to help others in need have aided him in his path to recovery.
Julia Armstrong of Leominster, Massachusetts, came into Monday’s meeting having recently celebrated seven years of sobriety.
“There was a switch that happened in high school for me,” Armstrong said. “That struggle to fit in, I wasn’t feeling like I belonged or fit in. I started drinking a little bit more and then I could relax and socialize a little better.”
The end to an abusive 13-year marriage would cause Armstrong to begin abusing alcohol.
“All of a sudden I had time where I didn’t have my children and there was this alone time, this aloneness that I didn’t know how to deal with,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong remarried for a year, another relationship that would lead to drug and alcohol abuse – this time a combination of alcohol mixed with anti-depressants and later pain killers. Armstrong said things got so bad she has trouble remembering the first year of one of her children’s lives.
“When it took off, it took off and it raged and it destroyed… the addiction drove everything I did from that point on,” Armstrong said.
It would take her losing custody of her kids after a detox program and winding up in the hospital after drinking a box of wine with all the pills she had for Armstrong to turn her life around.
“I know what my purpose is, it’s been shown to me. It’s to love people back to life, because that’s exactly what happened to me,” Armstrong said.
Ron Smith of Jaffrey also spoke Monday, sharing the perspective of a parent who lost their child to an overdose.
Smith lost his son to an overdose in 2012 and is currently dealing with his daughter’s addiction. His daughter currently seems to be doing okay, but that didn’t stop him from having to step in at one point and take custody of her son.
“You have to have somebody that sticks by you or you won’t get through anything. Whether it’s a loss or with someone going through recovery,” Smith said.