The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has named September National Recovery Month. In Holliston, to commemorate this month, Holliston Drug and Alcohol Awareness Coalition (HDAAC) will share local stories of recovery on its Facebook page, illustrating how many lives are touched by addiction.
“One of my main goals, personally is to build a better recovery community in Holliston,” says Gina Stucchi, of HDAAC. “We will be posting stories online through the month of September. These will be people who are local people (who have faced addiction) or parents who went through their kids using,” she says. “We’re trying to get people to read it and get involved and take their talents and insight to the table.”
Stucchi, who hopes to reduce the stigma that is often an impediment to those seeking help, will be open with her own story. Last month marked four years she’s been sober.
“I was a heroin addict. I was a cocaine addict. I was an anything-I-could-get-my-hands-on addict, and it all started with a pill prescription,” she says. A former EMT, Stucchi was prescribed Percocet for pain following a car accident.
“I was going through other stuff in my life, day-to-day life stuff was stressing me out, but when I took the prescription, I had not experienced opiates before, something changed in me where all my anxiety just disappeared. I felt like that pill just took away all the problems, and I felt terrific. I felt wonderful.”
Stucchi explains that her craving for the opiate “took off from there. I couldn’t stop. I asked for more; doctors gave me more. I started to experience withdrawal. I didn’t know what it was,” she says. One night, she says, an old friend she met at a bar got her pills, and “I just went down really fast. It was like a switch.”
Stucchi’s sudden addiction would take her from her house, her kids and her husband, and what didn’t help was that her situation was made very public, as drug arrests led to her losing her job and social standing.
Stucchi says she attempted to get sober probably “a dozen times,” trying AA and NA as well as a number of detox programs, and in the end, she chose methodone as a means to help her stop using, although she says her stay at the Plymouth House, in Plymouth, NH, helped her immensely with her recovery.
“I have kids, and I wanted to stay near where my kids were. I didn’t feel I had any option but to get sober in my environment,” she says. Her time with the other treatments was not wasted, she says. “Each time you try to get sober, you get different tools for your toolbox. When you are strong enough, and you get all the tools you need, and you want to do it for yourself, you can do it.”
Stucchi feels that methodone, a synthetic opiate that dulls opiate receptors, has a false stigma attached to it.
“It takes a while for people to get sober on methodone, but it kind of curbs your cravings,” she says, noting that she moved to a clinic in Milford from Framingham, to get away from the too many familiar faces that tempted her to use drugs.
The methadone clinic also provided more than just daily medication.
“Each day I was in front of an RN who assessed me. Being on the clinic means weekly counseling and group therapy – the majority is education on relapse prevention. Because clinics are funded by the Department of Public Health, even people without insurance are accepted,” says Stucchi.
Breaking the habit of the ritual, she says, is important. “When you’re using and you want to go out with your friends and get that bag, a team of people with that one goal, you have a group of people that accept you because they’re just as messed up as you are. That’s replaced your entire life,” she says. Part of Stucchi’s breaking the cycle included changing her phone number, shutting down social media, even getting rid of her car, so she’d be forced to be home. Not having money was a help, too, she laughs.
Stucchi says what was most valuable to her from the methodone clinic was not only getting help, but helping others to also prevent relapse.
“I would leave group therapy feeling like a million bucks, maybe having contributed to their recovery, and they contributed to mine,” she says. “Giving of myself to others and serving is a huge part, not only in the AA model, but it’s a big part of my recovery.” Stucchi says that her whole experience with substance abuse and recovery changed her as a person, that she is who she is today because of it.
“I’ve been through hell, and I’ve come out and I’m alive and you’re just grateful.”
Visit HDAAC’s Facebook page for more down-to-earth personal stories of recovery.
HDAAC meets regularly on second Tuesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. in the meeting room at the Central Fire Station. It also hosts monthly parents support group-3rd Tuesday of every month—7:30 p.m., at the Christ the King Lutheran Church.
Issue Date:
September, 2017
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