WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS – Three young West Virginians who abused drugs, entered recovery and are now helping others shared their stories Thursday afternoon during the Game Changer Prevention and Education Luncheon.
All three were introduced to drugs by adults – two of them by their parents.
Jennie Hill is a 2000 Nitro High School graduate and assistant director of the West Virginia Alliance of Recovery Residences.
She was an IV heroin user and dealer, she said. She hasn’t used since 2011.
“I do believe people need to start coming out about their recovery,” she said. “I do believe that stigma is what keeps us in the shadows even as we’re rebuilding our lives.”
Her family didn’t use alcohol or drugs but she found them through friends and social activities, including smoking pot in the woods after church. “It didn’t really seem that bad. It actually seemed kind of fun.”
Her downward spiral began during her college years.
“This disease crosses all class lines. It crosses all boundaries,” she said.
JJ Cayton is a 2018 Braxton High School graduate and works with the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness.
He was born in the Philippines and has lived through abandonment and abuse by his parents, he said. He’s been in and out of foster care.
His dad, who used a wheelchair and used marijuana to ease his muscle spasms, introduced him to the drug, he said. “I always looked at it as not as bad as people thought it was. So it was really a big part of his life.”
He lived with his dad and during his sophomore year, a flood ruined their house and his dad left him. “Even if the world rises up against you, you can always rise up against it, because you’ve got yourself.”
And drugs helped ease his pain and relieved his depression. Asked what helped him, what was missing from his life, he said that he once thought the drugs helped get him through. But then he saw that the pills would eventually kill him, and he walked 10 miles to a friend’s house. That’s when he realized the importance of people. “I can’t begin to describe how important peer support is for people our age.”
JoAnna Vance is a 2007 Rocky Gap High School graduate and a recovery coach and advocate for the West Virginia Recovery Advocacy Project. Her parents were drug users and involved her. Her father overdosed and died when she was 15.
Asked what advice she would offer to young people, she said, “Today we know that overdose is preventable, and we know that recovery is possible.”
For those struggling with substance abuse disorder, she said, get trained in how to use Naloxone or Narcan. Kids don’t want their parents to die, and their parents don’t deserve to die.
“Naloxone is prevention and it saves lives, and it’s important for teenagers to know that today. I wish I’d had it when I was 15, because my dad might still be here.”
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