I’VE “RE-ENTERED” SOCIETY AS A FELON !

And so at 6:30 AM on June 19 a group of solid loyal dedicated women walked me down to R&D where I waited patiently for my family to pick me up upon my release of Alderson Women’s prison camp. A very very emotional day for everybody …….the feelings were bittersweet. I said my goodbyes to Brandy, Roya, Josie, Linda, Kelly & Cayla.   A group of women I shared much pain, many tears and genuine laughter with over the past year. This experience is something that I will hold dear to my heart and something that I will always cherish. One more time God knew what I needed in my life. I continue to be blessed and God continues to give me exactly what I need and not what I want. I’ve learned however that there is a very fine line now between what I want and what I need. This past year was spent soul-searching and working on myself.  I got into the cargo van mail truck to be driven to the parking lot and when the door opened, Anthony, Talia  and Sean were waiting patiently to pick me up. I have to say this was one of the happiest days of my life. As I stuck my middle finger in the air to so kindly say FUCK YOU Alderson, we started our journey home!!!  So now what? How do I begin my life all over again? How do I pick up the pieces of the devastating bomb which was dropped two years ago on our lives?  How do I begin? Where do I begin?  So I spent the past week at the halfway house experiencing what all of my patients have been experiencing for years! It feels so very strange to be home.  I have been released from the halfway house and am now on home confinement until July 20.    I think of the women in Alderson every day. I know what they’re doing I know what they’re thinking I know what they’re feeling and I pray that they all get to come home very soon.

The prison system is the absolute worst. The fact that there are prison camps and FCI’s and different levels of security that nobody knows about is ridiculous.  Alderson is a camp. It’s a very very low level security for first-time offenders of nonviolent crimes. You would think that the inmates were nothing short of baby killers the way they are treated by the staff.  I am extremely grateful for my many many years of recovery and years of private therapy that I have had.  Thanks to this I was able to survive the brutal daily attacks on my self-worth my self-confidence and my self-esteem.  Living by my motto of “TREATING PEOPLE THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE TREATED and NOT THE WAY THEY TREAT YOU” is virtually impossible in that miserable environment. And unfortunately knowing that society has a preconceived idea of what a prisoner is and how they should be treated, one must be very thick skinned to survive going to prison. Once again there is prison and there are camps.

     As pretty much all of you were aware I became involved in the sex scandal that took place in Alderson. One of the young ladies who was sexually abused by the captain was someone who I was trying to help get clean.   When I made the decision to help her I was told by many of the inmates that I needed to stay out of it. I was amazed at how many women have been brainwashed and institutionalized.   They were genuinely afraid for me. I initially thought they were crazy until I first handedly experienced the retaliation that I endured.  I had a very light sentence of a year and a day giving me a 10 month bid.  Within those 10 months,  because of my decision to help this young lady, I was put in the bus stop which is a form of torture for over 180 days out of 310 days, I received three shots and I was shipped to a maximum-security county jail without explanation for a period of five days.  I was lied to and told that I was being taken there for my protection. The Warden and the Lieutenant are  who signed off on sending me to the county jail only for me to find out that they were both walked off of the compound by the FBI 24 hours after putting me in the county jail. The Warden so rudely asked me if I was SORRY implying that I should have gone to him and given him the evidence that I was holding probably so that he could destroy it.   He allegedly is being charged with obstruction of justice. Since this experience I have been suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) as well as severe anxiety disorder. If I had a chance to do it all over again I would not do it any different. I am now trying to recuperate and get back on my feet so that I might fight and take on Alderson Women’s Prison Camp.   They have a serious price to pay. To allow 1100 women’s lives to be put in the hands of a group of unethical, illegal, abusive, power hungry authority figures is absurd. Nothing short of a Class Action lawsuit is definitely in order.  See, we as inmates are told that we are property of the BOP.  We are not humans and we are not citizens. Once again we are property of the BOP.   I have never been called “property”.   Nobody knows what goes on in prison because there is no conversation following the words “they are in prison”.  I have never experienced such inhumaness and unfairness in my life. There is no healthcare offered. The library is on the fourth floor of an old building with no elevators. The email is also on the fourth floor of that same building. The other email is located at the bottom of a very very very long hill.  My point is that these areas in the prison are not handicapped accessible.  My facility, ASI and MES,  was required to be handicapped accessible or we would be shut down.  There was a van that drove the handicapped places however it had no air conditioning. The bus stop which is a very large area similar to a lobby of a large hotel had approximately 20 bunkbeds in it. The bus stop is where the new inmates were housed and also where the disciplinary problems were housed.  They left fluorescent lights on 24 hours a day. You could not sleep in the bus stop. Remember that I told you that Alderson women’s prison camp is a camp. It consisted of people who were first-time offenders of Non-violent crimes. The majority of inmates were charged with conspiracy.  If you know anything at all about the law, conspiracy is how the Feds cover their ass and make sure that they have something to charge you with.

Now i’m going to vent about the drug problem. I don’t think the country is aware of how many addicts are in prison who have never ever been offered or sent to treatment of any kind.  Prisons offer a program called RDAP.   It is a cognitive behavioral program for addiction.   RDAP  is offered to the inmates the last year of their sentence.    For example if someone is given a 10 year sentence and they are qualified to do RDAP, they are given a year off of their sentence. However when they get to prison they do nine years before they’re allowed to get into the RDAP program.  In other words they sit for nine years doing nothing before they start treatment. In reality it’s not that they do nothing because what they do do is get high. They use. The Suboxone problem in prisons is outrageous. A strip of Suboxone costs $200 in prison.  The best part is the prison does not drug test for Suboxone. Basically because it makes too much money on the sales of Suboxone through the commissary. It’s a joke and it’s a nightmare. Many of these drug addicts would be much better off if the judge would sentence them to two years of rehabilitation with the understanding that if they relapse after they complete rehabilitation then they would be required to complete their full sentence.  I would love to be able to work with an addict for two years in treatment.   I wrote a full program on supporting this idea. I would love the opportunity to pilot a program of this sort.  

Basically I am home praying about what I want to be when I grow up. I’m going to rebuild what was stolen from me. Working with drug addicts is my passion. The opioid epidemic continues to be out of control and there has been a total of 83 ASI patients who have died of overdose since April 2016.  I am almost finished writing two books. Be on the lookout! My plan is to open a few outpatient treatment facilities and continue helping people get clean!   My other plan is also to never go back to prison! I thank you all for your love your support and your letters while I was incarcerated.I look forward to your comments and to your support. Stay tuned for my new upcoming YouTube channel! Yes I’m going on the circuit! I love you all and remember that God Got Us!!!!!!

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November 3, 2017 … Happy Birthday… in Prison!

“Sugarmann, let’s go, you have a visit,” the guard yelled as I just started my shift in the kitchen. “Great I can get a day off of working in the kitchen– Thank God!” 

I got dropped off at visitation. There was Nick, Sean, Maria, and Talia!! It was so great to see them. Anthony was missing though. I miss him so much. I miss my family. My heart aches when they leave. This is very difficult. I never want to do this again. I went back to my unit after the visit only to find my bunk 100% decorated in paper butterflies hanging from strings! Each one had a hand written message from the women in the unit. Brandy did the decorations; she made dumplings and baked me a birthday cake!! They sang Happy Birthday to me and I suddenly realized that I had NO camera. I could not take a picture of my bunk with the butterflies or the birthday cake that was baked in the microwave out of Oreo cookies and coke!!! NO CAMERA. There were no pictures of my 63rd birthday. Because there are no cameras in prison. There are no iPhones in prison. There is no Google in prison. There is no Facebook in prison. There is nothing here in prison. The women in my unit made my birthday bearable. I am so grateful to have these women in my life.

There is however, ONE Narcotics Anonymous meeting on Tuesday nights in prison. I chair the NA meeting this month of November. We do the readings and have a speaker share for approximately 20 minutes and then members comment. Christine spoke for me this week. She is a registered nurse who lost her license and is doing two years in prison. I walk up and down the unit every Tuesday starting at 3:00 pm, yelling that the NA meeting is tonight at 6:00pm!! Meet at my bunk to walk together at 5:30pm. And I tell them: “Chase your recovery the way you chased your dope…. if there was a pound of heroin or a meth lab at the bottom of the hill you would run there… NOW get your asses up and let’s go to the meeting!!!

Last night there were 10 women from my unit walking to the meeting together. It made my night!! These women have never been to an NA meeting or to rehab. So I shared that I am 63 years old and 34 years clean and my first time in prison. I have spent the last 35 years helping people. And I was helping people when the FEDS busted into ASI on October 8, 2015.

Does society know what is really going on with the sentencing guidelines? The mandatory minimums? The non-violent/ first-offenders?

Brandy from North Carolina was sentenced to 15 years for a drug charge, manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine. She has 4 children. She had three years knocked off of her sentence giving her 12 years to do. She has never been to rehab. She has no knowledge of the world outside of prison. I keep picturing a little 8 year old kid using a cell phone and how a grown up like her is going to manage coming out of prison.

Bella, also from North Carolina was sentenced to 12 years in prison for conspiracy. I just read her paperwork from the courts. Oh my God she is not an addict and she never touched a drug. Her boyfriend who she lived with was a drug dealer. Bella was arrested and basically charged with conspiracy for “knowing” that her boyfriend was selling drugs. 12 years in prison. She does not even qualify for the RDAP (Residential drug and alcohol program) ! That is offered to addicts in prison and they are given 18 months off of their sentence! Bella does not qualify. This was her first offense and it was non-violent. She has been incarcerated for 10.5 years.

Gena is from Texas. She is serving 13 years. Gena was clean in recovery for 10 years and she relapsed. When she used, she started cooking meth and she caught a charge. First offense- 10 years clean, sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Kelly is from Florida. They call her “wink”. She is getting released on December 13, 2017 (my clean date!). I sponsor her. She will have served 17.5 years once she is released. She will be going to Tampa to a half-way house. This was a first offense for her also. She is extremely intelligent and has lost 17.5 years of her life. She is very active in NA in Prison. She is working the program. She has just started her 4th step. Her desire to stay clean and recover is awesome. She is a breath of fresh air!!

These are just some of the women I have met in here. It makes no sense to me that these women have never been in any trouble at all, and are punished to this degree. There are murderers who have been given less time than these women. Child molesters who have done much less time. The system is flawed. The government is flawed. It is upsetting to know that their are 1,100 female inmates in Alderson Women’s Federal Prison who are so unfairly mistreated. Who knows this is happening? Who even cares? What is the answer to this? It is unfair. The reality is: If these inmates would have been given a slap on the wrist and then promised to be given this hard sentence if they repeated the offense a second time I would bet everything I love that they would NOT repeat the offense. Why is it so harsh??? It makes no sense at all.

So I will have spent my birthday in prison, along with Thanksgiving 2017; my 35 years clean anniversary; Christmas 2017; New Years; and Anthony’s birthday.

I AM READY FOR 2018!!

Thank each and every one of you for writing to me and for remembering my birthday. All of you from the ASI veterans page are in my thoughts and prayers on a daily basis. You are making my time tolerable. PLEASE keep writing and PRAYING for my family and me.

God Bless You– I love you all!!

The Three Most Difficult Words Ever: “I Need Help”

Happy 2017   ! I hope that you all have a peaceful, serene, healthy and love filled 2017!!!!!

I haven’t written for the past few weeks. It was a very difficult holiday season however many things became very clear to me over the past weeks !!!  I want to write every day; however when I sit down to write I get very emotional and I get blocked. Instead of trying to fight through it I get up and walk away.  So tonight as I was thinking about what I really needed to write about I realized that the reason that I wanted to start a blog in the first place was because of my passion for working with drug addicts.   Helping them change and become the person that they want to be deep down inside is truly a miracle.  I used the word “passion”.  Working with drug addicts IS my MAIN PASSION in life.

Since the closing of ASI I have been trying to figure out how I would get back into my work.  ASI was the future for my four kids.  We raised them watching us help addicts daily.  As a result, they saw the good, bad and ugly of this disease.  I had many addicts on my couch;  in my home while my children were growing up.  We taught them that addicts were sick people and the ones that we brought to our home were the ones who wanted to get better. Not all of them made it.  Many of them stole from us. My kids got attached to many of them and they got hurt when the addict relapsed and abandoned them.   ASI became a part of my children as well.   They all knew that ASI would be their home and their livlihood, just as it was from the beginning of their lives.  They went on to College and majored in Psychology.  They went on to do trainings and go to meetings and listen.  While they were fortunate enough to travel and chase some of their dreams, they knew deep down that they would end up running, working and living ASI just as they had all of their lives and just as they saw their parents do every day of their life.

It was pulled out from under them.  Probably one of the saddest things one could watch and experience.  I have never been given an answer as to why, after 20 years, there had to be that kind of ending.  Nobody has ever answered why ASI could not have continued with other owners. So in the meantime, we are struggling as a family to make it daily.  Sean and I both were unable to collect unemployment.  We have been selling our possessions in order to live.  As you know, Sean has been battling cancer…..he has no health insurance. We are bogged down with medical bills.  My children were not making enough money to take care of us, our house payment, our car payment, etc…..  I’m putting it all out there because each day I try to grasp at ANYTHING and it is always the same……..there is nothing there. As I am sure you all know, ASI was a lucrative business.  Making an income on this disease has always been a struggle for me.  I did the best I could to deal with that struggle by giving as much as I possibly could to whoever was in need and could not afford to pay.   I can feel that many of the people who do not like me are taking great pleasure in my pain and probably think I deserve this on some level.  There have been so many people who have lied to the FBI;  disgruntled employees, jealous, envious people who live in hate of others.  So many false accusations, so many untrue newspaper articles.  I don’t know that I would wish what we are going through on my very worst enemy.

I get on my knees in the morning and at night.  Now more than ever.  I never imagined going from having everything to having nothing.  I am trying diligently to get something set up for my family so that they may have an income.   I am most likely going away in June for a period of time.  I want them to be able to survive.  The only work I know is helping addicts.  My family operates as a close unit, borderline “codependent”.  haha
We are presently holding each other up.  I had a friend say to me, “Roz, put a status on Facebook or send a flier out and ask everyone who you have ever helped for $25.00 or whatever they want to donate…….”    I can’t do that.  I don’t know how to do that.   I’m going to continue to pray as I have been doing for the past 32 years.  I have a God who is loving, caring and who has helped me get through every storm I’ve ever been through since I was 10 years old.

We will get a break.  We will get a miracle.  Something phenomenal will happen and God will be there helping us to put our lives back together.  I want to thank all of you who have loved me unconditionally.  Whether you are clean or struggling to get clean.  Somebody always has it worse than I do.  I still get phone calls to help addicts who are struggling……thank God for those phone calls.  They keep my spirit alive.   Please pray for me and for my family.  I need many many prayers and I KNOW they work.  God listens to prayer and God helps those who help themselves.  I have been asking for a financial miracle.  I learned that it is okay to do that.   I would have never imagined that at 33 years clean and four children later that I would have achieved my dream and had it yanked out from under me at age 62.

I have been approached by some people to participate in something called FUND MY CAUSE. I am in the process of researching it and I am in hopes of it assisting me with a way to help addicts get clean and a way for me to continue with my PASSION.  I am asking that you be on the look out for this in my next blog.  I am really in need of your support in order to make this happen.   Please continue to read and support my blog.  I really need your help.

Thank all of you who have been there for me……..please continue praying for the addicts and family members of the addicts who are still suffering, both clean and struggling to get clean.

And so This is Christmas…..

                         

Christmas 2016.  A rollercoaster ride of feelings.  Ups and downs, tears and laughter.  This is the first Christmas in 33 years that I have not bought one single gift….for anyone.  If you knew at all what Christmas morning has looked like in this house for the past 28 years you would wonder if I was going to even MAKE IT through the holidays without taking the bridge…..or using heroin…….or sitting in the bathtub with a razor blade.  But I can’t do that….because as I was talking to my kids last night they said, “Mum, yea we can’t buy Christmas gifts and we can’t go to New York (another yearly family tradition) and we literally don’t have money for gas…..but we are all alive.  We are all breathing.  There have been so many, many deaths in the past 6 months.  I spent Christmas and New Years as a patient in Gateway in 1983.  The Christmas before I got clean I stole all of the gifts out of my mothers car….I was pathetic.  The next year I spent the holidays in treatment and the years following I spent putting my life back together.

As I’ve told all of you in my other posts, I’m having a really hard time letting go of losing ASI and trying to move on.  I’m so very very stuck.  I just want to sit down and write emails to the FBI and the Department of Health and VBH and Fayette County Drug and Alcohol and the DEA and so many others who I am ANGRY at and who contributed to our demise.  But I KNOW that it will not do me or anyone any good.  It won’t bring ASI/MES back and those people certainly will NOT take ANY responsibility for their part in any of this.  See that is one of things that I learned in recovery…………I learned that when something goes wrong or bad in a relationship…..ANY type of relationship, that the blame falls on BOTH SIDES……remember, there are THREE sides to every story.  Yours, mine and the truth.    The bottom line is that I have not had the opportunity to grieve this loss.  And there are many losses that I have suffered this past year.   My heart hurts.  Literally.  Overdoses, one after the other. 42 deaths since ASI/MES closed.  And the one thing that was helping these addicts was pulled out from underneath them………….for literally no reason.  I will be sentenced in May.  Once I am sentenced, hopefully, I will be able to speak out.  As advised by my attorneys, I have been told to basically SHUT UP.  No interviews with newspapers or anything of the sort.  I’m sure you can tell how I drift off into sharing about ASI in EVERY BLOG !  I apologize for that.  There is SO MUCH MORE to my life and to the disease of addiction as well as the recovery process, that I would LOVE to share with all of you.

I miss you.  I miss my family group on Tuesdays.  I had the very BEST GROUP of family members on Tuesday nights.  They were great and they worked really hard on understanding their codependency and they worked so very hard on their own recovery !  It was awesome !

I need to hear from you.  I need to know what you want to hear from ME !!  I so appreciate you supporting my blog and I absolutely look forward to the comments!  They have been a great support to me at the absolute worst time in my life.  Can you please send me your email address in the comment section of the blog OR you can just email it to me !!  Rozsug1213@gmail.com

 

And so this is Christmas
So what have we done
2016 is over
2017 just begun

We have had many memories
At the end of these years
There was so very much pain
We shed many tears

The end of two decades
Came abruptly and quick
It was quite unexpected
It left everyone sick….

Thousands of addicts
Were helped every day
ASI/MES was a family
In many different ways

The Staff was committed
The Addicts were too
April 30 was a tragedy
There was nothing we could do

After its closing
Addicts started to die
So many families
Had to say GoodBye

ASI & MES
Were loved by all
We closed with great memories
That we could all recall

ASI is a legend
MES too
Thanks for the memories
To each and every one of you

And so this year is over
I can’t say I’m sad
ASI/MES is in our heart
For this we are glad
There may not be Christmas presents this year for the Sugarmanns, but we were blessed to have met all of the Addicts that we met over the past 20 years.  We were honored to help them and honored that God put each and every one of them in our lives. There are no number of Christmas presents that could EVER equal the love, gratitude and loyality that they have shown me and my family.  This year, Christmas will be remembered in honor of all of the blessings that came from the many Addicts who were patients at one point at both Addiction Specialists and Mary E Steratore Treatment Center.   ASI/MES might be closed, but the memories, the recovery, the dedication, the commitment and the hard work that took place for the past 20 years by both Staff AND by the Addicts can NEVER EVER be forgotten.

God Bless You All

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year & Happy Holidays to all of you.

I love you.

http://www.aheroinestory.com/about

Twenty Years Is A Lifetime

I was driving home from the Women’s I to We 3/4 House last night and I had a thought about ASI (Addiction Specialists, Inc) and MES (Mary E. Steratore Treatment Center).   I got a huge lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.  I was paralyzed.  I stopped the car in the middle of the road.  My heart sunk.  How did this happen?  I had a dream. And it came true.   My facility opened in July 1999.  I was so grateful and so happy.  Living my life doing what I love to do with the people I love to do it with.  Addicts.  Helping Addicts.  I had my own treatment center.  I have a great husband and four great children.  My children mean the world to me.  All I ever wanted was for my children to always love to be home.  I wanted to make sure that they loved being there.  I hated being home.  My father died unexpectedly when I was 10 years old of a massive heart attack and my mother might as well have died with him. She was so very sad and depressed. She spent her life waiting to die so she could see him again. So, needless to say, it was a sad place to grow up. I couldn’t wait to leave.

ASI was in operation for 11 years when we decided to open the Mary E. Steratore Treatment Center. It was a residential inpatient facility with 24 beds. I named it after my mother. It was my dream and it came true.  The Mary E. Steratore Inpatient Treatment Center.  I was able to help addicts in my own facility and I knew my mother would be (and was) very proud of me. My mother died when I had 4 years clean. My addiction took a toll on our relationship. Thank God I got four fantastic years with her. They were the best four years ever and I will always cherish them. I was so blessed to be able to own and name an addiction treatment facility after my mother.

ASI/MES was open and in operation for 20 years. On October 8, 2015 60 FBI agents raided the entire facility. Fifty more Agents also raided my home. My daughter was the only one at home when they showed up at 8:30 am. She is now in therapy two times per week because she suffers from  PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). She cannot answer our front door without breaking out in hives and having a panic attack. They violated my home and interrogated my daughter. They found NOTHING in my home. They left with a few laptops and a $900.00 TJ Maxx receipt. It was months before anyone was charged with anything. Literally months.

I believe I have been in shock. Ethics have always been a priority for me. They have always been of the utmost importance to me. I am devastated that this happened. I don’t understand why. I truly do not understand how I ended up here. I am 61 years old. I am clean 32 years. I used drugs for 16 years and never was arrested and never went to jail.Why is this happening now?   I do not want to have the “poor me’s”. I am totally in shock though, and I need to grieve. I need to work through the five stages of grief somehow. But I cannot  get through the denial stage. I’m stuck in it. This has literally put a hole in heart.I wake up every day with an empty feeling in my gutt. I get on my knees and ask God for help.I still have the hole. Then my husband sat me down and told me that he has cancer and has known for 2 months. He now has been in the hospital for three weeks due to some different complications with his heart and his good lung.

So I started this blog. It’s a way for me to express my feelings. It’s a way for me to stay connected to my old patients who I miss terribly. It’s a way for me to hear from all of you. It’s a way for me to tell myself each day that I’m going to be okay and that I can continue to do what I love to do. I had about five more years before I retired. Now, I literally have to start over. And I will. And I’ll be better for it. I won’t lose my faith. I believe in God and I believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe that the truth will be revealed. And we will all find out that this happened due to peoples envy and jealousy. Due to politics and the government. Due to society and their stigma of addiction and of addicts. I replay October 8, 2015 over and over and over in my head. Like a broken record.Now what? Those two words are something that I have been asking myself daily for the past 10 months. What a nightmare. That is the best description for our lives since Oct. 8, 2015.  I have not had closure with ASI/MES or with my patients.

I need to have a gathering of all past ASI patients and staff.  Well, not all staff.  hahaha.  I miss the patients and I need to see how they are doing !!!!  I have to figure out how to pull that off.  I’m not sure how anyone could just expect us to walk away from all of this like it didn’t happen.  My kids were planning on  working at ASI and taking it over.  They will need to continue in the field and open another one.  TWENTY YEARS IS A LIFETIME.

 

 

Reality

I’m blocked.  I guess this is writers block ?   I’m so frustrated with life right now.  I’m so frustrated with people.  And God ?  Well this is what separates the men from the boys.  “God doesn’t close one door without opening another…….”  “God doesn’t give us any more than we can handle”………… “God will never let us fall”…………………Not that I’m blaming God for any of this.  God gave us free will.  My son laughed at me when I told him that this is all Adam & Eve’s fault.  They ate the apple after God told them not to and we have been paying a price ever since !!   So of course, as I sit here bitching about God, I got a phone call from one of my son Anthony’s friends who I have known since he was a young boy.  He is an addict.  I tried to help him nine years ago but he was not ready.  He has 105 days sober right now.  He saw the GO FUND ME page on Facebook.  He was quite upset. He made amends to me and we talked about how he was not ready to get clean and how grateful he is to have had contact with us and had the seed planted.  It was so nice to talk with him.

The past twenty years I drove to Uniontown every day and spent my days working with addicts and helping them to get clean.  And on October 8, 2015 our entire world crashed.  Literally, it CRASHED.  I still don’t know what happened or why it happened.  I always thought that we were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty…..not guilty until proven innocent.  So many have twisted opinions.  I was taught that we have to “give” in order to “get”.  The FBI came to my home in June of 2015 and sat at my kitchen table and said……..”you know that you rub elbows with some pretty corrupt people in Fayette County?”  I thought they meant drug addicts !  I really can’t any farther with the conversation we had.  At some point it will all come out.  And I truly cannot wait for that day.   The ironic thing was that the addicts were the ones that were/are loyal.  The people who I helped the most, who I thought were my friends, are the ones who literally lied and stabbed us in the back.  I’m baffled.  I just keep having one conversation after another with God.  I’m trying to quiet my mind so I can listen.  So I can hear what He is saying.  So I can get some sort of answer for what is happening now.  I’m baffled at all of this.

So living life on life’s terms is really rough at times.  I have heard this at least once a day since October 8, 2015…….”Roz, have you felt like using?  So, on October 8, 2015, 60 FBI Agents raided our facility.    On January 8, 2016 I was indicted and on April 30, 2015 the State shut down our entire facility and on July 28, 2016 my husband told me that he was diagnosed with lung cancer and he would be having surgery on August 4.  He also informed me that he has known for the past two months.   He did not want to overwhelm us he said.   So really, “Roz, do you feel like using?”  is not a ridiculous question at all.  Fortunately,  I KNOW that using will NOT make it better.  I know that using will hurt everyone in my life and mostly it will hurt me.  However, the true answer to that question is……”YES, I feel like using.”

So we are starting over again.  To wake up in the morning and not know how to pay for a tank of gas is a bit humbling.  Our kids are literally a blessing; a gift from God.  They are the victims in all of this.  They did nothing to deserve to suffer like this.  I’m amazed at their ability to love me & Sean unconditionally.  I’m amazed that they have been nothing at all but loving, caring and supportive.  I’m amazed that they have not complained once and have only shown concern.  I’m just amazed that they have not judged us or questioned us once.  They are TRUE TRUE BLESSINGS.

When the praises go up, the blessings come down.

 

 

 

Surgery

Sean has been diagnosed with Lung Cancer.  Stage 1.  They are doing surgery today and taking out half of his lung.   He has known for two months and did not tell me until a week ago.  I believe he had our best interest at hand, however, I want to choke him.  I am unsure how he is able to hold things in like that.  All of my kids are home.  God will be there too.  I’ve been praying and asking Him to show up.  He always shows up. I haven’t written for two days.  I’m surprised how much I missed writing.  It helps so much.  I got two comments on here that were not very spiritual in nature. I guess they felt better taking shots at me and telling me that I knew ASI was closing down in December.  This is very untrue.  I had no idea the State would put 600 addicts on the street.  In fact, that is who is to blame for this fiasco.  They came rushing in after the FBI came in……..and after licensing us for the past 20 years, they suddenly decide that we should not have a license because the Feds came in to raid us.  This is ridiculous.  And all higher ups that could have intervened could not do so because they, too, were involved.  Money.  The almighty dollar. Money became an issue for everyone.

ASI opened in July 1999.  Sean and I were totally against methadone at the time.  We figured we could open a clinic and then help addicts come off of methadone.  That was our intent. We tried to open just a methadone “detox” program.  The State let us know we were not allowed to do that.  They told us that we were only permitted to do “maintenance”.  So we opened ASI with the intention to teach addicts on methadone about the disease concept of addiction.  And that is what we did.  We were a “cash only” clinic when we opened.  We took in 100 patients immediately.  The Director of Fayette County Drug & Alcohol made a statement in the newspaper that the clinic was not really needed in Fayette County and that there were ONLY TWO HEROIN ADDICTS in the entire county.  TWO?   Well it turns out maybe TWO THOUSAND.    We proceeded to service the patients and suddenly we started to get visits from the VBH rep.  (VBH is the insurance company for all welfare recipients in Fayette County).   This rep. named Marla brought us donuts daily and begged us to sign up with them so the welfare patients could be covered and not have to pay for treatment.  We did not want to do it because we were aware of the red tape involved with dealing with Insurance Companies.  Especially this type of coverage all the way around.  So after being tortured daily by Marla for several months we decided to do it.  The worst decision we ever made.

For some reason I find a need to take you all from the inception of ASI up through the demise of ASI. Maybe it is because “I” need to be the one that writes about it and hears about it and needs CLOSURE around it and on and on and on.  Or maybe because I cannot believe where my life is right now and how things change from literally one minute to the next.

I’ll continue writing later……………as for right now it is 6:42am and Sean goes in to surgery at 9:30am today. I also have  a wake to attend this evening so I’m getting ready to go pray so I can get through this day with God running it, not me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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