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.

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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

Ready, Set, Blog !

It has been 18 days since I have blogged.  So I decided this morning at 8:30am that I was going to write for an hour; get my blog posted by 10:00 am and then finish getting my clothes ready to take to AVALON to sell in Squirrel Hill so I can get enough money to get my gas turned on in my house.  It’s been off for 5 days.  The question right now in the Sugarmann house is “should we pay the gas at $1,066.00 so we can have hot water and a hot dryer or should we just pay the water bill at $740.00 which is going to be shut off on Friday so we make sure we at least have water regardless of whether it is cold or hot !!!”  So, it is now 9:45 pm which means I have literally taken 13.5 hours to write this post.  WTF is wrong with me.  I have resisted writing a little more each day.  All of my kids are home.  They have been home since Sean had surgery.  Every night my son says, “C’mon mum, kick the recliner up so you can lay back and go to sleep since you won’t go to bed……”  I told him that I don’t want to go to sleep because I don’t want to wake up.  Not that I want to die or anything of the sort……..just that I literally don’t want to “wake up” and be bombarded with all of those feelings of fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, emptiness, having to realize that there is no need to hurry and get dressed because I have to get to Uniontown.   Not wanting to wake up to the fact that it’s yet another day that I don’t get to see my staff or my patients who I have literally been seeing EVERYDAY for the past 20 years.  I haven’t seen Sammy in almost 2 months.  Yes, it’s horrible.  Yes, I’m whining.  Yes I’m feeling sorry for myself.

Watching my kids is what keeps me moving.  They truly have a story to tell.  These kids went from having anything and everything they ever wanted to having absolutely nothing.
Ands they have done it with grace and dignity and a smile on their face.  They have not shown one sign of resentment or anger to us at all.  They have remained very humble and concerned about me and their father through this entire nightmare of us being shut down and raided by the Feds to Sean being diagnosed with Lung Cancer.  They have gone from being on top of the world to almost being under the bridge.  They are my greatest motivator and greatest support.  They don’t even know it.  I’m so very proud of them and so very honored to say they are my kids.   I am blessed, regardless of how angry I get at God sometimes.  This is not God’s fault.  I am unsure “WHY” this happened.  It baffles me.  And NO I cannot NOT think about it.  I cannot just “LET IT GO”.   I hear from my patients EVERY DAY.  I hear of a death/overdose EVERY DAY in Uniontown.  It is unfair.
600 patients put out on the street????   And they make it sound like it’s a normal.  Oh well, they are just drug addicts.  Not useful for much of anything………..right? Is that not the message that is sent??

I have been writing all day….and deleting everything  write.  I’m so stuck because I feel my life is stuck.  I’m on hold.  I’m moving quickly and I’m stuck at the same time.  I was married in my active addiction to a man I met while I was in college at West Virginia University. His name was Dante.  We used together and we got married in 1979 on St. Patrick’s Day.  He moved to Pittsburgh with me when we graduated from College.  Our addiction took off once we moved to Pittsburgh.  It got very bad.    We went to rehab together in December 1983.  We kicked heroin cold turkey in the rehab and finally on the 4th night they came in the middle of the night and put Dante in another rehab in the mountains.  I was hysterical.  You would have thought it was the end of my world.  I learned about codependency after getting clean.  My relationship with Dante suffered from SEVERE codependency.  I acted desperate with him.  He was a drug.  I was pathetic.  I bought him clothes. I bought him shoes.  I gave him money.  I followed him everywhere.  I was pathetic.  I convinced myself that I would MAKE him marry me.  And I did.  If someone asked him a question, I answered for him.  If he wanted to be with another girl (before we got married) I wouldn’t say anything.  I would do anything to keep him around.  The thought of not being with him made me want to kill myself.  I was pathetic.  Hence, when they took him away from me and separated us in rehab I was crying hysterically.  I screamed, “You took my dope now you took my husband”……..they responded, “Same thing…….”   I remember those words like it was yesterday.  They played over and over in my head and I did not know what it meant.  We were separated for 45 days.  The first week I was detoxing from him and I was out of my mind.   At the end of the 45 days my therapist came to me and said “We are bringing Dante back here for five days so we can do some couples work before you go home.”  I said, “Don’t bring him here, I want a divorce.”

Dante and I lived together for our first year in recovery.   I knew instantly that we would not stay married.  We were better friends than husband and wife.  So I codependently went about my way and found him a job, an apartment and a new wife !  All because I felt so guilty.  I soon learned that codependency was a part of the disease of addiction and that family members suffer from it.  “Codependent No More” by Melanie Beatty is a great book for family members of addicts.  If you have a loved one who is suffering from this disease you should read this book and I am sure you will relate and find it MORE than helpful to you.

Dante & I remained great friends.  I married his sponsor.  They were great friends.  Dante was also one of our partners at ASI.  We talked on a daily basis and we were great support for each other.   Dante died last week.  I got word of his death on the day AFTER his funeral.   I am so hurt that nobody told me in enough time to go to the funeral.  I can guarantee anyone that he is highly upset that nobody contacted me.  He had very few people in his life.  I am not surprised I was not contacted by most of them.  There were a few, two in particular, who truly made me angry for not telling me.  People are odd.  They are jealous creatures.  They have no self awareness.

We are on into a new day.  It is 12:04 am.  I have been trying to get this out an entire day.  I will write more maybe even tomorrow !!!   haha !   I am excited about the future.  I believe things will get better and I believe that we will be open again soon and we will be able to go back to helping addicts just like we left off doing.  For most of us, it is what we are supposed to be doing.  And we are supposed to be doing it as a team because we made a great team  !!!!!    ASI / MES was a great upstanding ethical facility that had a true passion for helping addicts find a new way of life.  Anyone who has had any reason to come to ASI/MES knows what we are about.  All in favor of ASI/MES being put back in business
say “I”.

The “I’s” have it.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

If this was your last day on earth, what would you do?—Grays Anatomy

I just finished watching Grays Anatomy; Season 2, Episode 16 “It’s The End Of The World”.  What would you do if this was your last day on earth?  Do you know?  Can you think of what you might do?   I know I would make sure that I was with Sean and my kids. What a blessing to know that I wouldn’t have to cop first or get some money together to try to make sure I was not sick.   Recovery is good.  God is good.

We were visiting Sean last night in the hospital. He’s doing well.  He was in some pain and discomfort and they made him wait every 4 hours for pain Meds. I went to to the nurse to see if they could move it up to every 3 hours.  The nurse was very, very nice. I told her I worked in the addiction treatment field and she told me she was originally from Uniontown. I said “Oh small world!”  She proceeded to ask me if I knew that they just shut down the largest treatment facility in PA which was located in Uniontown!!  I said, “Oh as a matter of fact yes I do know…that was MY facility.”  Her jaw dropped and we proceeded to talk and she told me that she thought it was absolutely ridiculous that it was closed and that it was needed more than ever.  Unfortunately it is talked about wherever I go. It seems never ending.

Addiction is “never ending”.  Addiction is the “big white elephant” in the middle of the room that family members walk around and act like it isn’t there.  It starts very very very early in life. Actually it is hereditary. Unfortunately society thinks that it’s best to not tell our kids that we have experimented with drugs.  Society teaches that it is best to LIE to them. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them”…..such an untrue statement !!    Be honest with your kids. Tell them the truth. Educate them and let them know what is going on. Don’t scare them. Don’t threaten them. Don’t make them think that addicts and alcoholics are “bad people.”  Let them know that if they are genetically predisposed to this disease that they truly should think very very hard before they make a decision to take that first drink or drug.  THIS IS WHEN THEIR EDUCATION BEGINS. PLEASE don’t be one of those parents that say “be careful & drink responsibly!”  or the parent that says “as long as they drink while they are at home and I take the car keys then it’s OK”.    And I cannot for the life of me understand how parents can tell their kids that it is not OK to break the law and then turn around and be OK when their child drinks before the age of 21.  (because everyone does it!). ALCOHOL IS A DRUG!!!   And a drug is a drug is a drug….. Alcohol, marijuana, heroin, crack, cocaine, are all drugs. And an addict can NEVER use ANY of them.  If they do choose to use one of them the addict will be unable to stop OR they will use whichever one of them they like the best, i.e. their drug of choice!!!  Just so you know, when I use the term “addict” I mean alcoholic and when I use the word addiction I also mean alcoholism. There is no difference between the two. The only reason there is any differentiation is because thereare two fellowships, i.e.  Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.  This can be very confusing for people who are just beginning to learn about the disease of addiction.

I do not know what type of tangent I am going to get on when I’m writing so please bear with me. If you have anything that you would like me to blog about please let me know again thank you for your support and please send prayers for Sean and the Sugarmann family.