Las Vegas (KSNV) — September is National Recovery Month.
In tonight’s Mental Health Matters, recovery survivors share how they found community support through each other.
News 3’s Marie Mortera spoke to Dargin McWhorter, Amberly Potter, and Edwin Santiago-Colon, members of the Desert Hope Alumni Program, at the Desert Hope Treatment Center about resilience.
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DM: For me, my life spiraled out of control and there was nothing I could do to get it back and then I found that drugs and alcohol were just controlling my life.
AP: I have it together; I’m a therapist. I’m supposed to help others but I was dying inside.
ESC: My dad was a heroin addict. Once he passed away, I was a lost child. I was never able to connect back with the world then.
DM: The only refuge I knew was drugs and alcohol but because I hadn’t been introduced to anything else, when things would get rough, I’d turn to what I knew was safe. At least what I thought was safe. Drugs and alcohol would comfort me.
AP: Got introduced to some hard drugs and just started using them and it was a nice release. After a year and half of that, and some pretty tumultuous events, and losing a lot that I once had, I surrendered and admitted I needed some help.
ESC: The Air Force saved my life for the moment. It was like I took a break from the drugs but I still wasn’t right up here.
DM: I can remember moments when something needed to change but it was August 3rd of 2000 when I said something’s going to change. I can’t die out here like this and that’s when I started my recovery journey. I went to a detox facility and followed the instructions of the program.
AP: I went from a person who didn’t want to wake up and die every night, hoping that I would, to a person who is reclaiming her life and thriving in recovery and practicing again. I’ve got my relationship with my kids again and honestly, if I had not gone to Desert Hope, I don’t know where I’d be today.
ESC: Once I got arrested with the police, they found me in a porta potty. I cried to them. I said, please take me, I can’t do this anymore, and it was the first time the police wasn’t mean to me. They were so compassionate. The ride there, I didn’t feel like this was a punishment. They were saving my life. I felt like this was an opportunity. That was my surrender.
Marie Mortera: When you think of who you were then and who you are now, what would you say?
DM: I love you; I love you and thank you for what we went through. Because look at us know.
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