Deviate from Denial: Erasing the Stigma of Addiction and Recovery Through Inspirational Stories

By Sam Perez

In 2021, over 100,000 people died from an opioid overdose. The crisis continues.

To help combat this growing epidemic, author Sam Perez's parents made a decision that changed her family's life forever. In 2017, they opened DV8 Kitchen in

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Aug 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885048316

Book preview

PART 1

THE BEGINNING

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INTRODUCTION

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At the beginning of my senior year of high school, my parents made a decision that changed my family’s life forever. They opened DV8 Kitchen, a bakery that serves breakfast sandwiches, fresh loaves of bread with homemade jam, and the best cinnamon rolls you’ll ever have. DV8 is more than just a restaurant, though. It is also a second chance employment opportunity, which means that 100 percent of the people working there are in recovery from substance use disorder.

Before DV8, my parents had been restaurant owners for more than a decade, and over ten years they lost thirteen employees. The employees hadn’t moved on to another restaurant. They hadn’t been fired. They were dead—all thirteen from drug and alcohol overdoses.

Party culture is common in the restaurant industry. Long, intense hours can push workers to rely on substances to keep their energy levels high, and they’re working in an already social environment where alcohol is present. Restaurant workers stay at their jobs until late in the night, which translates into barhopping with coworkers, often to maintain or strengthen a buzz caught from drinking on the job. Shifts start later in the day, so long nights beforehand are easy to work around. Having worked in the industry for much of their lives, my parents were used to the culture, and my dad was a recovering alcoholic. In their dating and early marriage they had been a part of this scene. But this seemed to be a different kind of addiction they weren’t familiar with—one that was quite literally taking people’s lives.

My parents saw this massive problem within the industry which breeds partying. They were deeply affected by the deaths they’d experienced and knew they wanted to find a way to address the pattern of fatal addiction so common among their employees. They knew they wanted to try to fix it, but they weren’t sure how.

As my brother and I have learned over the years, when your parents work together and are their own bosses, you quickly become their assistants, consultants, confidantes, employees, copyeditors, and—now—personal publicist and author, apparently. Work isn’t confined to four walls when you own a business. This means my parents aren’t able to leave the work-talk at the door of the restaurants before heading home for the night, so work discussions are held at the family dinner table, on the sidelines of my brother’s sports games, in the car as I learned to drive, so on and so forth.

This meant that for years my brother and I had heard my parents go back and forth on this new concept. We listened to them debate the pros and cons, plead with one another, huff and puff, compromise, step on toes, and ultimately take the biggest leap of faith they ever had when they finally decided to give this crazy idea a shot.

The summer before my senior year of high school was a busy one. My dad began to dream up recipes and fill out paperwork. My mom started to look at paint swatches and pick out tiles. I strategized how to build hype on social media. My brother tested out his handyman skills (and his patience) helping measure booth sizes and hammer in nails. Our friends got the most challenging job of all: deciding which cinnamon roll recipe passed the aesthetic test and the taste test. Opening a restaurant is a family affair—or rather, a community affair. The Central Kentucky community rallied around my family in the most admirable way imaginable and showed us support at every step. From generous donors who contributed to my parents’ idea before it became a reality to the professionals in the community who offered their services during our pre-COVID weekly workshops, so many people have supported DV8’s mission and employees.

By the time August came around, my parents were ready to open the doors. They had the best-decorated interior and exterior complete with polished concrete floors and strategically graffitied walls, the flakiest pastries and most flavorful breakfast sandwiches, the coolest social media in the game, the best customers imaginable, and my parents’ biggest desire to empower future employees in their journey toward sobriety. What they weren’t prepared for, however, was how impactful those employees were going to be.

I get to share a few of those employees’ impacts in this book. Tara has demonstrated what a strong grip addiction can have on people and has been a great example of perseverance despite setbacks. Gene taught those around him about what a genuine zeal for life looks like and showed just how much heartbreak can accompany addiction. Jade embodies strength and determination that I have yet to find in anyone else. So many people at DV8 have paved such incredible paths. Each person has taught my family and the other people in their life so many lessons and opened our eyes to the harrowing truths of the opioid epidemic. With those truths about drug addiction comes a warning: Some parts of this book may be disturbing to some audiences.

Another detail I think is worth mentioning: I have changed nearly every name in this book. I get into the gritty details of peoples’ lives. I talked with them about some of their deepest, darkest moments. They laughed, they cried, they opened up to me, and they have entrusted me with portraying them truthfully. They were vulnerable with me in a way I admire more than they could ever know, and they granted me permission to share their stories publicly. While they are open about their pain and their transformations and their heartache, I know they are not defined by their worst moments. None of us are. While their pasts are testaments to their presents and their futures, I don’t want anything they may have done to detract from what they’re doing now. Yes, these pages are full of pain. But they’re also filled with hope. That is the focus.

Each detail of everyone’s story is as accurate as they could recall and as transparent as I could write it. That said, there isn’t enough ink and paper in the world to tell it all. I apologize for any details I left out, any names I didn’t mention, or any lessons I don’t allude to. I’m just grateful for the chance to share what I can.

I know this part of my growing up is a little out of the norm. I gained exposure to such a huge issue in a unique way, and I understand that most people don’t have that same experience and thus don’t have the same understanding of the opioid addiction that is running rampant through our country. While hearing my parents’ heart-to-hearts, watching their vulnerability, and helping them brainstorm and create this new concept, I started to develop a newfound passion. As my parents began to hire more and more people recovering from substance use disorder, and as I got to know them and their stories, I quickly realized how much I didn’t know, largely because addiction isn’t talked about as often as it should be.

People dance around the issue when it comes to recognizing it in people they know. Addiction carries a lot of shame and guilt, which often forces people to hide it. When we shroud an issue in secrecy as we have done with addiction, we only make matters worse. By creating this stigma and continuously denying what a massive issue we have, we can’t understand the problem, making it that much harder to find a solution. Seeing DV8’s impact gave me a passion to learn and to try and help more people understand the complexities—and the gravity—of this problem. It showed me the importance of deviating from denial through open and honest conversation.

And just like that, the idea for a book was born.

So why write about this topic now? After all, opioid addiction isn’t new. People have been getting addicted to drugs and abusing alcohol practically since people first existed. So why is talking about it right here, right now, important?

The simple answer—the problem is not improving. The United States just reached a grim milestone: More than 100,000 people have died in one year from an opioid overdose—an all-time record (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021).

Talking about this issue has never been more important than it is now, especially as we’re coming off the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a time when large gatherings, physical touch, and normal human interaction is unsafe, most Americans are feeling unsettled. The substance use recovery community is founded on fostering relationships with people to breed accountability, but now in the new normal we’ve come to know, this community has been hit especially hard.

In 2020, drug overdose deaths in the United States reached a record high. From May 2020 to April 2021, the CDC estimated that 100,300 people in the United States died of drug overdoses. This means that fatal overdoses surpass deaths from car crashes, guns, the flu, and pneumonia (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021).

The total is now close to that of diabetes, which is the nation’s seventh biggest cause of death. This number is more than the previous high in 2019 by more than 20,000 people, the largest single-year percentage increase on record since 1999 (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2020).

A huge reason for this sharp increase in overdose deaths is due to the isolation that we were living in. When you’re working to stay sober, a massive part of recovery is built on a community that you rely on for support and accountability. In 2020, this community was ripped away literally overnight, and it was a hard adjustment for everyone, not just people in recovery.

People working toward sobriety are seeing a major shift in their recovery process because programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) couldn’t meet face-to-face for an extended period during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I spoke with Charlotte Martin, a certified peer specialist in addictive diseases at Athens Clinic, a treatment facility in my college town of Athens, Georgia. She provided insight on what this isolation looked like.

We tell them like, ‘Don’t isolate, go to meetings, talk to people.’ Now we’re saying, ‘Oh, well, you can’t do all that,’ but you still have to stay connected, she said. Charlotte struggled with addiction herself when she was younger. Once she got sober, she decided to spend her life helping others with a disease she knows much too well.

Virtual AA and NA attendance has skyrocketed, and treatment facilities are seeing an uptick. Athens Clinic is a recovery center that aims to help people with opioid use disorder regain control of their lives. It administers methadone, a prescription drug used to treat narcotic drug addiction. Ali McCorkle works at the outpatient treatment program to help counsel and treat people struggling with opioid use.

From McCorkle, I learned that reports of opioid overdoses have drastically increased since the start of the pandemic.

With COVID in the treatment field, we have seen so many more intakes, McCorkle said. We know people are using way, way more.

Athens Clinic saw intakes rise by 59.4 percent from 2019 to 2020. So, are opioid overdoses going up because people are lonely, living in isolation? Well, yes and no, according to McCorkle.

A quarantined lifestyle could be partially to blame, she says—but not in the way you might think. Loneliness may not necessarily be causing people to use drugs more often, but it poses a danger of its own: accidental overdoses.

Before the pandemic, people were encouraged to use drugs with at least one other person in the room. That way, there’s another person available to help in case of an accidental overdose. But in a time of social isolation, more and more people are using alone.

Never Use Alone is a hotline that people can call when they’re using drugs by themselves. In case something goes wrong, the operator will send emergency medical services right to the user.

In 2020, the organization received over 2,100 calls, according to Jess Blanchard, education director and a national line operator at an overdose detection line. In twelve cases EMS was called, and in all twelve cases lives were saved.

Since the pandemic’s start, Blanchard said the calls have definitely increased.

I see the trend, and they’ve absolutely gone up for various reasons, Blanchard said. One being social isolation, and you know, people think before if they used alone at least somebody would show up at their house at some point. But now if I used alone, when would somebody even come check on me?

We post signs and write tickets for seat belt usage, speeding, and not stopping at lights, and we are constantly working on road reconstruction. The conversation around gun safety and laws has been at the forefront of legislation and scattered across headlines for years. Scientists work every year to develop a flu vaccine, and advertisements bounce around televisions and grocery stores and doctors’ offices and social media encouraging people to get their shots. What, then, are we doing to prevent overdoses?

The answer is: not enough, clearly demonstrated by the record-shattering number of deaths this past year. We’re at a point where simply educating on the dangers of drug addiction isn’t enough, and we now need to focus specifically on overdose prevention while also fixing the problem at its root.

As the problem persists, we need to address the issue head-on. I have seen lives ruined, and I have seen lives restored. I hope that by understanding the context of the problem, hearing people’s stories, talking about the issue, and educating ourselves about possible solutions, we can work toward remedying the opioid epidemic. I know there is a way out of this, and I hope that together we can move closer toward the light.

While people understand the epidemic is real and that it’s damaging lives, ruining relationships, and killing people daily, I think we’re quick to view it as a them problem. Those addicts.

I want to challenge that idea. What I’ve come to learn is that addiction doesn’t discriminate. It affects everyone.

It’s affected my parents. It’s affected every DV8 employee. It affects fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and grandparents and teachers and siblings and neighbors. Not only does it affect the people who are struggling with addiction or who have relationships damaged by addiction, but it also affects the communities they live in. I’ve seen it firsthand, and I know that you have too—whether or not you realize it.

Everyone knows someone actively battling addiction or who is in recovery. This disease is prevalent in every life, regardless of age, race, social class, life experiences, and more. Addiction doesn’t discriminate.

The good news? This isn’t a hopeless cause, although it may seem like it at times. Solutions exist, both at the individual and the systemic level. While we can’t just snap our fingers and make it disappear, we can take actionable steps to work toward stopping the problem.

The solutions and stories you’ll find in this book are designed for people in the recovery community who are fighting to stay sober with every passing day. They’re for people actively using who are searching for resources. They’re for family members and close friends of people who are addicted. They’re for those who aren’t as familiar with the world of substance use disorder but who want to understand exactly what addiction is and why it holds so much power.

I’ll walk you through the context first. How did we get here? How did the problem get so bad?

Then I’ll share personal stories from people affected. We’ll dive into my parents’ story, you’ll hear firsthand from DV8 employees, and I’ll share my own thoughts that I’ve gathered over the years. This is a people-centric issue at its core, and it wouldn’t be complete without these stories.

And finally, I’ll highlight what recovery and harm reduction methods currently exist, and I’ll provide different perspectives on solving the opioid epidemic from a variety of sources. You’ll find resources for people who are looking to get sober. You’ll learn about systemic problems with our medical system from the perspective of physicians. You’ll come to understand DV8’s mission of providing second chances. And you’ll hopefully see the importance of reframing how we think about substance use disorder and those it affects. By shining a light on the problem and the scope of people it affects, I hope we can begin to erase the stigma attached to addiction. Transparency is integral to DV8’s concept and recovery in general, so that is what I’m trying to reflect in these pages. Addiction is messy, it’s heartbreaking, and it has a huge grip on so many people. Let’s start talking about it and see what we can do.

CHAPTER 1

HOW WE GOT HERE

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Centuries ago, the concept of pain was understood differently than it is today. Doctors were constantly experimenting, finding new ways to treat pain for their patients without always looking for underlying root causes of the pain itself (Jones et. al. 2018). This attitude was pervasive in the 1800s when clinicians regarded pain as an incurable consequence of aging and thus doled out painkillers freely. Pain was a part of life to be endured, and the doctor’s job was to make it more bearable. To combat the unpleasant—but never unexpected—pain in life, there were no regulations on prescriptions for pain management drugs like opioids and cocaine, which were prescribed for everything from toothaches to diarrhea. As the years progressed, other pain-treating drugs such as morphine and heroin emerged. To understand this development of new drugs, it’s important to understand what an opioid actually is. Opioid is a class of drugs that includes heroin, synthetic