The Family to Family meeting series is providing support and education for families with loved ones suffering from substance abuse addiction.
The people and families who gathered in the Parkwood Youth Center on July 11 all had something in common. Each of the approximately 25 people had been impacted by drug or alcohol addiction in their family, and were there to offer support for each other.
Representatives from the Mayor’s Office of Education and Daybreak Treatment Solution combined for the Family to Family education and support group for substance abuse. This was the third meeting in an ongoing series that deals with how to address and handle when a loved one may be suffering from addiction.
Frank Voce, Daybreak vice president, and James Reidy, drug and alcohol interventionist at Daybreak, shared their own stories with the group.
“By the time I was in eighth grade, I already had a lot of issues I couldn’t deal with, and the only way I found freedom was doing drugs or drinking,” Voce said. He was the oldest of six kids living in a house with his parents and grandparents. He said you had to be a “soldier” in his house.
“I learned survival very early,” he said. He said grandfather and his dad struggled with their own problems.
He and his siblings were sent to CORA Services as kids. His sisters had speech impediments, struggling with their R’s and W’s, but Voce didn’t know why he was going there. He asked his mom.
“She goes ‘oh’ like it was nothing,” he said. “She goes, in first grade everybody just knew you didn’t like yourself. It hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Voce said he thought he hid his discomfort well. He described being a great athlete as a kid but having anxiety when playing sports, or walking on the double yellow lines in the middle of the road so no one would grab him from behind.
“I got the bad one,” he said. “I wish I just couldn’t say my R’s or W’s.”
He got kicked out of schools starting in eighth grade, going to harder and harder drugs to cope. By age 22, he had full-blown addictions to heroin and crack cocaine. Because he had more money than others his age from selling drugs, he did not realize he was addicted, thinking he was better off than most.
Voce found recovery with a relative amount of ease. He said his first time in a treatment center something “touched [his soul]” and helped him get off that path.
“I started to learn about the disease of addiction,” he said. “I dove right into disease of addiction has everything to do with how I feel and my emotions, and that’s how I recovered quickly. I couldn’t admit I was powerless to my addiction because I had no idea what it was.”
He is 12 years clean.
Voce is a Parkwood native. Parkwood is a neighborhood that’s been very affected by the opioid epidemic. According to Philly.com, the number of overdose related deaths in Parkwood increased 130.8 percent from 2016 to 2017, from 13 to 30. A total of 109 people in the neighborhood have died from overdose-related deaths since 2007.
Parkwood had roughly the same number of deaths last year as Tacony and Wissinoming, which had 33 deaths from a 13.8 percent increase. Oxford Circle and Mayfair had 31 deaths from a 63.2 percent increase.
Reidy, 10 years clean, was next to share his story. The Rhawnhurst native believes in exposure and addressing the problem head on. He believes families should actively participate in their love ones’ recovery. He goes into families’ homes to work with them as an interventionist.
“My parents loved me, I was afforded a lot of things in life, I just didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin,” he said.
Reidy recalled a time a parent asked him how they can tell if their son or daughter is addicted to a substance.
“I looked her right in the eye and said you know,” he said.
He recounted a story about sneaking downstairs on Christmas morning and moving two presents from each of his brothers’ piles onto his own. He called himself a 9-year-old thief.
“These are the breadcrumbs of addiction,” he said. “There’s signs that will jump out.”
When he was 30 years old and fully under the control of his addiction, he went to his mother’s house with an abscess on this tooth and asked for money. First she wrote a check, and he demanded cash. When she returned with cash, tears in her eyes, he demanded more.
“Not a thank you, not an ‘I’ll be OK mom,’ just where’s the other hundred,” he said. “That’s what drug addicts think like. That’s what I did to my mother.”
Reidy said families who do not support their loved ones suffering from addiction would end up in a losing cycle.
“It’s never going to end until you change,” he said.
After Voce and Reidy had spoken, attendees asked questions, shared their own experiences and mingled.
The series is coordinated by Caitlyn Boyle, the community school coordinator for George Washington High School. One of the school’s community outreach priorities was to provide support for those struggling with substance abuse.
This was the third meeting. Meetings will take place on the first Wednesday of every month from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Parkwood Youth Organization, 3301 Mechanicsville Road. The next meeting will take place Aug. 1.
Daybreak Treatment Center is at 1288 Veterans Highway in Levittown. Learn more about the center at DaybreakTreatmentSolutions.com. For questions, contact Boyle at [email protected] ••
