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Our Stories
Dana Moulton
Marlboro, MA
I am honored to be here today with a group of people working to shatter the stigma and discrimination that surrounds addictions throughout communities around our country today. And surely it does, with terms like “junkie’, ‘dope-fiend” and many other derogatory terms all too common in the vernacular of our society. I know, because I was that “junkie dope fiend”, and believed I would live in a subculture of opiate use, alienated from society in a cycle of use and institutionalization, because I could not “just say no.” I thought it was my lot in life, and acclimated myself to it. I felt I would never advance in any career with a criminal record the result of drug arrests. As a truck driver, I was given the trips to Chicago and Canada while my co-workers got the runs that would allow them to be home at night with their families. When I asked why we could not rotate the schedule, I was told that I should count my blessings, because I never had a background check, and if I did, it would cost me my job. Obviously, my boss knew I indeed had a criminal record and used it to coerce me to go along or get out. Ultimately, I trained my replacement and was let go. Other jobs I applied for, I was told I was not suited for the positions for one reason or another. One time after a job interview, again being denied, a woman told me I was the best person for the job, but my candor about my arrest for marijuana had cost me the job, and advised that I not be so open about my background. This after working three summers as a youth counselor while going to school.
I attended school at a Boston area community college while at a prerelease center from a state correctional institute. I made many friends, did well, making the deans list. It wasn’t long before rumors spread that there were people from jail attending the school, and as I sat at cafeteria tables they tried to guess who was a convict as people passed by, and what they had to say regarding them. When I ultimately revealed I was one of the people they wondered about, I found myself where I thought I belonged, hanging with other people doing time, reinforced in my belief that that was where I would always belong.
The years passed, and my addiction and cycle of incarcerations continued. I had tried countless treatment modalities, doing well, gaining hope and insights into what drove my addictions, but always relapsing when I was not in a controlled treatment environment. With the death of my wife Janice to a heroin overdose, which I believe to this day was intentional because of her being HIV positive and the death of her sister eight months previous to AIDS, my world collapsed. She was the only thing I held dear in my life.
With suicidal desperation, I tried the open option I swore I would never try. Methadone maintenance treatment was a dead end, or so I thought at the time. In reality, it was a safe harbor for me. I had found the treatment that would allow me to stop the craving for opiates long enough to put all lessons learned in other treatment modalities, to take the love that was given, and build a foundation for a new life. Oddly enough, when I was actively using heroin, I used to say at least I am not on methadone. The stigma that surrounded methadone had kept me from seeking it out as a treatment option.
Here I truly took my first steps to recovery, got in touch with the pain and the sorrow that I had laughed my way through with a constant opiate high, until I could not even force a smile. Now came the tears, anger, and frustration. My loss and the emptiness and anguish it left with me with were not unique. Now that I could look at the world around with a clearer mind and a resolute heart, I came to see discrimination and stigma for what they are; allies of the death and despair that is part of addiction. People are denied treatment and cast aside.
Would we cast aside people with heart disease, though they may have contributed to it by poor diet habits? Would we limit the amount of time a person can receive dialysis because they brought it on themselves by eating too much Haagen-Daaz Ice Cream or lived on fast food? Or would we deny cancer treatment because they should have known better than to smoke, or they should have quit sooner? Do we help the addicted person or our communities by criminalizing a person with the disease of addiction? Do we help by excluding people with drug offenses the ability to get student loans? I think not.
Stigma has made addictions a moral issue when it is a public health issue. Stigma has allowed discrimination to thrive.
I am proud to be here today with a group of people dedicated to changing the way we deal with addictions in our society.
As William White writes, and is posted on the Faces & Voices of Recovery web site,
“Many of us have carried a message of hope on a one-to-one basis; this new recovery movement calls upon us to carry that message of hope to whole communities and the whole culture. We will shape the future of recovery in America with detached silence or with a passionate voice. It is time we stepped forward to shape this history with our stories, our time, and our talents.”
Told this story of recovery at May 15th, 2004 Faces and Voices of Recovery Training in Boston MA.
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