Real People Real Recovery

Overcoming Addiction in Modern America

Eric Spofford, Piers Kaniuka

• Publisher: J. Ross Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781604278149
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Dipendenze in psicologia

The opioid epidemic is laying waste to America. Overdose deaths have decimated a generation and lowered overall life expectancy. Between the greed of Big Pharma, the war on drugs, and ineffectual treatment, addicts and their families face an uphill battle in getting the help they need. But there is a way out! Noted recovery professionals Eric Spofford and Piers Kaniuka are providing some much needed hope. In this book, they describe how they beat opiate addiction and went on to help thousands of addicts find recovery. Along the way, they discuss the root causes of the current opiate epidemic, which include dislocation, the prison industrial complex, the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, stress, racism, poverty, and much more. In addition, Real People, Real Recovery explains the difference between recovery and sobriety and what actually constitutes success in treatment.
Key Features:

• Provides useful, unique information on how to choose the right treatment center for yourself or your loved one
• Offers valuable insight from two of the leading voices in the New England recovery community as well as input from their team of experts and valued pioneers in the field
• Thoroughly explains their model of addiction treatment, which focuses on the root causes of addiction and why meaning, purpose, and connection are essential to recovery
• Analyzes and assesses the societal factors that are exacerbating the opioid epidemic in the U.S.
• Provides a unique blueprint for recovery that weds the 12 Steps and the dislocation theory of addiction

1

INTRODUCTION

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

When you step into a support group meeting, one of the first things you hear is that you should never compare. Just identify.

It’s a staple of support group culture: don’t try to compare your story to the stories of others. Doing that can lead you to downplay your own situation, make excuses, justify behavior, flee responsibility, etc. It’s a classic mistake that many people who are attempting to find recovery make in the early stages of sobriety.

“That guy is fucked. I’m not like him,” you tell yourself. Or, “She lost her kids and went to jail. Things aren’t that bad with me.”

When people do this, they’re usually looking for an easier, softer way. They’re not ready. Whether they admit it or not, they’re headed towards relapse. Still, no two addicts’ journey to recovery is the same. That’s especially true of Eric Spofford and Piers Kaniuka.

In fact, Eric and Piers couldn’t really come from more different backgrounds. They’re from two different eras—Piers the 1970s and ’80s and Eric the 1990s and 2000s. They traveled very different roads on their way to recovery. Of course, there were similarities: both had extensive experience selling drugs, hustling, and playing cat and mouse with the law.

But by the time they met in 2004, their lives couldn’t have been more different. Piers was 41 and was working as a program director for a New Hampshire treatment center—with a decade of recovery under his belt. Eric was a sick, 19-year-old addict on the run from the law and a small army of dope dealers.

But Eric was tired—exhausted, in fact. All his friends were either dead or headed to prison. Eric had overdosed four times that summer. After the fourth one, his parents came to see him in the emergency room at Parkland Medical Center in Derry, NH. His father was angry, but was also sad. The sight of his son broke his heart. His baby boy. The little man he raised to be a tough, hard-working logger like himself.

“What’s happening?” Eric’s dad, Stephen, muttered through tears.

It was the first time Eric had ever seen his father cry. Eric looked down at his body lying in the hospital bed. His chest bones were protruding. He had never been so skinny in his life. He wondered when he had last eaten. He couldn’t recall.

He was 5-feet-11 and weighed a sickly 130 pounds. Heroin, cocaine, and Xanax still coursed through his bloodstream. He was restless. His body ached. His parents’ anguish made little impression upon him. All he could think of was how he was going to get out of the hospital. His parents left, hoping their son would sleep off this latest overdose and get back on the road to recovery. Their hopes were misplaced. Eric ripped the IV out of his arm and fled the hospital in his johnnie. He was powerless over his addiction. He went to a trap house and got high.

A few days later, exhausted, he faced the stark reality that he was going to die. He was so tired. Tired of chasing the high, stealing, remembering which lies he told to which people, which dealers he had ripped off and which ones he could still call. It had been several years of nonstop running. At 19, he was dying of drug addiction.

He checked himself into yet another detox center. This one was in Massachusetts. He was in a haze. Cops were looking for him. He spoke to a counselor.

“Where do I go from here?” Eric asked.

It was a question that had a literal meaning in the moment, as in, where—physically—was Eric going to go after leaving detox. But the real question was, “Where is my life going?” Was he going to be another statistic, like so many of his friends who died in run-down apartments in rough, drug-infested neighborhoods in Lawrence, MA, Salem, NH, and Manchester, NH?

The detox counselor called a facility in New Hampshire. Piers answered. After exchanging pleasantries Piers said, “We’re going to work you hard. This is going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life.”

By that time Eric had been ripping and running for years. Somehow he managed to feed his addiction, evade the police, and keep his job at his dad’s logging company.

“I’m a fucking logger. I’m a hard ass worker,” Eric told Piers. “What are we working on? I’ve been working my whole life.”

Eric thought Piers literally meant they were going to be working—laboring. He had no idea of the mental, emotional, and spiritual work that lay ahead. Piers smiled a concerned smile.

“I’ll see you when you get here,” he said.

They hung up the phone. Piers looked at Eric’s intake records that had been faxed from the detox center. He saw Eric’s date of birth. “Nineteen,” Piers said, shaking his head. He let out a long sigh. “Another kid coming up on the front end.”

He knew that with an addict that young, he was not only going to be dealing with the disastrous physical and emotional wreckage of addiction, but also with the naiveté and arrogance of a teenager. The chances that Eric would be mature enough—as a 19-year-old male—to handle the rigors of recovery were low. But he also thought he heard something in Eric’s voice. He heard confidence and a toughness in his bragging about being a logger. He felt that he and Eric would soon make a solid connection.

A few days later, Eric found himself sitting in a group facilitated by Piers. He outlined a complex model of addiction that made total sense to Eric. It was, in fact, the first time that anyone had spoken to Eric in a language that he could understand.

“Before that, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to get better,” Eric recalls. “It’s that what was being presented to me made no sense. It wasn’t going to work.”

“Piers had been an addict himself and had gotten better. When he spoke about his addiction, he described my experience. He used like I used, going out to get high one time on a Friday after work and finding himself still using months later—the same kind of things that had happened to me.” But it went further. Piers talked about the pain of sobriety. It wasn’t enough to just get sober. The only way to get better was to find real recovery.

Eric had been sober before. But he never believed he could find contentment in sobriety. Piers told him that real recovery was possible—if he was willing to work for it. Piers then detailed the path of recovery that had delivered himself and innumerable other men and women from the grip of addiction. That path will be detailed in the pages of this book. It’s a program that he has seen work for thousands of addicts.

In this book you’ll learn how Piers and Eric got better. You’ll also learn how the destruction of community set the stage for the opioid epidemic in America. You will come to understand how pharmaceutical companies exploit the hopelessness of addicts to insure a healthy bottom line. You will learn about the role played by the prison-industrial complex and how the criminal justice system effectively disenfranchises, exploits, and enables drug addicts.

But, we will also describe a solution and a way out. A way to beat the game. Knowledge is power—and this is especially true where addiction is concerned.

You will be invited to take your place in a new movement, one that weds recovery and activism.

2

ERIC’S STORY

I was born in Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, MA, on March 1, 1985—the only child of Stephen and Beth Spofford.

Dad ran a logging company and Mom worked part time as an administrative assistant. We lived just north of Boston in Salem, NH, right over the Massachusetts border. I was a pretty happy kid, despite a lot of fighting at home. There was some drinking, although neither of my parents were alcoholic or addicted. But I do remember spending a lot of time in my room at night, listening to them yelling.

From first through fourth grade, I played soccer, but I never scored a goal. In fact, I was terrible. I didn’t like sports much and I still don’t. Growing up near Boston, everyone is a huge sports fan, always talking about the Patriots or the Celtics or the Bruins or the Red Sox. I really don’t care. I appreciate that my friends like it, but watching sports was never, and still isn’t, my thing.

I did like to fight though and started at a young age, beating up my cousins at family parties. In kindergarten I got in trouble for hitting a kid—with a Tonka truck.

I was a likable kid, but I was also something of a chameleon. I might be quick to punch a kid, but at the same time I had a certain way with people. It’s a talent that would serve me well in my years of active addiction—especially with the cops.

In fifth grade, I got some pretty difficult, albeit not very surprising news. My dad took me out to eat. We were sitting in the restaurant when he told me he was moving out. I remember he left on a Friday; it wasn’t long before my mom’s boyfriend moved in.

I lived with my mom for a couple years while my dad rented a room at his friend’s house. I’d spend the weekends with Dad; I slept on a little bed in the corner of his room. We also had dinner together on Wednesday nights.

Things were kind of rough because I wasn’t happy about my parents splitting up. It was around that time that I started selling weed. I was getting ounces and quarter pounds and selling bags to the older kids at North Salem Elementary School, the junior high, and even the high school. I was good at it. But it didn’t take long before some kid ratted me out to the school’s DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officer.

My mother tried to ground me, but that didn’t work. My dad was pissed and yelled at me, but I didn’t listen. I just wanted to make some money and buy cool clothes—JNCO jeans and stuff like that. Things gradually got worse. I fought with my mom a lot. We had several physical altercations and I also fought with her boyfriend.

Eventually, I went to live with my dad—and I lost contact with my mom for several years.

My dad and I stayed at his friend’s house in that little room. A little while later my dad bought a small ranch in Salem. It was a humble little place, but it was home and I liked it.

I was partying a lot by then. I was smoking weed and drinking on the weekends. By the time I was 14, I was doing ecstasy at parties. I’ve always done everything at 110 percent, so when I took ecstasy for my first time, I really liked it and went all in. While other kids were taking a pill or two on Saturday night, I’d take 10 on a Tuesday afternoon.

I got a fake ID and hit the club circuit. Club Boom, a rave spot in New Hampshire, became my refuge. It was a place where I used and sold drugs and made connections with the older kids. I was an old soul and grew up really quickly. Everything took off around that time. I met a lot of customers and suppliers—and I dove headfirst into the rave and drug-dealing culture. I started moving a lot of ecstasy. My life was one giant party that I thought would never end.

One day my friend Matt came over with his girlfriend Kelly. We were drinking and smoking weed. He had a 40 milligram OxyContin pill. We crushed it up and split it, each snorting a line.

I had no idea that with that line my life was about to change forever. I got really fucked up and threw up in the kitchen sink. I woke up the next morning wanting to do it again. The beast inside me had awoken. Opioid addiction was about to take hold.

THE ESCALATION

Six months later, I was using OCs regularly; as much as I could, to be honest. They were hard to get at first, but the more I used, the more other users came into my life—making it easier to find the drugs.

I started getting them from guys in Boston. They were some pretty rough dudes who were robbing pharmacies and ripping off other dealers. Some of them were going to the pill mills in Florida. They’d fill their prescriptions at the pain management clinics and bring the pills back to New England to dish out to their eagerly awaiting customers. I was always looking to get high and make more money. I was a willing participant in this new and exploding black market.

One day, when I was 15, I couldn’t find any pills. All my sources were dry. I got dope sick for the first time. It’s something that eventually happens to every opiate addict. I didn’t know what to do, so I called a girlfriend of mine whose dad was a dope dealer. She was already doing heroin. Her parents were both addicts. Her mother was in recovery but her dad was still an active user and dealer.

I went to her house and she shot me up for my first time. I threw up all over her floor. It was another turning point in my life. Things would never be the same.

The girl who shot me up has since died. She was an amazing musician whose life was cut short by opiate addiction. She wrote a song for me while she was in prison. I talked to her the day before she died in July 2016. She had put together some time in recovery but just couldn’t turn the corner.

From the moment I shot up that day, my whole life began to revolve around heroin. All of it. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. At only 15, I was a full-blown heroin addict.

I dropped out of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Eric’s Story
• Chapter 3 Piers’s Story
• Chapter 4: Eric and Piers
• Chapter 5: The 12 Steps Revisited
• Chapter 6: RID and the 12 Steps
• Chapter 7: Spiritual, Not Religious
• Chapter 8: Dates and Trends
• Chapter 9: The Dislocation Theory of Addiction
• Chapter 10: Big Pharma
• Chapter 11: The War on Drug Addicts
• Chapter 12: Perils and Pitfalls
• Chapter 13: What Is Success?
• Chapter 14: How to Choose a Treatment Center
• Chapter 15: The Mission of the Tribe
• Chapter 16: Real People Real Recovery
• Chapter 17: Conclusion
• Images
• Bibliography