Holidays can test those in addiction recovery
Sobriety can offer chances to heal; also can be ‘raw’
This Christmas, Anthony Martynowicz said he was giving himself the gift of sobriety. For his family, he offered honesty, quality time and atonement for years of hard drug use, lies and hurt.
“This year, I can’t wait, I can’t wait to sit down with my whole family and be present for Christmas,” he said shortly before the holiday. Though just 18, Martynowicz said he’s been addicted to alcohol and drugs for years.
He admitted that in holidays past, he often sneaked off to get high and would return to family gatherings avoiding eye contact, sitting off alone and “staring into nothingness.”
But now, living in a McHenry County sober living house, Martynowicz said he looked forward to “waking up on Christmas at my parents’ house … not just walking out of my room after a night of being strung out all night. I’ll actually be in good spirits, not wishing for the next day to come and wishing for this day to pass where I don’t have to see family.”
His story is one example of the challenges and opportunities that those in recovery from alcohol and drug addiction face around the holidays, which can be a chance to make amends with often-estranged family members and sometimes a reminder of happier times.
Martynowicz, who grew up in Algonquin and Marengo, said he began drinking and stealing pills from his family at age 11. At 12, he pilfered a bottle of tequila from his parents and chugged it down with milk.
Then he discovered pot, and his spiral into a drugfueled fog was fast and steady. He used crack cocaine, heroin and crystal meth, he said. He’s lied and manipulated, robbed to buy drugs, spent time in treatment centers and jail cells, and made several failed attempts at sobriety.
A turning point came last summer, after a rough dayslong bender of alcohol, drugs, a run-in with police and a family member calling him “just a drunk junkie,” he said. As he again slept off a run of bad decisions, his grandfather called Chris Reed, founder of The Other Side sober bar in Crystal Lake and president of New Directions Addiction Recovery Services, which runs three sober living houses in Crystal Lake.
Martynowicz called it a “total God moment” when he woke up and saw Reed sitting at his grandfather’s kitchen table. Reed, a former heroin user, offered Martynowicz a recovery plan and a bed at one of his sober houses. Martynowicz took him up on the offer.
The first days of detox were unbearable, he said. But now, he’s making what he says are “real friends,” and sharing his stories of the perils of drug and alcohol addiction. He lives with a steady routine of recovery meetings, a full-time job and “family” meals with others at the sober house.
This holiday season, he is grateful to be sober and coherent and able to help others while making amends with those he hurt. He’s also proud to be able to buy Christmas presents.
“Finally, I have money to buy Christmas gifts,” he said. “I want (my family) to know I have the money to spend on them, and I have the time to give to them that they have given me. Never have I ever thought that it would be like this.”
Dan Pieplow, 25, had a similar uplifting attitude about this holiday season. His tale of drug and alcohol abuse began at about age 16 and similarly led into recklessness, abuse of heroin and cocaine, jail time and failed attempts at sobriety.
Pieplow, who also lives in a McHenry County sober house, said his drug use worsened when he went off to Illinois State University, where he had unchecked freedom and quickly dropped out. He returned to his Crystal Lake home and continued to descend.
At his lowest points, he said, he spent days in his bedroom, snorting cocaine off family photos, which he thought was funny at the time. His mother would try to talk to him, but he would walk away and ignore her, he said.
Pieplow barely remembers holiday gatherings during that time because, he said, often he’d pass out on a couch. He would say he was tired from work when in reality he’d been up partying for several days and “didn’t bring enough cocaine to keep myself awake.”
He began to lose track of time but didn’t care. And, he said, “the whole time my family life was getting worse.”
He recommitted to recovery following an arrest in 2017.
But now, sober for about 20 months, Pieplow’s mind is clear. He has a steady job and is manager at the sober living home. He’s focusing on making amends this year, his second holiday season as a sober man.
He described his Christmas this year as “a wonderful day spent with family.”
His mother, Susan Pieplow, said before Christmas that she was “very, very happy that we are going to have a Christmas together as a family and he’s going to be participating and be present.” She’s grateful to see the other side after the rough patches. “I’m glad we got through it and it is behind us. That is a really good feeling to know he is going to enjoy family again.”
Debra Bell, 40, of Gurnee, is celebrating her fourth holiday season in sobriety and also said she looked forward to building stronger relationships with her family. But it’s the first Christmas of being sober that is the scariest, she said.
“Every ‘first thing’ in recovery is scary,” she said. “It’s all new when you’re sober … everything is, like, raw.”
To get through the holidays Bell stays connected with other women in recovery. She hosted a small Christmas gathering with her sober friends. “The fellowship is important,” she said, and online support is a lifeline for those unable to go out.
Reed knows the pitfalls for those in recovery during the holidays, beginning with the night before Thanksgiving, which Reed said is the biggest night of the year for drinking and drugging. He, too, encourages fellowship at places like the sober bar, where he hosts meetings, gatherings with music, dancing, card games, pool and, recently, a holiday get-together.
Tim Ryan, a Naperville author and activist whose son died of an overdose, helps those who abuse drugs find treatment.
During the holidays, Ryan said, those in recovery must attend their support groups, surround themselves with sober people and have safeguards in place. “I tell people, ‘Always have an out if you need to call someone,’ ” he said.
Some people in recovery are still “disconnected” from family, but avoiding isolation during the holidays is crucial, Ryan said, encouraging people to visit others in recovery.
“Look for ways to give back, volunteer at a homeless shelter, serving meals,” Ryan said. “You need more than willpower to get through the holidays. You have to use the tools in your toolbox and apply them. … Don’t isolate yourself. If you are struggling, put your hand up and ask for help.”
Martynowicz’s mother, Beth Rentner, was “thrilled” to have her son at Christmas Eve Mass and have him sleep in his own bed.
“Everything is completely different,” she said. Like he was before his addiction, her son is again “a person you want to be around with a kind, outgoing, shining heart . ... His positivity is infectious.”
Days after Christmas, Martynowicz said it was “great” that he was “able to be there and actually present, and I was included in conversations that I was actually able to engage in.”
He said his mother persisted in getting a lot of photographs of him.
“She just kept saying, ‘Get a picture with me and my son,’ ” he said. “It was just an all-around great day.”