Rock bottom to recovery
Fairfield resident surfaces from depths of addiction to counsel others
NORWALK — Nausea, vomiting, shaking and dehydration would typically wake Ally Kernan around 4 a.m.
The Fairfield native was 18 at the time and in the grip of opioid addiction. Most mornings, she would commit petty crimes on the streets of Bridgeport to fund her heroin addiction. That could take hours.
“By then you’re pretty deep in withdrawal because it just gets worse every second,” the 27-year-old said. “I wouldn’t wish withdrawal on my worst enemy.”
Kernan spent part of her day trying to track down a dealer before chewing on pills or injecting heroin in her car or a public bathroom.
“Even shooting up was a disaster because you gotta try to find a vein,” she said. “I’d be in withdrawal, shaking, and it would just be this mess. The second I would get high, within a minute, most of the withdrawal symptoms were gone. You’re not sweating your ass off, you’re not vomiting, you’re able to take a shower and it’s just — do it all over again.”
A deadly epidemic
Statistics paint a grim picture for those struggling with opioid addiction. About 130 Americans die every day from opioid overdoses, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 1,000 people died from opioid overdoses in Connecticut in 2018, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, https://portal.ct.gov/.
Connecticut’s overdose deaths are 1.7 times the national average. To fight the epidemic, local groups such as Connecticut Counseling Centers are working to help people experiencing addiction. See the accompanying fact box for a list of resources.
Undiagnosed mental health issues coupled with past trauma from domestic violence may have led Kernan to drug use.
“Drugs weren’t offered to me as something bad. They were offered to me as a solution,” she said. “A lot of the people around me, it worked for them, so I wasn’t looking at it like this is going to be a bad thing. It was, ‘this is going to make you not feel the pain that you feel, and this is going to work better than anything you’ve ever tried.’ ... I thought, ‘I’m not going to get addicted to this. I’m going to let this work for me.’”
At 16, Kernan started sniffing pain killers. By 19, she was using heroin.
“It was cheaper, stronger and more accessible,” she said.
Eventually, she became physically dependent. Without heroin she couldn’t socialize or complete ordinary tasks such as showering and washing her hair. She stayed quiet about her problem and continued to use, suppressing any desire to ask for help.
Kernan and her ex-boyfriend stopped paying their rent, which led to eviction and a year of homelessness. Life on the streets brought robberies, assaults and sexual abuse by strangers and acquaintances who “set her up.” Somehow, some way, it was always related to money or drugs, she said.
“There were times where we were supposed to go and pick up heavy amounts of drugs and that person that set us up with the dealer would know that we were coming with all that money and set us up for a robbery,” she said.
At 22, she was homeless, living on the streets of Bridgeport, and at rock bottom. Then she was arrested.
In 2014, she was convicted of conspiracy to sell narcotics, possession of narcotics and possession with intent to sell. On April 1 of that year, she began an eight-month sentence at York Correctional Institution in Niantic.
The worst part about lockup was a feeling of being trapped 24 hours a day, seven days a week, she said. Most of the corrections officers were male, something difficult for Kernan, given her history of abuse at the hands of men.
Not all corrections officers were bad, she said.
“But some were like the biggest perverts you could possibly imagine and as a female you already deal with that so much in society,” she said. “But there, you’re trapped. The people that do go and tell on someone either magically end up in segregation the next day, or nothing happens. It’s sad for the people that want to do their job correctly.”
Road to recovery
Although life behind bars was traumatic for Kernan, it’s how she began her recovery. After her release, she joined a church with an addiction ministry, attended 12-step meetings and utilized a detox facility. Group and individual therapy were also a part of her recovery.
Now a project leader for TurningPointCT, https://turningpointct.org/, a Norwalk-based online resource supporting Connecticut’s young adults and teens with their mental wellness and recovery, Kernan encourages anyone who’s struggling to reach out for help.
She celebrated three years of sobriety on Dec. 2. Her mother, Sarah Massa, said one of the hardest things was watching others judge her daughter throughout the recovery process.
“I would like people to stop with the labels,” Massa said of words such as “addict.” “Stop with the stigma because you don’t know what’s going on. It’s mean, and it’s hurtful and it’s so unfair, because it could be your child. She’s more than that ridiculous label.”
Kernan said one way the state could work toward combatting the epidemic is by putting more peer support specialists in schools.
“You can make some bad choices but that doesn’t mean you deserve to continue suffering or suffering more,” she said. “You don’t have to sit there and be ashamed of what you went through. You can learn from it and own it.”
“Drugs weren’t offered to me as something bad. They were offered to me as a solution. ... It was, ‘this is going to make you not feel the pain that you feel, and this is going to work better than anything you’ve ever tried.’ ” Ally Kernan, of Fairfield