She knows ‘success’ in recovery is a lifelong process

For 20 years, Mia Stanley was painfully aware that people dreaded to see her coming.

That’s because they knew she was high, and they had no doubt she was going to beg them for money.

But her awareness of their feelings never stopped her from doing exactly what they expected because all she really cared about was chasing that next high.

She spent two decades addicted to the powerful opioid painkiller oxycodone, and she admits she cared about little else.

A Clintwood native who lived in Pound until recently, Stanley started taking the drug after her first husband was prescribed it for pain. He offered her one pill, and that’s all it took, she said.

“I was in love with it,” she said.

She and her husband split up, she had no job and she would have lost her children had her mother not taken care of them, she said.

Most of the people who knew her were convinced she would eventually die of an overdose, she said. She thought so, too.

She started taking the drug when her oldest daughter was a baby. When she finally kicked the habit, her daughter was 20 years old and had never known her mother as anything other than strung out on the drug, Stanley said.

She’s lost count of how many times she landed in jail, but she remembers the last time. It was April 2018 when she appeared in court on a probation violation and she was given a choice by the judge: participate in the drug court program in Wise County, aimed at helping those addicted get off drugs, or face more jail time.

For the first time since the start of her addiction, she realized that she was ready for her life to change. She knew that the program was strict and that it would take more than a year, but she accepted the offer.

Her mother, who had always been there for her, was seriously ill. Now it was time for her to take on that role, she said.

“It finally hit me that I’m going to have to straighten up and take care of my family and for once in my life, I wanted to make my mother proud. I was ready and I’d never felt that way before. I was ready to do something different,” Stanley said.

For six and a half years, she remained clean and grateful. She also remarried and has good relationships with her two daughters, Stanley said.

Although she had never held a job, she applied for a peer support specialist position at an Addiction Recovery Care facility, Lydia’s House in Benham, Kentucky, and was hired. She said she needed to work in the field to help others, but also to stay on track herself. It was a constant reminder, she said, about the importance of staying clean.

In her role, her message to clients who are working to get and stay clean was simple: “If I can do it, you can do it.”

She knows exactly how they feel and what they are thinking.

“I’ve been in that spot of just feeling hopeless. You just give up and decide that’s how you’re going to be forever and there’s no way out. But there is. There is,” she said softly.

Although the drug court program had been a success for her, she wishes she had known about the ARC program, she said. 

“Listen, that would have really changed my life even more,” she said. “If I could have gone somewhere that offered all these approaches to all areas of life, spiritual help, mental health, they give you stable housing, jobs training, internships, and all those things make a huge difference. Huge.”

The residential centers offer a temporary home and so many more services than she had, and she has seen so many people heal and make a fresh, clean start.

She believes ARC has found a model that works and she’s excited it’s coming to Southwest Virginia, where she said so many people desperately need it.

Stanley told Cardinal News last September she really wants to help others in the Clintwood area who are in the same shape she was in. So, she hopes to work at one of the two treatment centers ARC is opening in Dickenson County.

She was interested in a liaison position that works with the court system and she wanted to work at the Primrose Recovery Center, which will be for women and located in the old Ervinton Elementary School building in Nora.

“That was my old elementary school and it’s going to be called Primrose and Rose is my maiden name,” she said. “Maybe it’s just meant to be.”

In late June, after being sober for more than six years, Stanley relapsed.

Going through a divorce and feeling she was doing everything for everyone else and not taking care of herself or going to support meetings, she gave in to that old temptation — oxycodone.

Around the first of July, she quit her job because she felt it was no longer the place she wanted to be, though she said the people there are like family to her.

Unfortunately, relapse is a common part of the addiction process, said Kevin Mullins, a Clintwood native who is executive director of Dickenson County Behavioral Health Services. It usually takes four to eight treatments for people to achieve long-term recovery, he said.

“The biggest takeaway is that relapse is not failure. It’s a message to the individual that treatment isn’t over. Treatment for substance use is a lifelong process,” he said, adding that’s why so many continue in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous for years after their sobriety.

On Aug. 5, Stanley told Cardinal she had been clean again for about two weeks. Although she said she loves her hometown of Clintwood and Dickenson County, there are too many drugs around, and she felt she needed a change of scenery.

She is now staying with her daughter in Fall Branch, Tennessee, and said she feels strong.

Although she has not recently reached out for help for herself, ARC is where she would go if she decides she needs treatment again, and she knows she would be welcome, she said.

She said she still believes in the ARC program and thinks it will bring change and healing for a lot of people who are addicted in Dickenson County. Currently, she said there is little recovery for those addicted in the county. 

Like Mullins, she said that addiction is a lifelong struggle and sometimes people slip into old habits. She emphasized that addiction is a disease and there should be no stigma attached.

“A lot of people aren’t honest about a relapse because of that fear, that stigma around drugs,” Stanley said. “I would like for people to know it’s OK to say I messed up.”