You don’t have to rattle off the long list of terrifying stories and statistics about drug and alcohol addiction to impress people like Deana Martinez. She’s lived them.
She is one of the thousands of Coloradans that can tell you first hand what it’s like when the aching need for Vicodin, Fentanyl, heroin, meth or alcohol consume your job, your friends and family, your health, your children and eventually, your life.
Once fallen in ways most people can’t even fathom, she’s ready now to walk on a runway — a fashion show runway later this month at Stanley Marketplace in Aurora. It’s a walk that not long ago would have been as surreal to Deana as her life as an addict might seem to the rest of us.
Deana’s addiction problems started at 13.
“I was a party girl,” she said during the taping of an interview video for the Miracles program, run by Comitis Crisis Center and Mile High Behavior Healthcare.
By the time Deana was 25, she’d been a heavy drinker was diagnosed with “full-blown” AIDS.
The addictions only got worse. Homeless, hopeless and interested only in how to get high, living or dying were mere distractions to her unstoppable obsession.
“I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t want to live,” she said. “Because I didn’t think I was worthy of life.’’
She’s been sober now since Nov. 3, 2015. Life is good.
Comitis Crisis Center Community Impact & Gov’t Relations Liaison James Gillespie says Deana’s story is gut-wrenching, and so common that it simply blurs with the similar tales of women whose obsession with opioids, meth, alcohol and other drugs takes them to surreal horrors.
“There are so many women here who live lives you can’t even make up,” Gillespie said. Women who are kidnapped by gangs during drug-induced exploits and succumb to endless rape and molestation for a couple of Oxycodone or a syringe full of heroin. Women whose children are taken and whose families abandon them to a world of gripping fear, loneliness and addiction.
The numbers are appalling in Colorado alone: Almost a quarter-million opioid addicts in the state, about 400 deaths each year. One a day.
And while beloved dads and children end or nearly destroy their lives while dedicated friends and families stand by, scores of women sentenced as outcasts in real and virtual prisons become just so much human waste.
“We’re lucky to grow up in the families we grow up in,” Gillespie said. For many of the women in the Miracles program, marginal family life gives way to living in the company of sadists.
The Miracles program takes in about 40 women with stories like Deana’s and offers them an opportunity. It’s a two-year process that deals with ending addiction as a priority, and allows women to find work, friends, lost family, taken children and recovery.
Gillespie says that two things are really the only common thread among these women: addiction and self-worth.
“We can all understand the stresses and problems that build in our lives throughout the day that ends will a full cup of stress” by the time you leave work or get home, Gillespie said. “These women start the day with a full cup” of angst and terror, he said. Every day.
Their addictions are as relentless as the sense of worthlessness that stoke them. Combating that is a focus of the Miracles program.
At the furthest extreme of a life where women eagerly succumb to gang rapes for a dose of Fentanyl? A fashion show.
Once the epitome of self-loathing, a group of Miracles participants and graduates will don some glam, fashions and “hey, would you look at me” to walk the runaway April 19 for an event that’s filled with fun and accomplishment.
Gillespie said the extravaganza is unabashedly and unashamedly sans alcohol and promising to be fulfilling to everyone who comes.
Proceeds from the event go toward allowing more women to find a way to recovery through the Miracles program. The need is great.
Buying a $25 ticket for this event allows you to see first hand what hope and success looks like, and how a little glam in everyone’s life can mean a lot more than just a cool dress. Come help yourself feel good while watching these women do the same.
Click here for tickets and information about Seasons of Change: Miracles Fashion show
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentineColorado.com
