Event Highlights Power in Recovery

SCHOHARIE — Several dozen people attended the annual pizza party held by the Open Arms Recovery Resource Center on Main Street Schoharie Friday afternoon. 

Peer Specialist and leader Tom Moran explained that the event was intended to give attendees a chance to talk about their experiences. He has six years of experience in the role and has utilized his own past addiction as a means to support those in need today.
Moran asked if anyone in attendance wanted to discuss their own experiences. Kristen Murray took the floor and gave powerful testimony of the power of both addiction and recovery.

Murray spoke of more than 20 years of struggle with alcohol and drugs. While she was able to push alcohol “to the side,” addiction to drugs was especially difficult.

She discussed terrible issues from childhood abuse and starting painkillers after a car accident. After a while, Murray said that she started to take them “like candy.”
Murray said that she started buying pills off the streets, followed by heroin, which she described as the “worst mistake I ever made.”

After Murray’s grandfather died in front of her in 2013, things became worse. She described her grandfather as her “best friend and father-figure.” His death was paired with bipolar and borderline personality disorder to increase anxiety and depression.

Murray said that she bought and used drugs the night he died. After her grandfather’s death the use of drugs grew from occasional to daily, leading her to get involved with the “wrong people.”

Drug use expanded during this period, including using cocaine. Her family caught onto the use and her children were taken away and Murray went to drug court.

At the time, Murray would have described herself as a “functioning addict” and able to hide her addiction “very well.” During this period she was involved in a life or death situation and escaped.

Next month is particularly important to Murray, who is coming up on five years sober July 2.

“It’s a huge accomplishment for me,” she said.

Murray explained that she had never made it more than five years sober prior. However, in July 2 it was like “a switch went off,” she said.

“I knew I was passing away.”

“My kids need a mom,” she said.

Murray explained that she became involved with fentanyl. She was saved because a friend had forgotten to give back her spare key and returned. After knocking, the friend alerted emergency services after getting a “bad feeling.”
She was left without a pulse and revived with Narcan four times. Murray’s friend requested she look herself in the mirror, to which she saw pasty white skin and bluish lips.

“Wake up,” Murray told herself, describing the experience as the “scariest feeling I ever had.”
“I disappointed herself,” she said. “I disappointed my family.”

Since the her overdose, Murray said that she realized that if she did not help herself or get help she would die. Even with support there is “still a struggle every day.”
She was able to make her way to recovery without formal rehab or counseling. She had rehab and utilized a halfway house in the past.

Murray said that she didn’t want to be counseled by someone who “learned from a textbook.” Instead she had a mentor who had previously struggled with drugs.

In recovery, Murray said that her feelings “snapped me all at once.” She had been once told by her mother that she wouldn’t make it past 40 and now had a “second chance at life.”

“All I can do is help people.” Murray discussed hopes to write a book “for other people to understand.” If the text was successful, she hoped to donate money to treatment centers.

“People think they have no one,” she said. “You have to be strong. It’s not easy.”

Open Arms is one example of a resource for those struggling with addiction and its effects. 

The center at 298 Main Street is fully confidential and comes without need for paperwork or an appointment. It is open to those struggling with addiction, families, and friends from 8am-4pm Tuesdays and Thursdays. The effort of the Schoharie County Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse (SCCASA) operates Open Arms in space graciously donated by Christ the Shepherd Lutheran Church of Schoharie. Moran can be contacted at tmoran8aa@gmail.com, stating that he is available “24/7.”