Recovering addicts inspire students at teen forum

WASILLA — Ask 100 students to post their anti-drugs up for all to see, show them a PowerPoint presentation on spice, or give them pamphlets to share with their drug-abusing friends, and a few might pledge to not use or let others use illegal substances.

Tell them a real story of rock bottom and recovery, and more might sit up and listen with a newfound fire.

“I think everyone generally knows drugs are bad,” said Mat-Su Central School senior Zach Curry at a teen forum for Mat-Su students hosted by Wasilla High School on Thursday night.

At the forum, about 80 students, staff and members of the community gathered to talk about ways to prevent and come back from substance abuse.

MY House outreach coordinator Jay Dagenhart and Paul Bossart, clinical director for the Wasilla substance abuse treatment center Set Free Alaska, both spoke briefly of their past struggles with alcoholism, but a few younger people in long-term recovery went into more detail for the students.

‘I was never gonna be that guy’

As co-founder of the new Fiend 2 Clean effort under MY House and a star of the Mat-Su Health Foundation’s video, “Heroin in the Mat-Su,” 30-year-old Kerby Kraus has had several opportunities to tell his story. He started using OxyContin at age 11, selling dope on the streets of Wasilla at age 12, and after losing his mother and his source of pills a couple years later, starting using heroin.

“I never was gonna shoot up, I was never gonna be that guy who did heroin. I was just gonna do pills because they’re prescribed from the doctor and that’s OK,” Kraus said. “That’s what I thought.”

At 17, he still had a 3.8 GPA. He lived on his own and had a job — few people outside of his close friends and relatives suspected him of drug abuse. By 19 he was injecting drugs, and it wasn’t long before he struggled to maintain consciousness.

“I have been revived by EMT three times, I have been pronounced dead once. Those are my overdoses,” Kraus said.

When he was in his mid-20s, his roommate committed suicide. Kraus was in detox at the time, but left to follow in his friend’s footsteps. He thought he had found the solution.

Dagenhart and other MY House volunteers found Kraus on a bench in Nunley Park with a .45-caliber handgun and asked him what he was doing.

“Looking for answers,” he remembered saying at the time.

They handed him an informational pamphlet and said, “This is the answer.”

In less than two months, Kraus will be three years clean and sober.

‘I gave up everything’

Though heroin has been the most high-profile illegal drug in the news recently, other substances are still wreaking havoc on Alaska’s youth.

Trebyn Richhart, another Fiend 2 Clean ambassador, said it was methamphetamines that had him feeling his best while being his absolute worst.

When he was 16, he “fell in love” with meth, he said — it was an upgrade from coke that made him feel “bulletproof,” like Superman, he said.

Suddenly, Richhart had to have that feeling every day, no matter what.

“I’d break into your car, I’d steal from your house … I’d take your wallet and help you look for it,” he said.

He said he tried moving out of state to get away from his addiction, but just discovered that “dope was cheaper there.”

When he was 19, Richhart got sober enough to buy and wrap his 3-year-old son a birthday present about a week before his party. Then Richhart decided to get high — a high he didn’t come down from until the day of the party.

He hadn’t eaten or drank any water in five days, and it showed.

“You could see the outline of my teeth through my cheeks,” he said.

Not wanting his son to see him in such a state, he told the child’s mother he couldn’t make it. Once she knew why, she told him he wouldn’t be seeing their son at all anymore.

“I actually shouldn’t say I lost everything, I gave up everything,” Richhart said. “You can have that, take that, as long as I can have that little baggy and that glass pipe.”

Two weeks after the party he crashed his car. He knew something needed to change, and asked his parents to let him back into their house. They said no, and he broke down and cried.

There was no one else to go to.

“I had 150 phone numbers in my phone and nobody to call ’cause I’d [expletive] on everybody,” Richhart said.

But his parents had a change of heart. They allowed him in on one condition — that he get treatment.

Two weeks later, Richhart was in recovery at Nugen’s Ranch. He’s been sober ever since.

Now a healthy 185 pounds, Richhart said he weighed just 135 pounds in the worst of his addiction. Though only 21 years old, he said “I feel like I’m 30.”

But he’s clean, and he gets to see his kid.

A team effort

Wasilla-grown couple Mason and Jazzmyne Balison, now 20 and 17, respectively, also understand the allure of meth and the damage it can do firsthand.

“I thought to myself, ‘Oh my god, this is what I’ve been looking for,’” Mason said, remembering the first time he tried meth when he was 18.

What Mason was looking for was a way to cope with physical and mental abuse in his home, he said.

Meth seemed to mask his pain better than alcohol and marijuana, but he was wary of its power. He stayed away from the drug for a few months, until he met Jazzmyne, who said she got drugs from a family member.

“When I started drinking and using, it was never hard to get anything that I wanted,” Jazzmyne said. “Most people see it as unbelievable that my own [family] would just give me drugs, but … we both saw it as, I knew where I was getting it, so it was safer.”

Mason blamed himself for getting Jazzmyne so heavy into the drug.

“You can’t say you love someone when you’re offering them something as life-changing as meth,” he said.

Jazzmyne dropped out of school and cut off all her hair, along with ties to any family member who wasn’t using. She lost 50 pounds in three months, and by that time was using $200-300 of drugs and other people’s money a day.

She and Mason broke up and got back together at least once, returning to each other to have a partner in crime — literally and figuratively — as they resorted to stealing from stores to support their habits.

“All the while saying to ourselves, ‘We’re gonna quit one day,’ like, ‘We’re just kids now,’” Mason said.

But when they became homeless, Mason said he’d had enough. He walked away, and when Jazzmyne realized he wasn’t coming back unless she quit, she followed a few weeks later.

Now they’ve been clean and sober for more than a year. They’re married, working and finishing their high school educations in Anchorage, where they rent a home.

The forum was the first occasion the couple had to tell their story to a large, live audience, and Mason said they’d be glad to do it again.

“I wanna help people realize that they can break free from addiction too, that you can have a better life.”

Spreading the message

After a brief Q&A session with the speakers, a few students lingered in the lobby to talk about what they’d heard.

“I think events like this should go on more often,” said junior Mat-Su Central student Dannial Beaty, whose brother Ryan called the speeches “inspiring.”

The Beatys and a few of their friends said they were no strangers to addiction, knowing extended family members or classmates who are struggling with the same things.

Justus Aiken, another junior at Mat-Su Central, said the message during the forum was well received, but wondered aloud how the message will spread to others who might not be seeking help.

“The kids that don’t come to these things are the ones that need to hear it,” he said.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.