After the high

Disclaimer: This article references suicide and substance abuse. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can reach the 988 Lifeline at any time of day by calling or texting 988. It's also possible to chat online at 988lifeline.org. Hancock Public Health officials remind that using drugs alone is dangerous. If you must use alone, please call the Never Use Alone hotline at 877-696-1996. Safe use supplies and recovery resources are available. FINDLAY — Nobody grows up wanting to be addicted to drugs. Yet behind every statistic is a person, a family and a community struggling to grapple with the harmful effects of substance use and the realities of those caught in a life full of using. Local drug users, now in recovery, open up about the realities of their addiction and what it took for them to choose recovery. Hoffbauer choosing life for herself and others Abby Hoffbauer was 12 when she started using drugs. Now eight months clean, she's found a reason to stay that way. During a recent interview with The Courier, Hoffbauer spoke candidly about a life shaped by addiction, trauma, relapse and recovery while balancing her infant daughter on her lap. Hoffbauer had what could be described as a tough upbringing. Her mother struggled with alcoholism and substance use, often leaving Hoffbauer and her brother in the care of her mother's boyfriend and later their grandparents. Her own substance use began with marijuana. "I started smoking weed and everything went downhill from there," she said. "...Once I got out of control, it was over." Police sources have said that substance users progressing from alcohol or over the counter medicines to "harder" or illegal substances is not uncommon. From marijuana, she quickly graduated to cough medicines containing dextromethorphan, or DXM. Some days, she said, she became so intoxicated she couldn't open her school locker without help from classmates. She drank whatever cough medicine she could get her hands on and often took to theft to keep a supply. On the street, she said, it's called "robo-tripping," being derived from one of the most abused medicines, Robitussin. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, DXM is frequently abused by teenagers because it is easily accessible and can produce euphoric and hallucinogenic effects. At high doses, it can cause altered perception, hallucinations and other serious symptoms. By the end of her ninth grade school year, she had jumped to cocaine, while also using cold medicine and marijuana. At 18, she became pregnant with her first child and was prescribed opioid pain medications. Eventually, she turned to heroin. "At some point, the pills weren't doing enough," she said. "It was cheaper to go to heroin." It wasn't until she was on heroin that she began hearing about opportunities for treatment in Florida. It's called the "Florida Shuffle." According to reporting by Florida public media outlet WGCU, the "Florida Shuffle" is a multimillion dollar fraud scheme in which individuals are repeatedly cycled through recovery programs for financial gain of others. Hoffbauer got caught up with a "body broker," someone who repeatedly recruits patients into treatment, relapse and readmission. "They get you into rehab," she said. "You finish the rehab; they give you money for going to the rehab after you get out. You use that money to get high and then they get you into another rehab." Thus the cycle repeats until someone can't complete the program or dies. Unable to complete a rehab cycle, the "brokers" left her homeless and in withdrawal on the streets of Florida, without even a phone to call someone. When she ran out of money, she turned to selling her own body. As a child, she believes her mother sold her to a dealer for another fix, recalling many nights spent with a man much older than she. "Prostitution was just something that came normal to me," she said. "It became an easy way to make money. … That's how I got high. That's how I stayed high." In her recovery, she reminds herself that she no longer has to resort to such a degrading act. After making it back to Ohio, it took years before she actively made the choice to get clean. When fentanyl entered the drug scene, she said she "would just flop." She believes she has touched death many times, but has never succumbed to it. Sometimes she would wake up to EMS holding spent Narcan bottles over her, other times she would wake up soaking wet in a bath tub. After another round of rehab and medication-assisted treatment, she told her husband he needed to get clean or she was leaving. "I was done," she said. "I was scared to death. I was scared of death." Slowly, she made progress. Over the next six years, she and her partner went to meetings, stayed clean, got a job, bought a house and worked with county protective services to be reunited with her children. "I had no excuse for why I relapsed," she said. But six years of sobriety came to a halt when she started hanging in with the wrong people. Getting high suddenly became the path of least resistance. Smoking crack again became a "24/7" activity. When she was pulled over after leaving what police describe as a "known dope house," she said she was told she would be arrested unless she agreed to provide information on others. She remembers being stopped by the police many times while she was using and that often it was one officer in particular who would stop her. Asked what she would say to Findlay Officer Paul Frey if given the chance, she paused to consider the question before admitting she would thank him. Hoffbauer cannot be sure Frey fully understands the impact he had on her life, but believes his encouraging comments during their many interactions helped. Because of how often their paths crossed, she came to view him as an older-brother figure. She said she felt more at ease when he pulled her over or arrived to assist other officers during a traffic stop because she believed he genuinely cared about her and wanted her to succeed in recovery. "I like his cowboy boots," she added with a smile. Frey could not be reached for comment by Friday deadline. While grateful for the support she received, Hoffbauer hopes law enforcement officers remember that addiction does not define a person's character. Looking back, she said her lowest point came when she no longer recognized the person she had become. Recovery, she said, only began when she learned to value herself. It took learning to be okay with being alone with herself to choose self-love. Now eight months sober, she's focused on her future and her family. After obtaining a GED, she plans to become a peer-support specialist to help others choose recovery. Waller working to help others Carl Waller has been clean for the last three years, marking his sobriety from the last time he got arrested. As a child, he had a certain knack for mischief. When a family member taught him how to open safes, he was caught and charged with safecracking, burglary, breaking and entering among other things. His father was a plant manager and had to move around a lot for work. Waller found it hard to fit in with his peers and turned to drugs and alcohol to self-medicate. It was peer-pressure, he said, adding that he is now ashamed that he, the bullied, became the bully. He remembers the school halls "parting like the Red Sea," because his classmates wanted to avoid him. After a back injury, he was prescribed OxyContin but said he believes he's tried everything at least once including but not limited to psilocybin, LSD, heroin and methamphetamine. He caught further criminal charges and often found himself in and out of incarceration. "I was only out a couple months before I was back in trouble again," he said. Over the course of his life, Waller has tested the hospitality of several of Ohio's jails and prisons, spending time in solitary confinement. Eventually, he was released on parole. "I did well on parole," he said. He got married and started a family but started dealing drugs again and was arrested for possession. After getting divorced and released, he job-hopped. Eventually, he met his second wife and loved her deeply until the day she died. After a stroke, the doctors told him that there wasn't much they could do for her. He believed she wouldn't want to live in a vegetative state in the hospital. "So I opted to take her off life-support," he said. "She died. It killed me." Lost in his grief, he dove into drugs and alcohol to cope. At the funeral, he said, he was too hungover to focus and was biding his time until he could go do another hit. When he got life insurance money, he spent $70,000 in four months on drugs. "I hardly left the house," he said. When he ran short on drugs, he would simply go get more. His son, also a substance user, moved in with him. Together, they would send out for drugs and get high together. For Waller, "it was never just a 50 piece," or $50 worth of cocaine. Often, he started with alcohol, spending time at the bar. He would take cocaine to stop feeling drunk. One thing led to another and one line of cocaine would turn into a four-day binge. Scoring a fix was never hard. While some may believe that drugs are only in "ghetto" neighborhoods, Waller said this is a misconception. "It's never far away; It's in every neighborhood," he said. "I could probably walk a couple blocks down the street and be able to acquire drugs." Local law enforcement officials have made similar comments. Sadly, his son didn't get the same opportunity to choose recovery that he did. "I didn't know he was into heroin," he said. When Waller would send his son with money to get cocaine, he believes his son would also use heroin in secret. Six months after the death of his wife, Waller found his son in the middle of the night overdosed from fentanyl-laced heroin. He doesn't believe his son knew about the fentanyl, but that he was aware people were "dropping like leaves" from it. "It used to be hard to talk about," he admits. "I couldn't talk about (his death) without tearing up… I'll never not have that hole in my heart that only he could fill." But time has made it easier. After separating from his third wife, he spent time at his mother's house and found himself stealing from her to get his fix. After a two-day bender, using her debit card to finance his habit, his mother threatened to kick him out. It was at this point that he found himself at his lowest. In the throes of depression with an injured back and the threat of becoming a wheelchair user, he struggled to see light at the end of the tunnel and saw the only path forward as a fentanyl-induced sleep into death by suicide. But it didn't work. "I think it was a sign from God," he said. He believes his mother never knew he had attempted to kill himself. He has accidentally overdosed four times, but has survived each time. To avoid relapse, he has had to do a complete life overhaul, changing favorite haunts, friends, activities. Waller is a self-proclaimed institutional Christian. While incarcerated, he would attend Bible studies and recovery programs. On the outside, religion was the last thing on his mind. Now, in recovery, he said he's found a relationship with Christ and has used it as an anchoring point on his recovery journey. The day he chose to get help for addiction is the last time he was arrested. He acknowledges that relapse is often a part of recovery but warns against using that as a crutch or an excuse to continue using. "I'll always be in recovery," he said. "There's no cure, but I know what I need to do to stay sober." Now living with his daughter, who is also in recovery, he's focused on simple pleasures and works to find joy in the mundane. He enjoys getting up in the morning without being worried about "when the cops are going to pull up." Proud of his own sobriety and his daughter's, he was recently certified as a peer-support specialist and is helping others find the same freedom. For those thinking about recovery, Waller reminds that help is out there and resources are available. For Hoffbauer and Waller, recovery did not begin with one single momentous step forward. It came after years of loss, trauma, relapse and consequences. Addiction took years from both and many like them. Recovery will never erase the past, but it gave them a future. Across the U.S., there are few corners that addiction has not touched and not everyone gets the opportunity to choose sobriety. No two addiction stories are the same and Hoffbauer and Waller represent just two individuals among a sea of struggling people. After years spent chasing the next high, both are now working to help others discover something they couldn't see for themselves: hope for a better tomorrow.