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Welcome to Choose Your Struggle Presents: Made It, Season 1: Stay Savage. We're about to start heading up again. But before we do, we truly explore Sarah's darkest days.
Choose Your Struggle Presents: Made It, a documentary, serial-style podcast telling the story of a person who has made it back from the depths of trauma and created something extraordinary with their second chance.
Season 1 is titled Stay Savage and focuses on Sarah Laurel and the harm reduction and recovery housing organization Savage Sisters.
* This transcript has not been edited. Sorry, I ran out of time!
Made it made, it made it as a member of the shameless podcast network previously on made it, she would come to my house and she would be safe for a couple hours or a day or two days, and then she'd be gone again. And I'd be terrified that. You know, the next time I talked to her, she was going to be, it wasn't going to be her.
It was going to be somebody calling saying she was dead. You want the truth? Fuck. Here we go again. So I knew something was wrong. If she dies first, choose your struggle presents made it season one, stay Savage. Everybody's JT here from consequences of habit.org. We are a federally recognized 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit dedicated to bring awareness to the impact that habits have on our mental health success and the environment.
And this whole thing was born out of my own bad habits. So if you were loved one, if suffered from substance misuse issues, or you want to show some support, just check out the programs that we are going on. I asked you to check out consequences of habit.org, either join the team or show some support.
We'd love it all. Thank you.
so I, I never like worked the AV or was on a website. I never did sex work, but there were times where I would, I don't know how to say it. Like, you know, you just kind of, if the situation arose, um, most of the time that included robbery. Sex work much like drug use is one of those topics in which we deny somebody with experience a place at the table base.
Only on that experience alone, what makes us even worse is we allow those whose very livelihood is based on creating second-class citizenship for those, with that experience to speak for them. In this case, when somebody is experiencing both homelessness and in some cases is relying on sex work to fund their drugs.
That person has no voice. We allow them to be banished to the sidelines while not everybody who is struggling with homelessness and substance misuse turns to sex work. It is something that happens commonly. What you just heard was Sarah's response to me asking about it. You also heard her allude to this in the previous episode, when she mentioned going on dates and how that was something she wasn't really interested in.
I asked her in these moments. Whether we're engaging in reluctant sex work or committing crimes, how she's squared, these actions with her own self identity. Here's a response. Welcome to episode six of choose your struggle presents made it season one, stay Savage. Yeah, I just connected from it. I wasn't living, you know, for the long-term I was living very minute, 10 minute and um, my mind was occupied with.
Hitting a lick getting some money and getting high. Um, there were brief moments where like, I would, I mean, I shouldn't say brief my lens. I went to treatment like 20 times, but you know, it barely ever lasted longer than a couple of days because I didn't, I mean, yeah. I hated myself. Hence why I was completely annihilated every.
With everything else going on, this may seem inconsequential, but I asked Sarah if she had any friends at the time, numerous studies have been done recently to highlight the importance of connection in recovery. In fact, that led to the famous Johann Hari quote, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety it's connection because Sarah was estranged from her family at this time.
In fact, most of the time when she saw them, it sort of centered around her drug use. Having any sort of friendship would be incredibly important. Here's a response. I mean, yeah. I had like my people, um, yes, I had, I, I had friends if that's what you mean. I have, I actually am still friends with one of the girls.
Um, she's still out there. And, um, I had these older guys that were on the block that I used to live on and my mom knew them. They weren't, they weren't like creepy old men. It wasn't anything sexual. They were just kind of like. I don't know, like almost like a father figure, um, older, Latino guy, Jose, and we would commit crime.
We would make money together and look out for each other. You know, if I had something and he was sick, he, you know, I took him off and vice versa and, uh, he changed my mom's tires. I promise previously that we would discuss withdrawal and what it's like to go through detox. And I think it would be helpful to identify the difference between the.
Withdrawal or the symptoms withdrawal is an action. Withdrawal is horrible. Detox is the program to put it simply withdrawal is what happens in your body when it's denied. The thing that it's been relying on for so long in this case substances, for me, that looked like spending my mornings wrapped around my toilet bowl, laying on the floor of my bathroom.
And that was never. Detox is a much longer program for me. Detox was an almost four month long procedure in which I did. What's called step down. And I took a little bit less of the substances every couple of days in many facilities that is compressed over a couple of days or a week here, Sarah putting it way better than I ever could.
It kind of felt like I was being swarmed by a million bees. There was this like intense anxiety. Even at the thought of getting dope, sick, because there's noise and static and you can't think straight and you're dizzy and your skin feels like it's being prickled and then you have to go to the bathroom and you're vomiting bile.
And at the same time, you just want to die. You go into this like misery because the dopamine levels in your head have completely dropped and. Your brain is incapable of naturally producing serotonin and dopamine because of these like overwhelming amounts of, of drugs. And then you just stop it and it literally feels horrific.
Um, there's no other way to really explain it. I don't, unless you've experienced it, you know, people say it's flu, like symptoms, go fuck yourself. I've had the flu before. I've literally never wanted to do die more than I wanted to die when I was dope sick. It has, it's not just about the physical elements, it's the mental and the emotional torment that taking your body and your brain chemistry to that level.
The only thing I can equate made it to is like that moment before somebody blows their fucking brains out because they're so miserable and it's just, it's prolonged. It's like a week of just like that moment before you end your life. As Sarah bounce back and forth between treatment and running, finding our next hit and doing our best to avoid withdrawal.
There was one person who always stood by her side and that was Mary. I wanted her to know that I'm here. You know what I mean? Don't starve to death. Oh my God. For Sarah remembering what her mother was going through while she was at her, lowest is still trauma. The things that I put that woman through. I mean,
during active addiction, she was probably the only person I kept real contact with, um, consistently and was honest with as much as I could be. She was a surprise. She surprised me. She surprised me with how much she loved me. And she still does. We had never gotten close to the way that we got when I was getting high.
We never had that kind of a relationship. And when I got sober, like we never had that. She'd never loved me like that. And
I think it was kind of what kept me alive. I would tell her some ugly truths and she would just, she didn't do the Catholic church thing with me. Like, she's very, he's very good at, at not hyper-focusing on things that would disturb me, you know, like today she'll disturb me, you know? Cause she knows she she's like, all right, bitch, like you're sober, you can handle this and she'll give it to me.
But when I was in that space, she just. It was like, she kind of morphed into this different person and it was just love. That's it that's all. It was, it was just love. There was no judgment. There was nothing else there, but love, and I don't think we'd ever been in that space. And I don't think that we would have been able to stay close throughout my disease if she hadn't been in that space with me because anybody else I caught them off.
I mean, she got mad at me, but yeah, I don't know.
It was a different dynamic that we'd never experienced before. And, um, I think it changed everything from Mary being there for Sarah meant taking her seriously every single time. She said she was ready to try to get into recovery. Here's Mary talking about one of those times. Um, at one point she's like, oh, I need mom.
I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I can't do this anymore. So. Okay. Uh, where are you? And I'd come get her and. Inevitably, you know, she want to, I have to stay well. And then I wouldn't bring her here. I'd take her to a hotel and we'd hang out at, at one point I picked her up and I started driving 95 south and I just kept going and it was deluge, raining out.
She's like, where are we going? I was like, I think Florida. She's like, mom, I can cop in Florida. I said, I know. But what if I get bad, dope in Florida? And I was just pissed. Like, I, I, I, I never yelled or hollered or screamed at anybody. I know what you're going through. I get it. You're not in control of this.
So I forget what's going on. We stopped at like a roadside coffee shop for gas and coffee, and she's like, I can get a ride back from here. Like do it. And she comes to the car and she's like that guy that was next to me, mate. He asked me if I, if I wanted a ride, I was like, maybe he's a rapist going for that shit.
So I get on the phone with her sponsor and response was like, turn around mirror. This is bullshit. Turn around, drive her back, drop her off at, just drop her off in front of Eagle hill. So we turned around. We're coming back. And she's like, look, I'll go. I'm ready. But I, I need clean needles and I need to cop tonight and then I'm ready.
And I was like, okay. So we drove to strip to McDonald's. Would you go to Rite aid? I gave her money to buy needles. I gave him money to cop dope, dope needles. And she said she wanted to go to McDonald's. So I'm sitting in the car. I'm like, so how long are you going to be in the bathroom before? I'm afraid you were overdosed.
She's like, give me seven minutes. I'm like, okay, do you have anything to eat? Yes. I want a cheeseburger. So again, light, I'm getting a cheeseburger. I'm sitting there and watching the clock, watching the clock, praying if she dies, I've already gone through this so many times that they could all die in the same night.
Like I could go to bed and wake up three children dead from overdose, alcohol drugs. You know, and you couldn't get to the point where you just say, all right, Lord, I have am completely utterly perilous. Everything is in your hands. Give me the strength to do what's right. And eventually took hold. Like I really did surrender really, really, really completely surrender to the point where it, Larry, you go, if they die, they die, then God takes them.
And I just pray that he takes them to heaven. So that night she comes out of the bath. She's all right. She's really like, we're going to get out the door and she throws up all over the place, the cheeseburger and it's pouring. So I go back in and get one of those big cups. And I'm like here, just in case don't throw up in my car.
So we get my car, we drive up to the Bristol area. There's a hospital there that has a 24 hour thingy. Right. So she wants to go in the morning. But get to the hotel. She's vomiting for an hour. She finally goes to sleep, get up in the morning, go downstairs and have breakfast. That breakfast is all over the Bruce bushes out in front of the hotel.
She'd just, non-stop throwing up and she's like, this is it's perfect. It's perfect. Goodbye. So then we get the assessment and she gets him and I'm not sure how that one went after this. Here's this episode's podcast recommendation brought to you by great pods. Hey, I'm Jen Trebek, host and creator of the podcast salad with a side of fries over there.
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for Sarah siblings continuously watching their mother drop what she was doing in Russia. Sarah's side created conflicting emotions. Here's Mac. I mean, my mom isn't old, but she's not young. And I just felt really bad for me. I had a completely different just view. And it was just like, she's a trooper, she's a super woman, you know?
And I knew if I left and I didn't stay to help and something happened, I would never forgive myself. I would picture her crying over a casket and. That made me cry because I just, I didn't want her to feel pain. So if there was anything I could do to kind of take any of it away, I would, with three siblings struggling, I asked Mack if those feelings were aimed at all three, I know what you're thinking rationally, that would make sense.
All three were struggling so that anger and that confusion and that hurt must be directed at all three, but this isn't a rational situation. Here's her response. Liz, I kinda, I didn't have any anger towards Liz. She was, she was so chaotic that she was not my mom's problem. Really. Um, she was all over the place.
I mean, at some point she was in, she was in South Africa for years. She got married to random person. Uh, came back, lived in my mom's attic, but then like left and just started bouncing around. She was. Problematic, but didn't require as much, nearly as much attention as Sarah and Charlie was gone. Um, he was in recovery.
He was in a rehab in Arizona and a recovery house in Arizona. So really it was just Sarah and yes, I was angry. Let's pause a minute and catch up with Charlie while Liz and Sarah are by nature, fiercely independent and getting them to go along with something they're not interested in is just not going to happen.
Charlie, as you heard him say before is incredibly conflict averse. And so when it was presented to him that it was probably good to get out of Philadelphia. He said, okay, I'm in, I'm sitting in this treatment center. Um, and there's like a family planning thing or whatever, a family, I don't know. I'm meeting with.
Um, and they basically said like, you got to get the fuck out of Philly. Um, you need to, to just not be around here for awhile. Um, so my counselor had like a drawer full of pamphlets and you just pulled a bunch out. And I saw one that looked cool and it was her sober living in Arizona. And I was like, cool.
Let's, let's run that. So like I got out there, uh, I lasted like maybe a month in this sober living. My Vivitrol shot wore off and like, Within 30 minutes of deciding I want to do it. I had heroin in my hand. I just kind of did, started doing like the tr the treatment, sober living shuffle there. Um, so I, I didn't really have too much of an idea on what was going on back here.
I was just too caught up in my own like selfish bullshit. I have to pause real quick and acknowledge something Charlie just said, and that was mentioned vivid. Vivitrol is one example of what is commonly referred to as medically assisted treatment or mat. And while MIT has been the gold standard and preferred by doctors and scientists everywhere in the addiction space for decades, it's still not widely used.
Let me break this down for you really quickly, because this inferior to me now, I will say I'm not a doctor or a scientist, so I'm not actually going to get into the science of mat. However, I'm going to paint this picture really quickly. We don't separate medically assisted treatment and just. In any other sphere, if you are diagnosed with cancer and you went to the doctor, you're not going to argue with him about, oh, no, no, no, I don't want chemo because that's a drug.
I just want to be treated holistically, unless that's your thing. And then all the power to you. However, that's not the standard of care in the addiction space. It is still an argument about whether it's okay for people struggling with addiction to receive medication. Stigma, plain and simple. There is this idea for many people who quite frankly don't know what they're talking about, that using something like medically assisted treatment is akin to trading one drug for another, which is just absurd.
So as Charlie's story illustrates, that was at play here and, uh, yeah, that's pretty soul crushing. Okay. Now that we've caught up with Charlie, let's go back to Mack who was helping us understand her feelings about Sarah stern. And if all this jumping around feels a little chaotic to you. Yeah. That's on purpose.
Hopefully I've been able to catch a bit of a snapshot of what it was like for the family at the time. Did I accomplish that goal? And that's for you to say anyway, here's Mac. I was angry because because every time my mom went to drop her off at a rehab, I was there too. And it was like, so much hope that that would be the last time I had to go.
Frickin rehab to say goodbye. And then every time she would leave the rehab and it was like, we just drove four hours to get you there. And then four hours back in an awkward silence, praying also so many times I had to pray with my mom and it's just like, oh my God, how many times can you say the hail Mary?
It isn't working so anger. Yeah, absolutely. And my mom took advantage of the fact that I moved to Philly when I was 18. Uh, ha she would call me often and she would ask me to, I had access to a vehicle. No one else had access to a vehicle. So she would ask me to drive to Kensington at 18 to go look for Sarah, just like, look for her on the streets.
She gave me an address one time and I had to go knock on doors. To find her at that point in time, I had taken self-defense classes, but I didn't own weapons yet. At that time, I was just like, I was an 18 year old baby, like fresh faced. Cute, adorable, not intimidating at all. All I had with me was a kitchen knife and I was going and knocking on these doors.
Eventually I did find the place that she was staying and oh my God, my mom made me write down the. So that I could continue to go there and all the time she would make me go and I would have to go sit in this drug house while people were smoking meth in front of me and shooting up, they were very nice hosts.
They did offer me drugs. Of course. I was like, no, thank you. I'm good. But so sweet of you to offer. Uh, but yeah, my mom. Often made me go down there just at night because I, I went to school during the mornings in the early days, and then I worked and then, so it was like nighttime. I was just walking the streets of Kensington and I hated her.
I hated Sarah for that for a little, I wanted to punch her in the face so badly. I was like, I swear to God, if I find you, I'm going to deck you, I'm going to beat you. I don't care. I am sick of it.
If you guys want to learn more about Savage sisters, check out www dot Savage, sisters.org. If you'd like to hear more from me and Sarah specifically, please reach out to info@savagesisters.org, and we can come speak to you, your organization, your business, or your place of worship on Narcan, trainings, harm reduction, trainings, or anything in general with Savage sisters.
If you want to donate, please go to seven sisters.org sponsorship. There, you can find a plethora of ways to give directly to our cause and help our mission. Additionally, if you want to come volunteer at an outreach, please reach out to info@savagesisters.org. So we can give you dates times and locations for our outreach events.
Thanks everybody. Stay Savage.
Hey, y'all it's Jay, the host of this show. If you're not really enjoying the series and you're just listening to make me happy, then thank you for the rest of you. I invite you to check out everything else. Choose your struggle does in the mental health and drug use advocacy space, we have a couple of other podcasts, including our incredibly popular weekly show called.
Choose your struggle on that show. I interview people with lived and learned experiences on the subjects of mental. Substance misuse and recovery and drug use and policy. But occasionally we talk about other topics as well. We also have another new show called choose your struggle presents Monday motivation, but it's not just podcasts.
We also host two vulnerable storytelling events, rock-bottom storytellers and a day in the life on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. And now I'm so excited to announce that we'll be doing rock bottom storytellers live here in Philly, starting the summer. I also have a book coming out, hopefully later this year.
And I regularly traveled the country, telling my story. And speaking about these important topics. I know this is all a lot, but you can check us out at our website. Choose your struggle.com and check out all of our podcasts, wherever you're getting this serious, just by searching for. Choose your struggle.
All right. That's enough about us. Let's get back to the show.
When you're living the sort of life that Sarah was at the time committing crimes to pay for your habit. And just by using those substances, committing a criminal act, it's not long before you run into trouble with the law. Unfortunately for Sarah, when that happened, it was no minor matter. Here's Sarah.
So first I was accused and there were like three different people in Delaware county that had been accused of an attempted robbery or burglary. And. That ended up it was, they brought like 54 charges and it was like an absolute nonsensical charge that they ended up literally giving me one count of paraphernalia for the Radnor police had searched this on the same day.
There were three females, all brunettes and except no two of us were NATS. And one of, one of the girls was a blonde girl with dreads. So it didn't really make any sense. And there was a burglary, um, of a sandwich shop and they had video footage of it, but they didn't have a clear view of who the person was and the person didn't take any money.
So it was an attempted robbery or burglary. And so they searched all three of our houses. Um, cause we were all known drug users and it's a very small town. Well, when they decided to search my room, they came across thousands of empty, dope bags, syringes, and other things. So the bad thing that happened was because they did this search.
They charged me with like child endangerment, which they're not wrong about because my kid lived there. Possession paraphernalia, distribution intent to distribute. Meanwhile, obviously I am a drug addict. Like this room is filled with empty drug bags. They took all of them and, uh, I was always afraid of being at my mom's house because I didn't want the police to show up and arrest.
And I ended up going to a rehab, um, to try and get a clean urine, because my defense attorney said that I should. And I, and I remember saying like, I'm just a junkie, you know, like I'm not, I'm not distributing drugs. Like I'm, uh, I'm. I am using all of these drugs. Anyway, when we went to court, the witness didn't show up.
And so they were like, well, we can either try and get the witness to come back and recharge you with all of these 54 charges, which were all bolted. Or we'll give you one count of paraphernalia and you can have probation for a year. And I was like, I'll take the paraphernalia, not knowing just how shitty of an idea that was for me.
And they said, well, you have to report to probation and parole, but that dah, dah, dah. And I was like, I'm not doing any of that. And so I got a warrant to those activists who are fighting for criminal justice reform. This is a clear example of what it is that we're fighting for. Was Sarah committing crimes.
Yes. But in this case, law enforcement was in a word lazy. They used the trumped up charge to capitalize on someone's struggle. And once Sarah was on the books, she couldn't get off them. Yeah. I kinda got sober for like 90 days. I met this guy. We were dating for a few months, we broke up, he moved to his parents' house in the Northeast.
Um, and then, you know, he was on the news for burglaries in a church. And, um, we weren't together, but I, I was in rehab when I saw him on the news. And when I got out of rehab, which I left early, I had voicemails from a detective saying that they wanted me to come in and make statements against this guy.
And then if I didn't that they were going to plaster my face all over the news and I was terrified. So I obviously did not call him. And I also thought I wasn't with this kid when he did this shit, I wasn't with him. He was caught red handed by detectives. I wasn't, we weren't even together for months. So I was like, I have nothing to do with this.
Didn't stop them. They put me on the news three times they put out a warrant for me and they charged me with. Felony of burglary. And, uh, I was arrested. I had to go to Philly jail, and then they transferred me to Delco to deal with the warrant for whatever they called it. Obscure bonding. I'd never reported cause they really honestly didn't care at the time.
And didn't understand it got out, went right back, got out, went right back. And, um, it was just. Something that seemed like it would be so simple and, you know, one year of probation and I, um, I wasn't living, right. So I wasn't really able to deal with not using drugs and showing up for appointments. You know, it's hard when you're upstanding and using drugs to report to your.
Wasn't a good situation, but it, I pretty much spent the year of 2015 incarcerated, as I'm sure you can imagine adjusting to this new life was not easy for Sarah. I remember when I got arrested in Philly, it was so fucking cold and, um, it was just, and that was just the ongoing thing. And, uh, it was. Fucking cold, everywhere in jail is cold.
Um, the food was fucking disgusting. I remember at one point and I didn't get loud, I didn't complain. I literally just kind of said to myself, when I got in there, I was like, all right, I'm just going to like, write this experience down. Cause this is something I want to remember. And I started to write about it and I stopped because.
I decided I didn't want to remember. There was a lot of injustices that took place in Philly jail. And in Delco, she's a different animal. Both jails were different. Yes. Male CEO's rape inmates that are females. Yes. It goes widely unreported. I remember being in line one day and seeing a thing on that box that said it had our food in it.
And it said not for human consumption. And I turned to, to a very young, pretty CEO. And I said, well, what are we aren't we humans? And she said, no, y'all are inmates. And I just kind of. I said that over and over to myself when I was in there. And it helped me kind of realize what I was in for
absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. The cos were horrifying humans and, uh, the treatment was horrifying and. Every time I got out of jail, I wanted to get as high as I could, so I could forget it. Proponents of our criminal justice system, like to say there's some sort of rehabilitation or treatment that comes with incarceration for Sarah, those lies couldn't be farther from the truth.
I had to like do some trail class for treatment, which was a fucking joke. Prep class, which I got kicked out of because I got locked into myself because I was fighting with the CEO. It was like this whole thing. So like, I, you know, I made it a little bit harder on myself than it should have been, but I found it difficult in the beginning to just reform to you must do, as you are told, and there is no rhyme or reason to it.
And also we will treat you as if you are lower than the scum of the earth and you will like it. Um, so. Try and, you know, with my intelligent brain, try and combat that with logic and, um, digital lock me in the cell. They didn't like that. I had to like write as I'm sorry, letter to the warden or something like fucking no, for me in hearing Sarah, talk about this.
One of the surprising through lines that I picked up on was the similarities in the way she talked about our criminal justice system and our drug treatments. Obviously Sarah is a bit of an expert on both here. She is talking about drug treatment. I think that treatment is not a system or a program that's supposed to do anything for you.
I think that the way that it goes is.
It's lost the ability to be individualized and there's, uh, it's just such a clinical field to it. And you're meeting people at this like broken, like open wound space. So the clinical feel is a turnoff. Most of us are, we have, we've been oppressed by the system. We have distrust issues with the system and we come in the door and we are immediately stigmatized even in a treatment facility.
You know? Um, I don't think that the employees of these facilities are to blame. A lot of the employees were the reasons that I stayed for a day or two, because they were recovering alcoholics and addicts that spoke my language. I think that the rules and the regulations and the policies that were in place were inhumane in some places and that this kind of like one size fits all treatment plan is unrealistic in today's society, especially with all of the underlying things that we're dealing with.
Rehab didn't work for me, cause I definitely didn't want it to and. I also didn't know how to advocate for myself. I think rehab is necessary for medical reasons to get off of substances and also for a safety net between like you and a drink or a drug. I don't think it's going to teach anybody anything.
I don't think that it's there for long-term recovery. I think it's there for short-term stabilization. And that people need to stop marketing their rehabs. Like they're selling some fucking thing like sobriety. Cause that is not what they're doing. They're just stabilizing somebody who was on a substance next time.
I immediately kind of went into like high alert and we got into a tussle and I went out a second story window. Thanks for listening. Made it. Season one, stay Savage is a chooser struggle production and a member of the shameless podcast network. I'm Jay Schiffman, your narrator producer, and founder of teaser.
And special. Thanks to Lauren Schiffman and Steve Schiffman for their help on this show, the theme song was composed by me and built on the song. All that by Ben sound. It made it theme. You hear in episode 10 was composed by lettuce and Rob devious, all interviews for the show were given freely and no payment was received by anyone for providing an interview for the show.
All views expressed by those interviewed are their own. For more info, please see our show notes or learn more@chooseyourstruggle.com.