Crime & Safety

'The Point Of Desperation:' From Rock Bottom To Recovery

Mentor woman overcomes heroin addiction with mix of faith, hopelessness.

Briana Hoppert had hit rock bottom. She had lost custody of her daughter, lost her car in a wreck and lost her will to live because of her heroin addiction.

“For the first time in my life, I had no clue what was going on,” said Hoppert, 31, of Mentor. “Either I needed to die or something had to change.”

By this time, March 2012, Hoppert had been a heroin addict for 12 years, from when she was 19 years old.

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Having snorted cocaine and Adderall before, Hoppert didn’t think heroin would be a problem when her boyfriend at the time introduced it to her.

“It feels like a full body orgasm,” Hoppert said. “That’s why people do it —the rush.”

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After a few months, Hoppert was addicted. By October, 2001 police arrested her for her first heroin-related crime —theft. Hoppert took a few of her mother’s checks and went on a spending spree.

One part of the problem

Drug-related thefts in Mentor have become more common as heroin use increases, police said.

With heroin costing $15 a hit on the street. Addicts don’t have to steal a lot to get enough money for a fix, said Mentor Police Chief Kevin Knight.

Thefts are only one part of the problem as heroin possession arrests have quadrupled from five to 20 in the past five years. From 2010 to 2012, heroin drug trafficking arrests more than doubled from three to seven. There are already three arrests so far this year, according to Mentor police records.

Hoppert was arrested for trafficking in 2003 in Eastlake. She went to jail for three months and then NorthEast Ohio Community Alternative Program in Warren, OH where she learned the first steps to becoming sober.

“I went to meetings, prayed a lot and worked the (12 step program),” Hoppert said. “Somebody said,  ‘If you just bring God with you like you did here then you’ll be fine’ and that’s what I did.”

Losing Custody

Hoppert stayed sober for three years before she relapsed in 2006.

“That’s when I started using the needle and started doing all kinds of things for money like scams,” Hoppert said.

It wasn’t until 2007, with the birth of her daughter, that Hoppert would try to get off heroin again, using Methadone prescribed to her as an alternative.

But in 2008, she tried to detox with Methodone in an effort to get back with her daughters father. Withdrawal was difficult for her and she turned to other alternatives such as alcohol and Suboxone.

“So I was trying to make myself feel better and before I knew it, I was using (heroin) again,” Hoppert said.

After that she decided to give her daughter to her mother, knowing she couldn’t take care of her. She lost permanent custody in 2009.

“When I had to give her to my mother, I thought, ‘Well if this doesn’t do it, then I’m hopeless’ and I gave up on life,” Hoppert said.

Back to the needle

For the next four years, Hoppert’s life would spiral downwards, filled with heroin binges and multiple suicide attempts.

“One time I tried to kill myself with four grams and I woke up eight hours later and said, ‘This is [ridiculous], I spent a lot of money on this just to wake up,’” Hoppert said.

Hoppert would have days she’d completely black out and a daily routine of “wake up, drink Four Lokos, go get [heroin], get high, smoke crack for the next eight hours, shoot some more dope, go to bed and do it all over again the next day.”

By the time she hit bottom, she had called Lake Geauga Recovery Centers to get treatment for the third and final time and waited for an opening in their sober living house. She began praying.

She called her aunt and asked for $10,000 to pay for any sort of treatment.

“She said to me, ‘You know, Briana, if I thought $10,000 was just going to make this all better and I could bank on that, I would give it to you in a second. But how do I know this is different from any other time,’” Hoppert said. “That’s when I realized I was done.”

Faith and Detox

Hoppert planned to detox herself for a week. On the third day, the recovery center called her back with an opening. Her praying paid off.

“For him to call right at that moment, that was God telling me, ‘You’re doing it so far what you need to do. This is how I’m going to come into play,”’ she said.

Hoppert has been sober since June 2012. She lived in the recovery center’s Oak House in Painesville for five months.

At the Oak House, women with addictions go to 12 step meetings, have 30 hours of therapy each week including group meetings and lectures, said Melanie Blasko, president of Lake Geauga Recovery Centers in Mentor.

Out since November, Hoppert lives a more stable life and works as a dishwasher at a Mentor restaurant.

“They say in order to recover, you have to reach that point of desperation that’s strong enough to bring about a complete personality change necessary for sobriety,” Hoppert said. “I had to completely lose myself before I could do that.”


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