Families share stories of addiction at Gaiser center conference
BUTLER TWP — Gayle Brumagin’s daughter, Crystal, was 12 when she started using drugs. At 14, she entered her first rehabilitation center.
“I just thought it was like a phase,” said Brumagin, a nurse’s aide. “We used to drink and smoke pot, and then once you had your kid, you grew up.”
Brumagin said as she navigated her daughter’s addiction and recovery, she learned more about the inner workings of addiction, and how the disease impacts the brain.
Looking back on the rehabilitation, incarceration and treatment undertaken by family members in recovery, Brumagin and two other panelists at the second annual Ellen O’Brien Gaiser Center’s Discover Recovery symposium shared their stories, how they learned to support their loved ones, set boundaries and let go.
“Their stories help all of us,” said Dr. C. Thomas Brophy, Gaiser Center’s medical director, as he introduced the speakers Monday, Jan. 8, at the event at Butler County Community College. “(Stories) help everybody not just relate, but maybe even understand what they need to do at home within their own families.”
Kara Nastasi’s late brother, Krispen, struggled with addiction beginning 20 years ago. At the time, addiction and recovery were not talked about, she said.
“There was a lot of shame revolved around it, even on a family level,” Nastasi said. “Nobody in my family wanted to admit he had an issue. We certainly didn’t talk about his drug abuse, rehabilitation or any kind of help.”
“Even fewer conversations were out in the open about how, as a family, you should navigate this unknown world,” she said. “So I would have to say I was probably on the outside looking in with his disease of addiction. I truly didn’t understand the hold heroin had on his body, mind and spirit.”
Nastasi said her brother was incarcerated, admitted to the county’s drug court program and underwent rehab multiple times.
The rehabilitation programs afforded her more time with her brother, she said.
“I gained him back several times through his addiction journey, and I’m so thankful that he was sober to be at my wedding,” Nastasi said. “He got to see his nieces and nephews born and he was truly an amazing uncle.”
As her brother began the recovery process, Nastasi said she was able to shadow a friend who was a physician at a methadone clinic, a facility where people receive treatment for opioid use disorder. What she found was “eye-opening,” she said.
“Any one of us could become addicted to heroin after just one try,” she said. “That really stuck with me.”
Nastasi’s brother was friends with the younger sister of Jen Chapla, one of the other panelists at the symposium.
Chapla, who is older by six years, said learning to support her sister meant learning to step back.
When Chapla discovered her sister was taking heroin, she said she immediately began making inquires into rehabilitation options and calling treatment facilities across different states.
“We were raised to just get ‘er done and fix it,” she said.
But being a fixer “came at a great cost,” Chapla said, straining her relationship with her husband as she put herself in high-risk situations, like dragging her sister out of a drug house and confronting a heroin dealer alone.
“I did some really dumb and extreme things in the name of trying to keep her safe,” Chapla said.
“I remember saying (to my sister), ‘It’s so incredibly frustrating to be so powerless — I’m sitting this close to you and I can’t help you,’” she shared. “And I remember her plain as day saying, ‘You have no idea how hard it is to be sitting here not being able to help myself.’
“I had to let go and learn to grieve who she was once was,” she said.
In the process, Chapla also said her husband helped her set boundaries.
“I was not going to give her money; I would only drive her to a doctor’s appointment or to a family member’s home,” she said. “I never was going to visit her in jail.”
Chapla said her boundaries differed from Nastasi’s as their journeys were their own.
“We both had to have different boundaries, and for me, that was mine,” she said.
“It was humbling to lean into the strength of others,” Chapla said. “The last and most important piece was I had to admit that anything was possible and that could include her death.”
Brumagin still struggles with feelings of guilt, she said.
“I feel like I should have done something different,” Brumagin said. “I shouldn’t have just sat back and said, ‘She’s going to outgrow this.’ I mean, yeah, you do feel guilty … I don’t go in for that counseling or any of those groups or anything, but you do feel like it’s your fault.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have worked so much overtime, maybe I shouldn’t have told her dad, ‘Let her do what she wants,’” she said. “There’s things that I’m sure everybody would like to go back and change. And you know, I thought by giving her everything that she was going to have the best of everything.”
Brophy said guilt and self-doubt are commonly expressed by family members struggling to best support someone in active addiction. When asked whether a warm or “tough love” approach is best, he said what matters is that the response is a personal decision, made as a family.
“I tell people to listen, use the resources and the statistics that we do know — keep that line of communication open, support them in a non-enabling way,” Brophy said. “As far as how warm, how tough, how strict — as hard as this is, think of the worst outcome. And then try and think which version of yourself you could more live with. Because that’s what all these parents are doing that have lost their kids.”
Today, Chapla said her sister has two children of her own, holds two degrees in social work and works as a certified clinical trauma specialist.
Brumagin said her daughter is now six years sober, and the first in her family to attend higher education to pursue a four-year degree.
“She’s doing good now,” Brumagin said. “I just keep my fingers crossed. That’s all I can do. And she has to live her life, you know — she’s 31 years old.”
“I wouldn’t trade her for anything,” she said. “She’s taught me a lot of stuff that I would have never, ever have known if I hadn’t had her. I would still — I would still pick her. You know, she’s my baby.”
