From darkness into light

Melissa Thompson grew up in Salem in a good family, free of a history of substance abuse. Nevertheless, after the birth of her second child, a son in 2007, she became addicted to prescription medication, specifically opiates, which led her down a dark path.

Thompson spoke at the May 26 March Against Addiction. 

“In 2012, it really spiraled out of control,” she said. “… I started manufacturing methamphetamine to supply myself with the money I needed to be able to use on a daily basis. I left my children with my mother and went out and did what people in active addiction do — I used and manipulated and stole and did a lot of harm to myself and everyone else and made a whole lot of bad mistakes.”

However, with help and support of recovery programs and her family, she made it out of active addiction and has been in recovery since 2014.

“I’m not confused about who to give credit to,” she said. “I could not save myself. I shouldn’t be here. I should be dead. I should be in prison. I should definitely not have the rewards I have today because I stopped using.”

Thompson said she can remember the day she was arrested.

“I remember telling the arresting officer who came in and got me that I was tired. I was very tired and he said, ‘You can quit at any time, Melissa. It can be over.’ 

“I still remember him saying that and I went and did some time in the county jail and I took a plea deal and I remember the treatment team was there from Washington County. My probation officer, who was going to be my house arrest officer, was there. I told her, ‘I can’t quit. I need help. It’s out of control. I can’t stay here and I can’t be clean here. It’s going to kill me.’ She said, ‘We’ll try to get you into treatment.’”

Thompson entered an inpatient facility in Evansville the next day. She had been to treatment facilities in the past, but hadn’t been successful. This time, however, she found what she needed to start crawling out of her addiction.

“You can’t arrest away a drug problem, but it can push individuals into recovery,” she said. “I know that, because that’s what it did for me. They told me if I didn’t go, I’d be in prison for three to seven years. I’d already taken enough from my family and my children. I was not an active mother. I couldn’t do that to these kids. I didn’t want to die. I knew what it was like to want to die in active addiction — you’re like, please let this be the last one. I need to quit or I need to die because it’s not pleasant and it’s like hell.”

She came out of inpatient and into outpatient treatment while on house arrest. She could leave the house to go to meetings and she could volunteer at the outpatient facility.

“I met people along the way who told me, ‘You don’t ever have to go back,’” she said. “‘You never have to go back and see what that hell was like.’ I remember it. It’s painful enough to never want to go back. Visiting my kids at the county jail, that was painful. Crying every Sunday when they left, that was painful. Seeing my mom come in there and say, ‘I’m not bonding you out because you’re going to die if I do,’ that was hard. I was able to go and make friends and I had women who were able to get me places I needed to be. They took me to meetings and showed me I never needed to go back to using.”

Getting free wasn’t enough for Thompson. She had that group of women who helped her and, in return, she wanted to help others.

Her group in Scottsburg sent her to Austin for training and they started a group there, which she attended, and she became a speaker.

“I was praying to be of service to help someone else because if I just focus on me, I’ll go crazy,” she said. “When they called and asked for my resume, I didn’t want to go back to Scott County and I didn’t want to come back to Washington County, either. I wanted to go somewhere where no one knew me, where there was no one I’d used with, where no one knew the damage I’d done, but I went because my friend told me, ‘You don’t get to pray to be of service to other individuals and then pick where you go. God gets to pick where you go and help someone.’”

Today, life is good for Thompson. She said she always says yes when asked to speak, even when it makes her uneasy.

“People showed up and spoke for me and really helped me,” she said. “I didn’t get here by myself. This is not about Melissa. I got here because of the people who loved me back to life and believed in me. I believe that Salem can rise above, just like Scott County rose above. It’s really great over there. The community came out and supported everyone in recovery. Their recovery outreach has turned around more than 500 percent.”

Michael Roop calls Thompson his hero.

“Working with PACT, we see a lot of drug use up close in groups and community corrections,” he said. “She’s been an inspiration to me and I call her a hero. When you get to know people you work with in community corrections, their families, their kids’ names and see them out doing productive things, it’s important to come out and support them. Their families and communities see them in a more positive light and as the individuals they are.”

Steve Crane has been a teacher for quite a few years, enough to see his students grow into adults who could make their own choices. Some of those choices make him proud and some of those choices make him grieve, like the ones that lead his grown-up students down paths of addiction.

“We’ve all seen too well what the drug problem is doing to our community, especially our children,” he said before the start of the first March Against Addiction on Saturday morning, May 19. “I get very sad when I see anyone – especially former students of mine – who have made bad decisions and ended up in trouble. I remember these students as they once were — innocent children, enjoying their childhood, smiling and happy. Then I see their unhappy faces when they’ve turned to drugs or trouble.”

The idea for the walk was borne from his belief that, “I guess, after a while, I needed to do something; to do everything I could.”

Crane said he was chosen on the part of Salem Community Schools to join an addiction prevention coalition called Align Southern Indiana.

“This group consists of people in five counties in Southern Indiana who have the same problem we have — Clark, Floyd, Scott, Harrison and Washington counties,” said Crane. “We are meeting to involve these communities to align and pool their resources to advance the public good. In part, this could allow people better avenues for success after being incarcerated. Obviously, there is no single answer to this problem. Although, through collaboration with these other counties, Washington County will now have better ways to help its citizens.” 

Organizers chose May 26 because it coincided with Salem High School’s graduation. The location, which combined the YMCA and walking path (community) and high school track (the school), symbolize the community and school effort to fight the drug epidemic.

“We feel like our course symbolically joins our community in a special way with our future, our children, and we wanted to have the walk in the month of May, signifying the ‘mayday’ or emergency our community is experiencing,” said Crane. “We pray that this march sends a message of hope, caring and compassion without judgement for each and every citizen in Washington County. If this helps just one person, it’s worth it.”

Crane said he hoped to make the walk an annual one, bigger and better each year. This year’s walk included about two dozen people and by the end of the walk, the Washington County Substance Abuse Council raised $425 in donations, with more possibly coming in.

YMCA Chaplain Tony Mendizabal said he’s grateful Crane organized the March Against Addiction.

“It addresses such a prevalent issue in our community,” he said. “If this raised awareness that helped one person, today was more than worth it.”