sodaat

Lessons Sink In

ODAAT client didn’t know where he was going until he got there

Recovery doesn’t always happen on purpose. At least it doesn’t always start out that way. Clemente Salley is one of many recovering addicts who have found a new way of living partially by accident. He says when he first entered the ODAAT program in 1995, he wasn’t looking for recovery or community, it was just a place he’d go when he got tired of “living like a bum.” “I did it just to get some weight back on me and get my foot back into the workplace,” he says, adding that his crack cocaine use had left him weighing in at a gaunt 135 pounds. Caught in a “whirlwind” of crime and active addiction after being released from jail, Salley was a far cry from the promising teen he was at 15. That was the age he received letters of acceptance to such universities as Penn State and Clarion State, he says. But an affinity for freebase cocaine, and later crack, stalled his plans indefinitely. “Once crack hit the scene, I kind of fell in love with it,” says Salley. And so he spent the next several years chasing it.

“I never thought I could learn so much from a woman about how to be a man.” - Clemente Salley client of ODAAT

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