“I was on crutches chasing addiction for miles through the rain, and that’s the way I chased my education.” - April Steele Most importantly, she stays connected to the organizations that give her life a greater meaning through internships, volunteering and - hopefully soon, she says - employment. “I’m really grateful I made it through everything, and there’s got to be a purpose for me,” Steele says. “I’m here because I’m supposed to help people.” A network of support Using every resource available to her through STOP, ODAAT and PRCC, Steele approached recovery with a redirected tenacity that once propelled her crack addiction. “I was on crutches chasing addiction for miles through the rain, and that’s the way I chased my education,” she says. A broad set of recovery services gave her the tools she needed in that pursuit. At PRCC she learned to build a resume, write a paper and seek employment despite a bad work history and criminal past. ODAAT got her deeply involved in the recovery network, which branched out into greater Philadelphia. “Every day we went out there and cleaned up the entire community,” says Steele. “[ODAAT] became part of my family, and I became part of the community.” At STOP, Steele did the heavy internal work to address the causes of her addiction, develop skills to cope, and add to her ever- growing support network, which has been with her through major life struggles such as a battle with cancer. She keeps herself busy in part to avoid the distractions she says brought on her last relapse, like unhealthy romantic relationships, and the idea that she can drink, since crack was her drug of choice.
She grew up in a structured environment. “We lived in the country and visited my grandma every Sunday,” she says. But when her parents divorced when she was 18, she lost her supervision and started to experiment with riskier behaviors. By the time she was 21, she had a daughter and was introduced to crack cocaine. The struggle that followed took away her children, her family, her life, and her freedom. She spent a total of 13 years in jail. Now 50, she works diligently to regain the stability of her childhood.
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