Winchester woman finds recovery, purpose, and a second chance at life

September is National Recovery Month. This seemed like the per­fect time to inter­view my new friend — who is already well-known to life­long res­i­dents of Clark County — about her recov­ery jour­ney. My hope is that Tami’s sto­ry is an encour­age­ment to any­one strug­gling with addiction.

Tami Stewart has lived all 61 of her years in Winchester, long enough to know the town from the inside out: its store­fronts, its neigh­bor­hoods, its court­rooms, and its qui­et acts of mer­cy. Her life has tak­en her from wash­ing win­dows and help­ing run local busi­ness­es to sur­viv­ing addic­tion, earn­ing a col­lege degree, serv­ing on a non­prof­it board, and telling her recov­ery sto­ry so some­one else might find the courage to begin again.

It is a lot for one life­time, and Tami talks about all of it with unusu­al openness.

And the won­der­ful thing about liv­ing through all of these highs and lows is that Tami is an open book. She is unashamed of her past and loves telling her sto­ry in hopes of encour­ag­ing oth­ers who may be strug­gling with addic­tion. She is clear-eyed and bru­tal­ly honest.

Her sto­ry is one of per­sis­tence, a will­ing­ness to accept help, and grit. After many years of addic­tion, Tami has been clean for the last 12 years.

Recently, she was remind­ed of how Winchester stands behind their own after being the vic­tim of cyberbullying.

“I’m not gonna be bul­lied,“ she told me in a recent inter­view. “But . . . I’m just thank­ful for Winchester. I’m thank­ful for the peo­ple that have stood behind me and ral­lied behind me. Twelve years lat­er, and they still got my back. Yeah, that means a lot to me.”

‘Just like a normal kid’

Tami was adopt­ed at a young age and raised by Russell and Frankie Burgess, who ran an antique store in town, which Tami helped with.

“I have been down­town [in] Main Street busi­ness­es my whole life. I grew up just like any nor­mal kid over on Euclid Street off Boone Ave. Went to GRC and Belmont. I got mar­ried young. Had three chil­dren young.”

She says her addic­tion start­ed after her chil­dren were grown and had “left the coop.”

“I broke my shoul­der in ’95. And at that time, I had a med­ical card. So when I went to the doc­tor, they just put me in a sling and sent me home with Lortabs. They didn’t set it. They didn’t do any­thing, no surgery or any­thing, just that.

“And need­less to say, the Lortabs led to my stronger addiction.”

She explained that her doc­tor at the time began giv­ing her injec­tions of a “real­ly pow­er­ful” pain med­ica­tion — she’s not sure what kind — until that doc­tor retired. After that, she found her­self unable to get the med­ica­tion she need­ed to con­trol the severe pain in her shoul­der through the med­ical community.

“I had no choice but to try to find my med­i­cine on the street. OxyContin, Percocet, what­ev­er. I was an IV user. I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

Tami said she reached bot­tom on Dec. 4, 2014 — the day she got arrested.

A turning point

Tami says that while get­ting arrest­ed was scary, it turned out to be a life-chang­ing event.

“I knew I need­ed help. My hus­band, Tom, . . . had tried and tried and tried to find me detox and rehabs. But back then, you just couldn’t find them. Yeah, and if you did find them, they want­ed an arm and a leg.

“So we both talked about it. We both knew that my best detox was sit­ting over there at [Clark County Detention Center]. And believe it or not, I was only in there on a sig­na­ture bond. Tom could have come down. Anybody could have come down at any time and just signed a name, and I could have got­ten out.”

So she stayed in jail vol­un­tar­i­ly. For 105 days.

She said her biggest strug­gle, once dry, was not just stay­ing away from drugs. It was learn­ing to “sur­ren­der.”

“Most peo­ple that are sit­ting in jail, their con­cept is, ‘I’m sit­ting in a jail, how much more sur­ren­dered can a per­son get?’

“And then, it dawned on me one day. So that night when I laid on my cot, I prayed to God and I told Him, ‘All right. I sur­ren­der. And I know what it means. If you see fit for me to sit in this jail for five years, then I accept that. Whatever you decide to do with my life, I will accept that.’

“The very next day, at five o’clock that after­noon, Tom came down and signed the paper and got me out again. I nev­er even talked to the man. Didn’t tell him about my prayer.”

Next steps

“I knew I was going to be able to get out, and we had talked about the drug court pro­gram. And even while I was in jail, every­body kept say­ing ‘the drug court program’s set up to fail. You will nev­er make it.’ But I’m kind of, like, I ain’t got much choice.”

That turned out to be the start of Tami’s recov­ery jour­ney. She was 50 years old.

In the Drug Court pro­gram, they got her the surgery she need­ed to fix her shoul­der and final­ly elim­i­nate the dai­ly chron­ic pain that had led to her addic­tion in the first place.

Then the hard work began. Because remov­ing the pain doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fix the addic­tion prob­lem. At first, she strug­gled with the rigid require­ment of the program.

“I didn’t under­stand why I had to go to these meet­ings, why I had to show up in drug court, and do the tests and all that, but look­ing back on it, I’m grate­ful for all that.

“It’s hard to explain because at the time, when it’s hap­pen­ing to you, you don’t under­stand what they’re doing. But now, I can look back on it and real­ize that it was oper­ant con­di­tion­ing. They were slow­ly recon­di­tion­ing my life to being some­thing ‘nor­mal.’”

The system worked for Tami 

Tami says she has a lot of peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions to thank for help­ing her with her recovery.

“A lot of peo­ple stood behind me dur­ing that peri­od of time. Not only did I have peo­ple over there at the cour­t­house, I had the judges and I had the lawyers. I had the drug court pro­gram, I had the peo­ple out there at the health depart­ment and home health. They were stand­ing behind me.”

But recov­er­ing from addic­tion was not the only life goal Tami had.

“I decid­ed I want­ed to go back to col­lege, so I went out here to BCTC and I got my asso­ciate degree in applied sci­ence with human ser­vices as my major. I main­ly did it [so] I can say I actu­al­ly did it, and I com­plet­ed it, absolute­ly . . . . It was more or less a step­ping stone to say I did it.

“Because all my life, I’ve been start­ing things and nev­er [fin­ish­ing them]. . . . I want­ed to start some­thing and actu­al­ly fin­ish it.”

“And then I got con­tact­ed for the New Opportunity School for Women. I did not know what that was, so I gave that a shot. I went down there and stayed with them for two weeks. And I end­ed up becom­ing a grad­u­ate [of their res­i­den­tial program].”

She is now on the Board of Directors of NOSW. I didn’t know any­thing about the orga­ni­za­tion until our inter­view, but Tami was eager to edu­cate me.

“We take ladies and we help them with their self-improve­ment, their self-empow­er­ment. Anything they want to do, we try to help them with the resources to get it. Like I said, we take ladies for two weeks. We cocoon them. We help them with total makeovers.

“We do dai­ly class­es on finances. How to do things like, say, lat­er on when you’re by your­self, and you don’t have that part­ner. We teach them how to become inde­pen­dent on their own.

“Matter of fact, right before I come down here [for the inter­view] I was just doing a Zoom meet­ing with them.”

‘He has been my backbone’

Among the many peo­ple Tami cred­its for help­ing her with her jour­ney in recov­ery, there is one per­son she puts at the top of the list: her hus­band Tom.

“He has def­i­nite­ly been my back­bone, because, as he says, he holds the record for the most attend­ed NA meet­ings by some­one who has nev­er had the prob­lem him­self. He was right there. Even at my meet­ings he couldn’t go into, like the ther­a­pist and psy­chi­a­trists, he was still sit­ting out there in the truck.”

Tami laughs as she recalls those times.

“I had co-par­tic­i­pants who start­ed jok­ing with me, going ‘Where’s Tom? We know he’s here. He ain’t far behind you. He don’t let you out of his sight.’”

As I said ear­li­er, Tami Stewart owns her choic­es in life. She doesn’t deny them and she doesn’t sug­ar-coat anything.

“I was an addict. I am recov­er­ing. And you know, I always will be in recov­ery. I can’t hide from it.”

The last sto­ry Tami told me made me take notice. When you’re in the throes of addic­tion, even sim­ple things most of us take for grant­ed — yard­work, dish­es, laun­dry, a nor­mal morn­ing — can feel out of reach.

“I can remem­ber one day, when I was dri­ving around in a car, and I was try­ing to find my dope. I was going down the street and I had to look over, and I saw a woman out in her yard just trim­ming her flow­ers. Just dig­ging in the yard. And I can remem­ber sit­ting in the car think­ing, wouldn’t it be so nice just to be able to wake up one day and not think about drugs? Just to be hav­ing nor­mal every­day life. Do the yard? Do the dish­es or do the laun­dry? Just not think about that.

“You know, and I final­ly got there.”

Yes, you did, Tami. You made it.

This sto­ry was edit­ed to cor­rect the spelling of Tami’s name.