Club Serenity gives recovering addicts a place to be understood

Newsrooms across the commonwealth have spent years documenting the opioid crisis in their own communities. But now, in the special project State of Emergency: Searching for Solutions to Pennsylvania’s Opioids Crisis, we are marshalling resources to spotlight what Pennsylvanians are doing to try to reverse the soaring number of overdose deaths.

WITF is releasing more than 60 stories, videos and photos throughout July. This week, you will find stories about treatment facilities and recovery.

 

Anyone who steps into Club Serenity in Charleroi gets a jarring reminder of what the organization is up against.

Immediately on the left is a remembrance wall featuring the photos received by the Washington County club of more than 250 people whose lives were claimed by an overdose.

The deaths have become too many to be contained on that wall, so on the opposite wall is a mostly empty tackboard with nine more photos posted in the lower left corner in memory of fatal overdose victims.

But club president Mark St. Cyr is also be there to greet newcomers.

“When you walk in that door, I’m going to give you a big hug and say, ‘Glad you made it,’” St. Cyr says. “A lot of people don’t make it. They walked through that door because they survived.”

Club Serenity board members provide peer support and mentoring for individuals throughout their recovery process and assist them in finding treatment programs as well as housing, whether it’s halfway and three-quarters houses or just someone’s couch.

The 12-step recovery program meetings draw between 300 and 500 people from throughout southwestern Pennsylvania to the club’s Fallowfield Avenue meeting space every week.

And board members are there to listen.

“To go home (and say), ‘Hey, I feel like using,’ they don’t get it,” St. Cyr said. “Here, we understand.”

Washington County suffered 97 overdose deaths in 2017, including nine in Charleroi, a borough of roughly 4,000 residents. Charleroi also had nine overdose deaths in 2016, when the county suffered 109 fatal overdoses, more than the total number of drug overdose deaths in the county from 1992 through 2002 combined.

“You’re fighting an endless war here,” Club Serenity Vice President Lee Roberts said. “All we can try to do is minimize the casualties.”

Having battled addiction themselves, board members try to build community presence and reduce the stigma that they say often hinders local recovery. They attend Charleroi Borough Council meetings, talk to school students about overcoming addiction and hold a recovery rally in October that featured speakers, information booths and free Narcan training to raise awareness about recovery services.

St. Cyr is working to establish more social services at Club Serenity in the near future, including a career training program and a place for supervised visitation for those in recovery seeking custody of their children and wanting to prove they’re ready to be parents.

“We are growing,” St. Cyr said. “That’s the sad part. I don’t want to have to do all these things.”

But he does. He points to a face on the remembrance wall of a man that St. Cyr says fatally overdosed after his father and before his aunt died the same way.

“We’re trying to reach out,” St. Cyr said.