Note: In honor of the event at Park Square to commemorate International Overdose Awareness Day at 6 p.m. today, The Westfield News spoke with a mother and daughter from Westfield who have dealt with addiction.
WESTFIELD—For Megan Phelon, addiction happened because she felt like she didn’t belong.
“I was 13 years old, I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t going through a good time in my life,” she said. “I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin.
“I wanted to fit in.”
She started drinking alcohol at parties with older kids. This was followed by cocaine. Then, in order to make some money while still in high school, she began to sell pills with her friends. She tried the pills, got hooked and found that it wasn’t as cheap as heroin. So then she tried heroin.
All to fit in.
She continued to use heroin, eventually becoming addicted. Like millions of others, she battled with the substance that has continued to besiege the U.S. and Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, her mother, Kate Phelon, knew nothing of it. She said that her daughter would sleep in and it seemed like a traditional teenage thing to do. Then she started losing weight and while she was concerned, addiction still didn’t enter the picture.
“I just figured it was the typical teenage testing of the water and thought that she had an eating disorder when she was losing weight,” Kate said. “And I was totally naive.”
It wasn’t until legal trouble began to happen that Kate found out and Megan’s secret was exposed. Now that Kate knew, Megan was being pushed to get clean.
Megan said she tried a variety of detox centers and programs, but none would work. She tried methadone, but would get sick if she came off it. She tried suboxone, a popular opiate treatment medication, but would get sick if she came off that, too.
Plus, in order to get into a detox program, Megan said she would have to go to them “dirty,” or with drugs in her system. Even after she got into the programs though, they wouldn’t have enough space to keep her for a long enough time to get better. The longest she stayed she said, was 15 days.
And when she got out she fell back into her addiction.
“I think it happened a good 10 to 12 times where I tried to go and get clean,” she said.
This sort of care was highlighted by both Megan and Kate as one of the critical downfalls of how opioid addiction is currently cared for.
It wasn’t until Megan was arrested in January 2015 and incarcerated that her healing would begin.
Megan Phelon’s mug shot from her January 2015 arrest.
Once in prison, Megan was finally able to begin the process of quitting her addiction, but not due to treatment or assistance inside. Instead, it was because of quite the opposite.
“She will publicly say being incarcerated helped save her life but she didn’t get any treatment while incarcerated—she had to quit cold turkey,” Kate said.
“Jail isn’t treatment,” Megan said. “It forces you to get clean, but from there you have to do it on your own and there is no assistance.”
Both Kate and Megan stressed that this is another downfall of how opiate addiction is treated.
“The population in there, they aren’t given what they need,” Kate said. “My daughter was in there for 11 weeks and got one AA class. There’s a lot more that needs to be done and we need to keep pushing.”
Kate and Megan both said that Megan was lucky to be able to eventually transfer out of prison and into a transitional facility, where she was helped to acclimate herself and overcome her addiction. However, Kate said it took a lot of pressure from them and their attorney to get Megan the help that she needed while incarcerated.
Now, a year after finally becoming sober, Megan and her mom are both talking openly about the issue and what they feel is needed most to combat it—education.
Megan Phelon post-incarceration and sober.
“I think it’s important for people to know,” Megan said. “I think there’s been progress in society with how people look at addiction now but there needs to be education, there needs to be more preventative measures.”
“I think the education and awareness of where there are services needs to be out there because my daughter didn’t plan on being a drug addict,” Kate said.
“Nobody knows that you’re going to be an addict,” Megan said. “It’s the adolescent changes, it’s those experiments. Doing that one line of cocaine will lead you eventually to being on the street and there’s no way to know it or not.”
