Sybil Clarkson, a former crack addict for 18 years, and Transitions, the program which helped her become clean and who she now works for as a Child Care Coordinator/Case Manager, have been profiled in The Journal Gazette of Fort Worth, Indiana.
Clarkson had previously tried to give up drugs with AWAC, another program run by the non-profit Women’s Bureau (part of the United Way Movement), but lapsed after she left the 90-day program. After getting into some legal trouble relating to her drug use, she returned two years later to the agency and their residential program, this time determined to quit:
“I got sick and tired of losing my relationships with my parents, my children, my significant others….Everything I did was centered around my drug. I had forgotten the life I had before drugs.”
And she managed to do herself one better and find for herself a new life with the Transitions program. Opened in 1996, with up to two years of treatment for women (plus their kids aged ten and under) in the form of residential, semi-independent and then after care treatment, it has had on average, over its ten years, a 30% success rate getting women off drugs and alcohol. She has also found the time and satisfaction of getting an Associate’s and Bachelor’s degree in Human Services from Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne, with plans to begin a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy.
