Inside the doors of Peniel, a drug and alcohol treatment center, you won’t find a specific age group, gender, or race, just a group of people looking to live drug-free.
“I got arrested for selling drugs,” Peniel recovering addict Gino Winkelman says.
“It wasn’t until 5 years later when I started using heroin,” Desalynn Coleman, also a Peniel recovering addict, tells us.
“It doesn’t discriminate,” Samuel Melendez, who is in the Peniel program adds. “It doesn’t discriminate no matter what you are. You can be a doctor. You can be a lawyer.”
You can even be a police officer. Last week the Cambria County District Attorney, Kelly Callihan, confirmed that a Johnstown police officer overdosed inside the Public Safety Building while the officer was on the job. Police used Narcan to revive the officer and Johnstown police put the investigation into the hands of state police.
Monday we reached out to Callihan’s office to see if this is a setback in the county’s effort to fight the war on drugs, but she was unavailable.
When we spoke with those at Peniel, they said the substance abuse problem has only become worse.
“The reality is that an addiction is usually an answer to a problem that someone is facing that they don’t know how to otherwise cope with,” Peniel director of public relations Durean Coleman explains. “Some people pick up and use drugs and alcohol when they’re dealing with those issues.”
No matter who you are, or what your background is, they want to stress there is help.
“I was just tired of the life I was living. I knew there had to be something better for myself,” Winkelman says.
They also say that addiction doesn’t mean the end of your success.
“You must want it. You must really want it,” Melendez tells us. “You must admit you have a problem. You’ve got to admit it. That’s the first stage.”
“Through coming here I’ve learned how to become a Godly woman, how to stand on my own two feet, to overcome the victim mentality, and to take my life back,” Desalynn Coleman adds.
Callihan has started several new initiatives to try to help stop this epidemic. This includes making sure police are involved in overdose calls, so they can try to get additional information, and take the dealers off the streets.
