After 24 years, woman finds sobriety and a new passion

WATCH – Charmed Life –

August 19, 2020 – “It went from cocaine to oxys to heroin to heroin and crystal meth and it was just a never-ending process,” Staples explains from the Layman Way Recovery Center in Alfred that has become her new home. The drugs eventually landed Staples homeless. During the summer of 2019, she was living in a tent in the middle of the woods in Sanford, she weighed 80 pounds, had no money, and began shoplifting to support her habit. It was her rock bottom when she finally got arrested and was in and out of jail for almost five months.

While in jail, Staples was offered to enter the recovery program at Layman Way which is literally across the parking lot from the York County Jail but she turned it down twice. When it was offered the third time, Staples took it. “It got to the point where I just didn’t want to be in jail and I came here. I honestly had no intentions of staying here I had every intention of running,” Staples admits.

But thanks to a woman who she befriended in jail who was also in the program she stayed.

“That was the first glimmer of hope I’d seen in years,” Staples says.