Imprisoned addicts offer cautionary stories for students

By Jennifer Eisenbart

Editor

If a visitor looked at Julia Bell, Natalie Coenen, Chelsea Kosier and Stephanie Deyot sitting side by side on the stage at the Burlington High School Nov. 12, little would have seemed amiss.

Aside from all four wearing what looked like green medical scrubs and lanyards with an ID card, the four looked like just about any young women their age.

But as Deyot explained, all of them have given up their identities.

“I’m known by an eight-digit number,” explained Deyot, who then reeled off the prisoner number that defines her at Ellsworth Correctional Facility.

Deyot and the other three were at BHS Thursday night to speak about the dangers of drugs – specifically opiates – and how easily drug use can ruin lives. Partners2 and Focus on Racine helped bring the program to BHS, along with drug-testing kits and informational packets. The presentation was held the same night as student-teacher conferences.

The program falls under the Wisconsin Anti-Opiate Campaign, with the women speaking taking part in the Ellsworth Correctional Facility Earned Release Program.

“They have to be recovering from an opiate addiction,” said Ricky Person, the corrections programs supervisor at Ellsworth. “We like for them to be relatable to the students.

“Most of them have done well in high school, and began their downward spiral in high school,” Person added. The program, he said, has a good completion rate, with just 15 percent of those completing the program returning to jail.

“This program has been very impactful,” Person added.

A small audience gathered to hear the young women tell their stories – each one more harrowing than the one before.

Kosier and Deyot talked about their difficult childhoods – both with a parent who drank, and both with a history of abuse.

But both also stressed they turned to drugs in an attempt to cope with the wide range of emotions that came from the situation.

“Nobody was there to help me deal with what I was going through,” said Kosier. “I didn’t appreciate anything, and I had really low self-esteem.”

Added Deyot, “I felt these emotions I couldn’t even describe or cope with.”

But it was Coenen – 21, born and raised in Appleton, a graduate of Appleton Xavier High School – that drew the most emotional picture.

With pages of a notebook in front of her to read from, Coenen started simply by saying, “Heroin has no preference. Anyone can become addicted.”

Coenen said she came from a stable family, one with no history of alcohol or chemical dependency. But her first boyfriend, she said, was a pot dealer.

She said she started to push away her childhood friends, and “let’s just say, I lied. A lot. About everything.”

She tried heroin for the first time when she was 16. She recalls her then-boyfriend asking, “What have I done?”

Over the course of the next five years, Coenen overdosed 10, perhaps 11, different times. The last time, she said, she woke up screaming, “Why can’t you just let me die?”

“Addiction isn’t sanity,” she said. “I was a class A junkie, and nothing about my life or me was cool.”

Finally, earlier this year, Coenen said she made a decision – that she wanted to live. She got into the treatment program at Ellsworth, and part of her treatment was writing down her story, and now, sharing it.

“Finally, I’m unbelievably grateful to be alive,” said Coenen, whose parents drove down from Appleton for the program and spent several minutes holding their daughter after she finished speaking.

But all four young women stressed – along with two recovering addicts who have been released – that while there is life after prison and after addiction, it’s not the kind of burden teenagers want…or need.

“You have to be aware,” said one of the two who had been released. “You don’t want to just take some kind of pill because your friend says it was good.”

When asked how to prevent it, though, there were suggestions from the young women, but no hard solutions. Deyot thought “shock therapy” – showing teenagers pictures of addicts and what they went through – might be the best.

But it was an evening of reflection for Kosier, who was set to be released from Ellsworth the next day.

She stressed that, somehow, her family still had “unconditional love” for her, and now she wants to see others get – and stay – clean along with her.

“I want to be different this time,” she said.