Speaking out and speaking up

While Chamber Programming Vice Chair Roger Steuhr acknowledged that the topic of drug and alcohol abuse is uncomfortable, he also noted the near record attendance at the Chamber’s April 14 luncheon as evidence of the community’s refusal to turn a blind eye to the issue.

After introducing keynote speaker Danny Malloy of the Addiction Prevention Coalition, Steuhr and others listened solemnly to Malloy’s remarks, which pulled no punches on the realities of heroin addiction.

“I may not look like an addict,” Malloy began, adding that it took failed attempts at 20 rehab programs before he finally got clean in 2010.

The Boston native survived toddlerhood with an alcoholic father who would often disappear for days at a time, leaving Malloy to fend for himself with no food. By age six, he went to live with his aunt, who set him on as straight a path as she could.

By his ninth grade year, behavioral scuffles with the nuns in his Catholic school had escalated to incidents of stealing and smoking pot. Though Malloy said pill use was scarce at his high school, access to drinking and marijuana were easy enough, and contributed to him barely finishing high school. After struggling through two semesters of college, Malloy was kicked out, and lived a nomadic life with a friend, living in a van, performing odd jobs here and there, and also picking up a distinct taste for opiate painkillers.

“It’s hard to explain to someone who cannot relate to addiction, but after I tried them I remember thinking, ‘I just found God.’ These pills gave me a purpose. They did what God is supposed to do. They filled a hole in my life.”

After two years of that lifestyle, Malloy returned to Boston, where oxycodone became his drug of choice.

To feed his habit, Malloy began selling the drug until he was busted at Dunkin’ Donuts.

“The drug made me a robot,” he said. “I could look you in the eye, steal your purse, then help you look for it and swear it was a guy down the street.”

Malloy said that it wasn’t until the arresting officer had his knee on Malloy’s back that he began to self reflect about what had gone wrong and how had he gotten to this point in life.

It was a fleeting moment, and Malloy was nowhere near earnestly quitting. He quickly escalated to heroine, which led him to wake up in a full seizure during his fifteenth stint in rehab.

“In the ambulance I looked up and said, ‘If you let me live, I will dedicate my life to helping people.’ But I still didn't keep good on that promise,” he said.

It took one evening when he was at his dealer’s house, on the sofa rigged up to another man while both shot heroin before he was jolted into a sincere desire to change.

After watching that man turn blue and almost die, and seeing how morally devoid others in the house were that night, more interested in tossing the man’s body out back than to call the police and risk being arrested, Malloy decided to change for good.

Today, Malloy is five years sober, four years happily married, gainfully employed as a graphic designer and social media staffer at the Addiction Prevention Coalition, and speaking his truth to impressionable high school students throughout greater Birmingham.

The same man who sheepishly attended his first Vestavia Chamber luncheon two years ago, donning a $30 suit he’d purchased on eBay, today commanded the respect of every single person in the room, as not only a survivor, but as a thriving community leader.

Mark your calendars for the Chamber’s May 12 monthly luncheon, featuring guest speaker Art Tipton, President and CEO of Southern Research Institute.