Peer Grief Specialist Recounts Recovery Journey
Part One
By Luke Schmaltz, VOICES Newsletter Editor
Meagan Fisher recently joined the SADOD team as a Peer Grief Support Specialist. As she helps others cope with substance-related grief, she draws from her experience with sustained recovery as well as her six years of working as a recovery coach.
She equates her journey to having lived through a war. “It was a 15-year battle,” she begins. “I am truly surprised and grateful that the drugs and my dangerous behavior didn’t kill me. Not many people I knew from that world had the same outcome.”
Fisher expresses her gratitude by reciprocating the goodwill that saved her. “There are so many people throughout my struggle, and up until now, that played a huge role in shaping who I am. Most of them probably have no idea they touched my life the way they did. Now, I want to be that kind of support for somebody else.”
Early Exposure
“I started experimenting with Percocet when I was 15 years old,” she says. “About a year into my drug use, my mom introduced me to a coworker of hers named Joelle. Her husband, Craig, was in the Navy and I babysat for them.”
“This was the beginning of my first substance-related loss,” Fisher continues. “I never had a father, and I became very close with Craig – he sort of stepped into that role for me. He had chronic pain from being shot in the back during a combat mission in Iraq. He was prescribed Oxycontin and asked me to sell them for him. As I did that, I started taking them as well.”
“By the time I was 20, they had moved back to Texas and Joelle had split with Craig because of his drug use. One day, he called asking me to buy him a bus ticket to Massachusetts so he could come stay with me. The weekend he was supposed to arrive, I was hospitalized with a hernia which needed surgery. I missed a call from Craig and his message said that he had a change of plans and was going to stay in Texas.”
“I found out, after he called me, that he killed himself. That was my first stint with grief, and there were a lot of ‘what ifs.’ What if I would have answered the phone? Maybe he wouldn’t have done it. I know now that once someone is in that state, they have already made up their mind and they are calling people they care about to say goodbye.”
Escalating Turmoil
“My addiction got worse after that. I started using heroin,” Fisher explains. “It was cheaper and more accessible than Oxycontin or Percocet. This was when they were really pulling back on giving out prescriptions.”
“A year or so after that, I went into treatment for the first time. I wasn’t ready, but I was pushed into it by my probation officer. I got arrested for assault and battery – I beat up another girl over drugs – and someone called the police. Going to treatment would help me avoid jail time, and I ended up in New Bedford. That’s pretty much where I was until I got sober.”
“In that area, heroin is pretty hard to find because New Bedford is run by Latin Kings. They prefer to sell crack and coke, which is how I got introduced to crack – and my drug of choice switched.”
“Crack cocaine brought me down into the worst part of my addiction. I started doing sex work and I was homeless for the first time. I also lost custody of my children while I was in the halfway house – my mother had custody of them instead.”
Numbness and Chaos
“The first time I smoked crack, I witnessed a murder. I was sitting at a dining room table in a crack house, between two guys who were arguing in Spanish. I had no clue what they were talking about. I was chopping up crack with a knife and the guy to my right grabbed the knife, swung it across me and stabbed the guy sitting to my left. It was crazy but I was so high that I took my crack into the other room and continued to smoke.”
“The stabbed guy was thrown out onto the street corner and they made me go out and take the money from his pocket. It was a high-traffic drug area so there were cameras everywhere. Not even four hours later I was pulled in by New Bedford detectives who knew who I was from the footage and from having arrested me before.”
There were unusual circumstances in the investigation of Fisher's case, and the charges were eventually dropped.
“I knew, in the back of my mind, that I wasn’t ready to be sober. I tried many times between when I was 21 and when I finally got sober for good in 2019.”
Life in Limbo
“During my time in New Bedford, I was in and out of the Department of Corrections. 30 days here, 30 days there – I never showed up for court. During one of my stays, I met a girl named Cassie. She was the girlfriend of one of the members of the Latin Kings. We met in Dartmouth House of Corrections and she was my cellmate. I got out before her and the day she was released we met up at the same house I witnessed the murder in.”
“She died of an overdose right in front of me. We had Narcan, and gave it to her four times but she couldn’t be revived. The people in the house wouldn’t let us call the police, so we brought her outside. We dragged her to an adjacent parking lot and called 911 but it was too late. I used to hang around with eight or nine different girls and now, only two of them are alive. They are sober too. I think three out of 10 of us made it.”
“When I was losing all these friends, I did not realize that these were traumatic events. I was numb to it and saw death as just an everyday normal thing.”
Complete Self-Care
When it comes to coping with grief from the loss of multiple people, Fisher shares what works for her. “You have to involve yourself in things that make you happy,” she says. “Work through it, whether with therapy or some type of yoga. I believe very strongly in the mind, body, spirit connection and that you have to work on all three at the same time.”
“If I didn’t work on my mental health, I wouldn’t have gotten sober. If I didn’t find happiness, I wouldn’t have stayed sober. If I didn’t get sober and deal with my anxiety and depression, I wouldn’t be able to deal with my grief in the right ways – I would have returned to doing things that were not beneficial to me.”
In Part Two of this story, Fisher shares the details of her recovery and vital insights into the value of peer support, recovery coaching, and therapy. Stay tuned to VOICES for the conclusion of this story in the June 2025 issue.