Officer in Recovery Reflects on Transformative Life
Part One
By Luke Schmaltz, VOICES Newsletter Editor
Danielle Alachoyan works as a Correctional Program Officer (CPO) for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MADOC). She is also the founder of Doreen’s Place, a women’s sober house named after her mother, and the visionary behind Warriors of Opportunity, aka Woo Inc.
Alachoyan’s current position as a career public servant and community outreach leader is juxtaposed with her past. She has experienced addiction, crime, incarceration, recovery, and a series of profound losses that have placed coping with grief among her ongoing concerns.
Young Trouble
“Growing up, it was me, my mom, and my two older brothers,” Alachoyan begins. “My dad left when I was seven, and I picked up my first substance when I was 11. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I knew I didn’t feel like everybody else. At the time, I could only do what I could get my hands on, which were inhalants – anything that could get me high – including gasoline, Pledge, and rubber cement.”
“My mom got me involved in DCF (Department of Children and Families), my brothers were 12 and 13 at the time, and were already doing drugs too. My mom caught me with the rubber cement, but I kept using it to get high because I liked getting outside of myself. My mom put CHINS (Child in Need of Services) on all of us, and I kept using. I used marijuana at 13, cocaine at 15, and alcohol as well. I had a lot of fun, but my disease progressed.”
“I grew up super Catholic, but in poverty – my mom was unemployed and on SSI, but did some substitute teaching here and there. We grew up on welfare in Worcester, and I started going to catholic school in fifth grade, at age 11. It was a brutal adjustment, from Worcester public school to a private school with peers that were way better off than we were, so I felt intimidated and less than, and that’s when I started using substances. My mother got my brothers and me into Holy Name Catholic High School on scholarships, and we had to do work study. All three of us got kicked out.”
“My brothers and I would get high together, smoking weed, drinking, taking acid, and doing cocaine. After Holy Name, we all went to South High, and then we all got kicked out of there. We all ended up in alternative schools.”
Escalating Issues
“By the time I was 19,” Alachoyan continues, “I had done everything, including ecstasy and Special K once, and that’s when I met my daughter’s father. That turned out to be one of the most detrimental relationships I ever got into. He sold drugs, so we always had them, and eventually he went to jail. He came out of incarceration with a heroin addiction, so I wanted to try it too. Our relationship turned from love into a bad situation. It was violent, toxic, destructive, and we would fight with each other often. I was also sexually abused when I was four.”
“I accepted a lot of unacceptable behavior. I suppose I just didn’t know any better. I found out my partner was using a needle, and I told myself I would never do that. But almost immediately, I wanted to know what it felt like, and I had him inject me that night after crying temporarily, and I started IV heroin use. At that point, I was 20, and I ended up pregnant at 21.”
During that time, my partner violated probation and was incarcerated while I was pregnant. I continued to use while I was pregnant until I had some stomach pain, and I brought myself to the hospital, where they discovered the drugs I had in my system: opioids, and benzodiazepines. I stopped using around five to six months pregnant, until my daughter was born. I had to detox by myself, and I was always with my partner when I did that, which was hard without him. Thankfully, my daughter didn’t emerge with any drugs in her system, and she was healthy; 21 inches, seven pounds, thirteen ounces. As soon as I could use again, I did. I had a C-section, and they gave me Percocet, and I went back to how I wanted to be. My daughter met her father for the first time when he was in prison – MCI Concord.”
“He came home when she was about nine months old. By then, I had an apartment in Great Brook Valley in Worcester. Once he got back, the two of us were off to the races. We continued to use and our daughter was more of a hindrance than anything. I would feed her, bathe her, and put her on the bus to daycare, and that was it. I ended up on the methadone maintenance program and began smoking crack.”
Transitional Struggles
“At one point, I had been up for days on crack and all kinds of pills, benzos, and I had to go to court soon,” Alachoyan says. “I was delusional and hallucinating in my counselor’s office at Adcare, and she told me that I was going to lose my daughter, that she was being adopted, and the process had already started. My counselor told me that I needed to leave the area where I was living and get my shit together. So, I left everything I had and went into a shelter, but I didn’t stay sober because I didn’t know how. I didn’t understand the extent of my addiction as a disease. I relapsed and started smoking crack with other women from my IOP, and got kicked out of the shelter. I got into another shelter, the Friendly House shelter, and they wanted me to go to AA meetings as the courthouse and DCF had suggested.”
“My mom had been in recovery my whole life. She got sober when my older brother was born, so she really helped me. She picked me up for meetings and was incredibly supportive of my daughter and me. I started hearing other people’s recovery stories, and I wanted that for myself. I wanted to be a better daughter, a better mom, and a better person. I started going to the meetings for myself, but I didn’t want to change things; I wanted to behave the way I had been, just not drink and do drugs. I was still selling drugs and stealing. A year into recovery, I finally got a sponsor – I thought I didn’t need one. I was on the verge of losing my daughter again, even though I was in sobriety. I would leave her at the house so I could go sell drugs.”
“My sponsor said, ‘What are you doing? You’ve got one foot in and one foot out. You have to make a decision.” I decided it was time to do the 12 steps, and my sponsor got me through them. I built myself a network and went to a lot more meetings. I was getting phone numbers for rides to meetings, taking the bus, doing whatever I had to do to show up. That was 2007 when I was 25.”
Growth and Loss
“I decided to go back to school for criminal justice. Initially, when I started my college career in 2002, my perspective was different, and I was not doing things for the right reasons. But when I returned in 2007 after getting sober and progressing in my healing, it ended up being my area of interest because I did an aptitude test and the results said that I was well-suited for that field, health, human services, and criminal justice. I got my associate’s degree in 2009.”
“In 2020, my mom passed away. She had 38 years of recovery. I found her body, and it was one of the worst days of my life. At the time, my brother, George, had been sober for one year. My mom had just given him his coin. He relapsed that day, and I got a phone call that he was drinking and had been seen walking down the street drunk. It was difficult, but I had support from my AA network, so I didn’t relapse. During this whole period, my other brother, Tom, had been consistently using. I started isolating badly because at that point in my recovery, I was praying every day, talking to my higher power, and I was going to at least three AA meetings a week. Regardless, I started getting really mad at God, then I stopped praying and stopped talking to people in AA.”
“I became very sick, mentally, and started acting out through shopping and relationships with men. I tried to find any way of coping I could, rather than picking up a drink or using drugs. In 2023, I finally started coming out of the fog of all that, and while I was with one of my best friends, Jared, and his sister Jess, I got the phone call that my brother, George, had been found dead. Somebody had gone to do a wellness check on him and found his body in his room. The guy he was getting high with had just left him there when he overdosed. The guy shot him up with what they thought was heroin, but it was fentanyl, and he went down instantly. He had been in his room, deceased, for a week.”
“I had to do a GoFundMe so that I could raise money for his funerary services. I lost my mind and went into a psychosis. I was telling myself that all the people in my life were puzzle pieces. Thankfully, I had my core friends by my side: Jared, Tommy, Kerri, Jackie, Janie, Chrysanthe, Stacey, and my daughter Shailynn, who was my puzzle piece holding it all together. I needed to tell each of them how important they were to me. Once I told them all, I was going to die and join my mom and my brother. I kept repeating this to them, and I eventually went nuts – I lost my mind. My brain just broke.”
“I ended up in the psych ward again because I was either going to kill myself or get high. I didn’t want to use drugs again because I knew I would ruin my daughter's life, and I had worked really hard to be a good mom and not put her through any of that. My friends urged me to go to the hospital, and I ended up in treatment again. I got my meds adjusted and got out of the hospital in February of 2023. Tom was in jail at the Worcester County House of Corrections when we found out George was gone, and we waited to bury him until Tom got out in February. After that, my oldest brother, Tom, was still using, was homeless, and in and out of jail.”
Upward from the Bottom
“On New Year’s Eve, 2024, I got the call that Tom was found unresponsive and they were bringing him to the hospital. No one knew how long he had been unconscious. He called me earlier that day and asked me for money. I didn’t give it to him, but I told him I loved him. I refused to give them money, although I would buy them food and cigarettes – I would do anything for them besides give them money.”
“I knew that Tom was no longer here. His heart was beating, and his organs were working, but he was brain-dead. There really wasn’t really a decision to be made because that is no way to live. So, they pronounced him deceased on January 4th, 2024. I donated his organs, which was a blessing because we helped at least three people. I received letters from two of the recipients thanking me for giving them a second chance at life. Again, I had to create a GoFundMe for a second time.”
“At that point, I still had my friends, along with Kathia and Angela, who were still there supporting me, but the more people passed away in my life, the fewer people were there for me. I found it very strange that the more people I lost, the less support I had from those around me. I was a shell of a person at that point, but thank God for my core group of friends and God.”
“In May of 2024, I opened a sober house in an income property I owned. I named it Doreen’s Place, after my mom. I had started putting it together after George passed away, and finally got all the particulars together after Tom died.”
In Part Two of this story, Danielle Alachoyan delves deeper into her parallel recovery and grief journeys while discussing Doreen’s Place, Warriors of Opportunity, her ongoing educational journey, and more. Stay tuned to the September 2026 issue of VOICES for the rest of the story…