(gentle music) - She had to choose an instrument for Band and all the girls in our small town picked flutes and clarinets, but she took one look at the trumpet and it was big and brass and shiny, and she said, "Yeah, that's it."

And she had to play it in the back with the boys, and she was as loud as they were.

But this sense of audacious zest, it didn't always lead to admirable behavior.

(gentle music) - That's Annemarie Whilton talking with pride about her precocious and independent daughter, Sarah.

Welcome to Stories From The Stage produced by World Channel, and WGBH Boston.

in partnership with Massmouth.

Each episode, ordinary people stand up in front of a live studio audience, and tell a story based on a theme.

I'm Liz Cheng.

- And I am Patricia Alvarado Nuñez, and we help start Stories From The Stage.

Every month, we tape real stories of people from all walks of life.

Some are funny, some are sad.

- And Patricia, some are very tough to work on.

- Yes Liz, Annemarie's story is every parent's nightmare.

- Oh yes, starting from when my son was 14, my husband and I were so sure we knew exactly what he was up to.

Even though he liked to test limits, turns out we knew about half of what he was up to.

(Patricia laughs) - I know, my husband and I are very close to our nephews, and we want to believe that they are always safe, that they always make the right decisions, and that they will never, never get into trouble.

I know it's naive.

- You're proud they're growing up and becoming adults, but you're also frightened about all the dangers that are out there.

So you try to teach them good judgment, and offer some boundaries, and then you just have to trust them and hope for the best.

- Unfortunately, for some kids, a wrong turn could be just around the corner.

- Here's Annemarie Whilton, an artist and preschool teacher with the rest of the story about her daughter, Sarah.

When the kindergarten bus pulled up, we were ready.

My daughter had her blonde hair in two little pigtails, and she had on a brand-new plaid dress, and she grabbed the hand of our next-door neighbor, and she took a giant step up into the bus.

And with her back to me, she loudly proclaimed, "We may never see our mothers again."

(laughter) And then the doors shut, and I thought, "What?"

And I watched her as she took her seat, and her chin was defiantly raised, and she was facing forward.

And all the other little kids had their noses and their faces pressed up against the glass.

And they were crying and they were waving.

But my daughter never looked back as that bus pulled away.

And I had to smile.

(laughs): Because she's daring, she's dramatic, and she's independent.

These are difficult things to parent, but they led to some real moments of pride.

Like in middle school.

She had to choose an instrument for band.

And all the girls in our small town picked flutes and clarinets.

But she took one look at the trumpet, and it was big and brass and shiny, and she said, "Yeah, that's it."

And she had to play it in the back with the boys, and she was as loud as they were.

(exhales softly) But this sense of audacious zest, it didn't always lead to admirable behavior.

At around the age of 14, she started secretly drinking, and by 15, the boys took a real interest in her.

And they started supplying her with pills, older boys, and it was Adderall and Suboxone and OxyContin.

And by 16, she was crushing and snorting these things.

And by 17, she was injecting heroin.

And I was desperate to save her.

We had three different schools in three years.

We had family therapists, individual therapists, A.A., we had rehab, we had detox.

We had D.Y.S., we had DCF, we had probation officers, and we had jail.

And I couldn't seem to bring her back to me.

And around age 18, she went missing for over a week.

And I thought, "This is it."

And one evening, I got a text on my phone.

And I flipped it over, and it was a picture of my daughter.

It was her state I.D.

And below it, it said, "Is this your daughter?"

And my breath stopped.

And then the next line, dot-dot-dot, quickly came across, and it said, "Hurry.

Someone overdosed in this building last night."

And it left an address.

And I flew down to New Bedford.

And I don't even remember driving there.

But I do know that someone else's life can pass before your eyes.

When I got there, I went straight to the courthouse, and I petitioned the judge to have her forcibly committed for drug treatment.

And the judge agreed, and a warrant was issued for her arrest.

And I sat and I waited.

And I waited, and I waited, and the police didn't bring her in.

So with two hours remaining, I jumped up.

I drove to the police station, and I said, "I'm going to go get her myself."

And they advised me against it.

They said, "If you knock on the door of a drug den, no one's going to answer."

And I said, "If I knock and she hears my voice, she will answer, and I'm going."

So they accompanied me.

And we needed two cruisers, not one, because that's how bad the neighborhood was.

And when we pulled up, everything was just grim.

It was grey.

The buildings, the chain link fence, the sidewalk, the sky, the trash.

The people morphed into these shadows.

And we ran around this building, and we could not gain entrance.

Things were boarded up, there were staircases missing.

As we turned the last corner, we were met by this really powerfully built woman.

And she took a look at me, and she pointed to the third story, and I nodded.

And wordlessly, she turned her attention to this large brass key ring on her hip, and she started flipping through the keys, (suspenseful music) - In a minute, we'll hear what happens next.

(suspenseful music) Ann Marie did get to see her daughter that day, but it was not an easy way reunion.

- She was impossibly thin, and her beautiful blonde hair was stuck to the sides of her head.

And her pale skin was scratched, and I just felt an incredible amount of sadness because, she was asking for permission to put on her dirty flip-flops.

My daughter asking for permission.

And as she bent over I could count the knobs on her spine.

And when she straightened up, they put her in handcuffs, and then they let her down the flights of stair, and I watched the officer in charge and he very gently tucked her head into the back of the cruiser.

And it reminded me of when she was a little girl, and she would tuck her little head, into the corner my body, and we would read her favorite book.

- After the police took her daughter, Ann Marie just sat in her car.

I was just incredibly visibly shaken because I had done it, it was done, she was in a safe place, so I realized I could release everything in my car and I was just sitting there sort of stunned and the woman, who led us into the building, actually crossed the street and she knocked on my window.

And it was sorta scary I have to admit at first because she was a very unapproachable female.

And I thought, "Oh no!"

And she leaned into my car and she said, "You're a good mamacita."

And I just said, "Thank you for letting me in."

And she walked away, and that's when I was just, I went from being not distraught, but just emotionally almost empty, to being filled up again.

Like I thought, the world is just so big and the world just can be so kind.

And yeah, and then I drove to the courthouse and witnessed Sarah in handcuffs, they bring them out in handcuffs.

And she was screaming and yelling, and she was very thin.

It's hard, I mean, it's really hard.

- After taping Annemarie's story, we had to know what happened to Sarah, and what she remembered from that terrible day.

- I remember being extremely angry, I didn't wanna get clean.

I had no intention of getting clean and I remember just being so, so mad.

I don't really remember too much like the moments leading up to the police coming in, but I was not in a good place at that time.

Before I was in New Bedford I was in a psych ward, and I left with this patient there.

She said, "You know if you leave with me I can give you a place to stay, and I can provide you with drugs, this and that."

And I didn't even know this woman at the psych ward and I said, "Okay, let's go."

And I left.

Things just spiraled, really, really out of control there.

I mean, in that house there was no toilet paper, there was no soap, there was no towels, there was nothing, like, and if we had a dollar, it was going to drugs.

It was just really, really bad.

And I was in a really bad place but a lot of it is a fog because I was high most of the time.

- I'm almost positive that time she went to Framingham she's been there twice.

She was sent there for treatment on her addiction and she received absolutely no treatment.

And when I went to see her I asked if they could at least even have members of the AA community come in and they didn't even do that.

They were not helping her find her next step.

So she had a call, sober homes opened up at like a yellow pages and start calling them in Boston while she's still suffering from the withdrawal of addiction.

While she's battling for access to a phone, you don't have phone in your room within limited hours, and then how does she get a call back when she leaves a message?

It's just, it's crazy.

So she pulls this little piece of paper out of her green prison clothes.

And she says, "Mom," and we're sitting opposite each other, I can't even touch her.

So we're sitting opposite each other in plastic chairs and she is not a criminal.

And we have guards watching us.

So she hands me this piece of paper which she had shoved in her pants with a list of sober homes.

And they came over and they forcibly removed it from her hand.

And she said, "It's just a list of sober homes so my mom can help me."

And they said, "You know you're not supposed to pass anything."

And I tried to argue with them, "Please just let me have the list, let me have a copy of the list."

And she was actually removed from us, put in some sort of detention area for five or 10 minutes, and then escorted back out to sit down and face us without the paper.

So we could finish our, (laughs) our visit.

There's a hundred million incidents like that, a hundred million incidents.

I don't know how anyone gets better actually, I don't know how they do it.

- The night Annemarie was on Stories From The Stage, we didn't get a happy ending.

(calm music) But in talking to Sarah, we learned that she is now 10 months sober.

- I live in Burlington, Vermont.

I am a waitress at a bakery, I live in a sober house where there's rules and structure, and I live with a bunch of sober women, I go to 12 step meetings, I work the steps of AA.

Since moving to Burlington, I found so many things that I love to do.

You would ask me like two years ago what I liked to do and I'd have no idea.

Even in times where I was like had brief sobriety I had no idea what I like to do.

But since moving here like I found I love hiking, and I love running.

Running has been so, so helpful to me.

I never used to run now I can run five, 10 miles and it's amazing.

It's done so much for like my mental health, my wellbeing.

I do yoga, I'm going to a yoga class tonight, I'm very excited.

(chuckles) I don't know, just being in nature, There's just so many things.

I got my license finally, I drive, I never thought I'd get my license.

- Sarah says, that her key to continue sobriety, is taking it one day at a time.

- Because I think I can get anxious and I can put high expectations about what I think my sobriety should look like and what I think my life should look like.

And if I don't make that, I don't wanna get frustrated with myself.

You know, the fact that I'm sober, the fact that like, my family is in my life and that they can sleep at night and the fact that I don't obsess over a drink or a drug today is a miracle.

It's honestly amazing.

So I don't wanna just put all these expectations and not make them and then get discouraged.

- I grew up myself in a very sheltered, protective, I almost wanna say leave it to beaver kind of beautiful childhood and early years.

So this sort of blindsided me, and I think in many ways it's sort of broken my heart open.

It's opened me up to the reality of other people's existence, I think my world is larger, I think my heart is bigger.

- Parenting and growing up are never straight lines.

- You just never know what's gonna happen.

- Annemarie says her experience follows her into the classroom, when she teaches art to preschoolers.

- I can notice the child who is struggling a lot clearer.

I can see the ones with sensory issues, and depression.

I can see the ones that are hard on themselves.

And I make a B-line towards them, you know.

(chuckles) I try to tell them it's gonna be okay.

I tell him it's okay to work with their mistakes, I'm an art teacher.

We just paint over and we start again we don't throw the paper out.

- Sarah continues to work the 12 steps, including making amends.

She has walked into stores, apologizing to a stranger for stealing clothes.

But when we ask about apologizing to her parents, we were surprised by her answer.

- You know how many times in my addiction have I said to my parents like, "This time it will be different, I'm sorry."

You know that was like my whole using.

I would get clean for a month and I'd say, "I'm sorry, this will never happen again."

You know, "Please let me come home, I won't ever use again.

Please do this for me and I won't ever do that again."

And it was me just constantly making all these promises and then inevitably like using again, breaking their hearts and making them worry again and again and again so like, it was suggested to me by my sponsor to wait until I have not a lot of clean time but more clean time under my belt to make those direct amends to them.

So before making those direct amends, what they call it is living amends.

So living amends to my family would be like me answering the phone when they call, me not asking them for things, me being financially responsible, not asking them for money, like working a job, working hard, being able to pay my own rent and just doing all these things on my own, just through action rather than words.

- Anne,arie and Sarah, celebrate every milestone, and would like to offer some hopeful advice.

- It's hard but I think, fully loving them where they're at without making any excuses for their behavior.

You have to be firm, but you can't be cruel.

- They always loved me they never ever gave up on me and the fact that I could get better, but they also had to love me from afar.

They couldn't enable my addiction.

When I was using they couldn't let me live in their home, they couldn't give me money.

And back when they did that and they would kick me out and do all these things, I would be so mad.

You know, it was all their fault, and if only they would let me live at home I would be sober again and all of these excuses.

And I thought like them kicking me out and not giving me money meant that they didn't love me.

And like I know today that they loved me so much that they had to let go.

In order for me to hit a bottom and get better, right?

Because if they kept giving me money and kept letting me stay at home and enabling me, I wouldn't have had any want to get sober, I wouldn't have hit any bottoms.

So that would be my suggestion like love your children, but just love them from afar and like be there for them when they wanna get sober but try not to enable the addiction.

(calm music) - We are so grateful, to Sarah Whilton and her mother Annemarie, for sharing their story with us.

- It is really the best part of our jobs.

- It absolutely is.

(calm music) You can hear and see more stories at worldchannel.org.

I'm Liz Cheng.

- And I am Patricia Alvarado Nuñez.

Thanks for listening.

(calm music)