Ode to recovery

The simple pleasures of coffee in the kitchen, recipes taped to the refrigerator and chairs on a shady front porch are not lost on Brandon McMahon and Tiffany Corna. After short lives filled with turmoil, they're a couple reveling in the quiet rhythms of daily routine. They may have their scars, both inward and outward, but now they have something else, too.

"I've never been happier in my entire life," says Corna, a tall, brownhaired 25-year-old. "I've never been able to wake up and smile before, and have my own coffeepot."

McMahon, who is 24 and has a red ponytail and beard, forms a sly grin. "I pay bills now," he says. "Every time a drug dealer comes up to me, that's what I say. I pay bills now."

If statistics are any judge, drug addiction is a particularly devastating minefield for young adults. The 2006 National Survey on Drug Use & Health, from the government's Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, indicated that people ages 18 to 20 had the highest rate of illicit drug use, at 22.2 percent. The next-highest rate, 18.3 percent, was for people ages 21 to 25. Overall, there were 6.5 million current drug users ages 18 to 25.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, early drug use increases the odds of even worse drug use later. Both McMahon and Corna were exposed to drugs in childhood. They describe a 21st-century America where easy access to drugs makes it tempting for young people to blot out difficult situations with prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, marijuana, Ecstasy and cocaine.

Theirs is a story that begins with pain and ends with poetry.

Bad things for a kid to see
McMahon's parents both drank too much. They divorced when he was a little boy and his dad received legal custody of him. His mom also popped pills, and died when McMahon was 11; his dad eventually lost his house and his business to his addiction. This was in Meriden. At age 14, McMahon moved to Waterbury to live with a relative.

"It was a party house," he explains. "They were popping pills and smoking weed all day. Then me and my sister got put into DCF." He tried pot, but didn't particularly care for it. He'd find little stubs of marijuana cigarettes and sell them at school. When he was 16, the state Department of Children and Families arranged for him to live at a shelter for troubled youth in Waterbury. McMahon stayed there a few months and left without telling anyone.

"I was sleeping in a tunnel," he says. "It was right near some train tracks. I stayed there for a couple of weeks, but DCF came and found me." He bounced around a couple of residential school programs until he was able to finish high school in Rhode Island. During that time, he experienced his first major drug-induced high, by taking over-the-counter cough medicine. And he attempted suicide. "Every time I've tried to kill myself, it's because I wasn't happy with my living situation," he says. "I never thought it would get better. It was a really bad childhood. Bad things for a kid to see."

Then came college. By the end of freshman year at Bryant College, McMahon was taking all manner of pills and smoking prodigious amounts of pot. "I tried OxyContin there. I tried THC pills. Percodan, probably Percocet. I tried things I didn't know the names of," he says. He lasted two years before he was forced to leave school and go back to Meriden and stay with relatives again. There was another suicide attempt. There were more stays in hospitals and residential treatment programs.

That's where he got to know Corna.

A racing heart
Corna would just as soon not relive the details of her youth, even now. "I was trouble, I guess," she says. "I was abandoned in a hotel when I was 2." She's from the eastern part of the state, adopted by a family at the age of 6 with two biological siblings. But within a couple of years she was exhibiting self-destructive behavior and trying marijuana by age 9.

"My drug use was scattered throughout those years," she notes. "The big stuff wasn't until I was older, when I tried anything I could find. Drinking, pills, smoking weed, Oxy. Cutting myself was also a big addiction. I wanted to feel sedated."

Like McMahon, she was in and out of various hospital and residential programs -- resulting all too often with using even more drugs than before. She'd use crack, morphine, prescription drugs. So what halted her addictive tailspin? Exhaustion, she says. An emotional and physical exhaustion deeper than she could bear. "I looked at myself and my family, and I just got so tired," she says. "I wanted to be happy for once. I would feel my heart just racing all the time, from all the craziness. It's not good. It's not good when you can't even walk straight."

In 2005, Corna found herself at Park Street Inn, a New Haven residential treatment program administered by ALSO-Cornerstone. There she got to know McMahon, another client whom she'd met briefly at a previous program for people dealing with addiction and mental health issues.

For his part, McMahon had long since stopped feeling any euphoria from drug use. "When you need it just to feel normal, what's the point of it?" he says. Drugs had drained away any money he ever had, put him in hospitals and sidetracked him from his poetry writing, which had become his passion.

McMahon wrote Corna a poem and a rehab romance was born.

He wants, she wants
Corna and McMahon have been clean for two years. In January, they moved into a third-floor walk-up apartment within walking distance of the beach. They own a computer, a TV, furniture, appliances and a big, shaggy cat they call Kitty. The place is clean and bright. They support themselves with government assistance.

Corna likes to take long walks along the West Haven boardwalk and listen to music. McMahon tends to his writing career, which includes the publication of two softcover poetry volumes, Scrap, and Forever Animals. He's working on two additional books, plus a spoken-word album. "I want to run for city council and eventually be president," he laughs, but his blue eyes are sharp and focused. He says he dreams of opening a bookstore devoted to poetry. He'll call it Poets Haven.

His oft-cited philosophy is that every action taken by every person changes the world in ever-widening ripples of transformation. Not everyone understands that, he says. Corna understands that she wants joy. "I'd like to have some kind of career, to become something," she says. She turns to McMahon and rolls her eyes. "I want us to share our lives together," she says in his direction, almost sheepishly. "You know. What all chicks want."

Jim Shelton
29 June 2008

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