This post was originally published on this site
Addiction Recovery Bulletin
DRAMATIC VIDEO –
Jan. 15, 2025 – Painted rocks displaying words like “family” provide a hint of color to what remains of Art House — a home for recovering addicts on their journey to sobriety. Darlene Dominguez is the supervisor at the facility and last week helped her 25 residents narrowly escape the fast-moving Eaton Fire.
“It’s devastating,” she said, fighting back tears. “It’s devastating.”Recovering addicts were rebuilding their lives. Now their home is gone.
The experience of losing one’s home in a fire is traumatic for anyone but for those overcoming addiction, Dominguez said, it can be completely destructive.
“When you’re an addict, you know, you lose everything in your addiction,” she explained, “and then you come here and you start off new and you’re clean and you work hard to get where you’re at, and then it just goes. It’s very devastating for a recovering addict.”
She understands this deeply.
Dominguez is five years sober and once lived in Art House, which provides Recovery Bridge Housing. It’s where she graduated and where she then got a job. In other words, it’s an integral part of her sobriety story.
“It was like my new family,” Dominguez said. “My safe space. Like my safe grounds. I would go to work, and I knew I was around people who cared, and we were going to keep me straight and sober.”
Art House is part of the Los Angeles Centers for Alcohol and Drug Abuse, or LA CADA, which operates several facilities and programs in the area.
CONTINUE@SpectrumNews1
The post Los Angeles Fires: Recovering addicts were rebuilding their lives. Now their home is gone. appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.