A few years ago, Deborah Petree hit rock bottom after a seven-year struggle with a narcotic addiction.Petree became addicted to prescription narcotics after an injury from a car crash in 1996 that left her a quadriplegic and still suffers from slight brain damage and mild paralysis to the left side of her body.
It was her chronic pain and the situation that led her down the path of addiction to the eventual opening of W.A.D.E. Freedom House, a recovery center for women that had its ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday, Feb. 16. W.A.D.E. actually opened at the end of September and now has 10 of a maximum of 32 women working the program at the center.
According to Petree and the latest research from the National Institute for Chemical Dependency, less than 10 of 86 halfway statewide houses are open to women.
Petree, co-founder and program director of W.A.D.E., which stands for Willingness, Acceptance, Desire, and Empowerment, now has only a faint memory of a time when she sat in a jail cell facing felony charges and decided to make a life-changing decision.
“My options were jail, institution, or death — and death was the next step,” Petree said. “I could live my life in recovery, or die. So, I decided to live.”
It was the collective efforts of family and friends that brought Petree to a detoxification unit of Brookwood Medical Center in Birmingham. But it took more than just detox to convince Petree she had an addiction. She also attended other treatment centers, including Bradford Health Services in Warrior. Petree ended up in the St. Anne Institute of Birmingham, a secondary treatment center for those who have already been to a primary treatment center for their drug or alcohol addiction.
She said it took her a while to realize she was in recovery for the wrong reasons at first, because she wanted to please her family and friends.
According to Petree, anyone wanting to get sober must do it for themselves, not others if they want a successful recovery. She says an addict must be willing to change his or her whole life if necessary.
“I knew if I was going to make it, I was going to have to change playmates and playgrounds,” Petree said.
Petree said it didn’t take long until she realized she wanted to spend the rest of her life helping other women find the peace and joy she discovered when she beat her addiction.
Petree was searching for a way she could do just that when Wayne Musselman, director of W.A.D.E. Freedom House, backed into her car. Petree and Musselman became friends and eventually she became his fiancée.
Musselman’s home had been on the market for almost a year and hadn’t sold. The couple began talking about what it would mean to women like Petree if they turned the home into a place women could come to recover from their addictions.
“When the house didn’t sell, we took it as a sign from God this was what He wanted us to do,” Petree said Musselman told her.
Musselman shared similar circumstances with Petree. Though he had been a substance abuse prevention counselor in the Navy from 1988 to 1990, Musselman also became addicted to narcotics.
Musselman suffered a broken back in the March 27, 1994, tornado that leveled the Goshen United Methodist Church in Piedmont, killing 20 and injuring many of the 140 that congregated that Palm Sunday. Musselman helped carry the injured out of the church unaware of his own injury due to shock.
As he struggled to recover from the incident, Musselman was prescribed pain killers. From that, he developed an addiction to the medication that lasted four years.
They worked together to mold the 22-room house into a recovery center for women. The 6,200-square foot house has nine bedrooms (six upstairs and three downstairs) and five baths.
The result is W.A.D.E. Freedom House Recovery Center for Women, which sits on 15 acres. Occupants are free to explore the property and visit with the horses, cows, and dogs when they are not reading their Narcotics Anonymous book, referred to as the “Big Book”, and working their 12-step program.
According to Petree, the ladies occasionally need counseling beyond Petree’s and Musselman’s training. W.A.D.E. Freedom House works primarily with counselor John McAnulty from The Bridge, Inc. of Fort Payne.
W.A.D.E. accepts clients from neighboring counties Bibb, Blount, Jefferson, Shelby and Tuscaloosa. They will get their first from the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women later this week.
Requirements for admission can be found at www.freedomhouse.com.
While at W.A.D.E., random drug testing is required, most often by courts. The testing is conducted by urinalysis every week, or sometimes two, depending on what court mandated the testing.
Petree is required to turn in drug test results along with progress reports on each woman from weekly to monthly depending on which court and what the offense was.
When asked how she determines progress for the women, Petree said, “Attitude speaks gratitude.” Petree says if the women are up-to-date reading their “Big Book” and working their 12-step recovery program then that is reflective of their progress.
By applying to and being accepted into a substance abuse facility, inmates can often receive alternative sentencing issued by courts. This can often reduce their charges by about $1,000 upon proof of entry into the program.
The facility is hoping to get female volunteers to take the women to work and to their NA meetings.
It is the goal of Petree and Musselman to fill the facility with 32 women, the maximum capacity, and make it an intensive in-house secondary treatment facility. Currently, they do not have plans to add a detoxification program to their facility but would like to eventually have a step-down program where the women completing the program can live in apartments on the property for an additional six months.
W.A.D.E. Freedom House is also seeking state funding for the program and is in the process of appointing a board of trustees to oversee the center.
The women at W.A.D.E spoke highly of the center and claimed it was aiding them in their recovery.
“I started socially doing drugs around age 12 — gateway drugs that led to my active addiction. I was arrested 11 times in one year. I got them anyway I could,” an anonymous resident of the center said. “After the court system gave me so many chances, they finally decided to let me try to help myself. I’m so glad that a home like this is out there for people like me. Not only are there people here that really understand my problems, it’s a very comfortable and sober place for my recovery. I am so grateful to be given a chance to recover and to have found a place like this for my drug treatment.”
Petree says she has high hopes for the center and for the ladies working the program. She further said those that have come through the program have been successful because of their dedication to it and because they took it “one day at a time,” a slogan of the program.
“Any day clean is a success—that’s our main focus,” Petree said. “And it doesn’t matter what we have to do to get us there.”
