Drugs put them at risk of disease and death. Now in recovery, these Kentuckians find hope

Addiction is rampant in Appalachia. So is hepatitis C. Health experts warn an HIV outbreak could be next.

Addicts struggling to get well at two long-term recovery centers tell their stories:

Read the investigation:Kentucky's Appalachian hills are a shared drug needle away from the next big HIV outbreak

Christian Lamb

Christian Lamb, 21, began selling drugs as soon as he got his driver’s license.

With so many drugs around, he said, “it was easier to be bad than it was to be good.”

Lamb grew up in Richmond, Kentucky, but said the drug scourge reached far beyond his hometown –“it was bad everywhere" in the region.

Lamb wasn’t partial to one drug. He abused meth, anti-anxiety pills and heroin – shooting up and sharing syringes.

“When you’re in that world, you just want to get high,” he said. “I was addicted to the needle. I was on a path of destruction.”

The needle brought hepatitis C. And the drug life brought jail time and court dates – and a judge who insisted he get treatment.

Lamb wound up at Chad’s Hope, a faith-based recovery center in Manchester where he said he was born again. Now his faith and lessons on ways to stay sober give him a new future.

“God brought me here,” he said.

Luke Segnitz

Luke Segnitz, 62, is a clean-cut artist. No one would suspect he spent much of his adult life in the chaos of addiction.

Segnitz, of Lexington, took his first drink around 14 years old, then tried pot and hallucinogens at 18. Over the decades, he also used cocaine and heroin, sometimes together as an injected “speedball.” He smoked crack for a while, too.

Gripped by addiction, he said, “I went into all of it pretty blindly.”

Segnitz developed two forms of hepatitis. He believes a transfusion may have transmitted hep C, and hep B probably came from the drugs. Though he shared needles only twice, he said, he realizes he was living a risky life.

Healing Austin:Read more about the largest, drug-fueled HIV outbreak in rural America

Over the years, Segnitz was in and out of legal trouble and drug treatment. When he could, he worked as a “special events artist,” painting pictures for customers to commemorate special times.

But his addiction always pulled him back into chaos.

Two close calls with death finally woke him up. While taking the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, Segnitz needed to be revived with Narcan twice in a month.

By then his life was spiraling down uncontrollably, leaving him living out of his car. When family members tried to find a rehab to take him, he was ready to go. He decided on Chad’s Hope.

Now more than a year sober, Segnitz tries to help the younger guys at the center – and he envisions doing that for as long as he can.

“I plan to stay for the foreseeable future,” he said. “There hasn’t been a flicker of wanting to be out there again.”

Joshua Jones

Joshua Jones, 25, graduated high school as a valedictorian and never even smoked a cigarette until he was 18.

But college partying led to several hellish years of addiction that landed him in a recovery center.

Jones, of Powell County, said he attended the University of Kentucky on a full scholarship. But when he began using and selling drugs, his grades plummeted and he dropped out. He enrolled in cosmetology school, only to fall heavily into heroin.

Things just got worse when he opened his own beauty salon. “I was dealing more drugs out of my salon than I was doing hair,” he said.

Jones was afraid of shooting up at first. But after hanging around with other IV drug users, he tried it anyway. His addiction deepened, and he “pawned every vehicle I had” to pay for the meth and heroin he injected into his body.

After an arrest last year, Jones tested positive for hep C antibodies – and was told he was one of the lucky patients whose bodies clear the virus without treatment. In court on a meth possession charge, he was given the option to go to drug treatment and landed at Hickory Hill Recovery Center in Emmalena, Kentucky. He said the 12-step program, the fellowship of other clients and the chance to be a peer mentor are helping him to heal.

“I was ready; I really was,” said Jones. Before, “I was running from myself, really … This place has given me a second chance at life.”

Patrick Curtis

When Patrick Curtis, 26, took OxyContin for the first time, he said, “it gave me the confidence and energy I needed.”

Curtis, of Madisonville, was a 21-year-old student at Morehead State University at the time. His desire for what he believed the pills gave him won out over concerns about addiction, even though drug abuse had killed several relatives.

OxyContin eventually gave way to cheaper and more available heroin. He shot it up and shared needles with others, though he “worried all the time about contracting a disease.”

He did – hepatitis C.

After hitting rock bottom and winding up homeless in Lexington, Curtis finally got help. He's now recovering at Hickory Hill, learning how to stay sober and sharing those lessons as a peer mentor.

Curtis eventually wants to go back to school and earn a teaching degree. He also wants to get treated for his hep C. Although he hasn’t suffered any symptoms yet, he’s worried because he watched an aunt die of the disease.

Curtis has government Medicaid, and the state recently removed previous barriers to treatment. Coverage no longer depends on the level of scarring in the liver, for example, and substance abuse no longer disqualifies someone from initial treatment.

But for now, Curtis tries not to think too far into the future.

“I know I can stay sober today,” he said. “I’ll worry about tomorrow tomorrow.”

Laura Ungar: 502-582-7190; lungar@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @laura_ungar; Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/laurau.