AKRON, Ohio _ Life's winding paths always seem to have a way of bringing Neena S. and Danny S. back together.
The two met in sixth grade and, through the power of alphabetical order, spent their next six years sitting next to one another in every class.
After that, though, "we kind of had different life journeys," Neena said.
"She went to college and I went to get high," Danny said.
They met again years later in 2004 and hit it off. By 2005, they were married, working steady jobs and raising their newborn son, Colin.
"There was this picture that things kind of looked normal," Neena said.
But their family dynamic began to unravel when the drug and alcohol addiction Danny lived with most of his life boiled over into opioid use.
Here is the story of each of their journeys on Danny's road to recovery _ a story the couple told together Saturday at Summa St. Thomas Hospital during Alcoholics Anonymous' Founders' Day weekend celebration.
NEENA'S JOURNEY
When Neena and Danny met up again after high school, Neena was working with addicts as a behavioral health specialist. She was attracted to the job as a self-proclaimed "fixer"_ a trait that may have led her to her future husband.
"It's part of what attracted me and why Danny and I got married," Neena said. "I'm kind of, to a fault, that person who wants to make other people's lives better. I jumped in and just even kind of lost myself in the process of being a helper."
A year into their marriage, Danny injured his back and was prescribed painkillers. Though he had a history of addiction, Neena tried to turn a blind eye as Danny quickly became hooked on the opioids and began abusing the painkillers.
By day, Neena went to work, helping addicts at the very beginning of their recovery process. By night, she went home to her husband, learning firsthand the pain of addiction that each of her clients and their loved ones felt.
She said she turned into an unpleasant person as she worried relentlessly about Danny and begged him to stop. But no matter how hard she fought, Neena realized she could not fix her husband.
"With addiction, he would focus on drugs ... and I would focus on him," she said. "That's how the family gets really sick and things start to get pretty dysfunctional. It's a contagious disease."
So Neena started working on herself instead.
Every Saturday, she and their toddler, Colin, went to addiction support meetings. Neena also went to group therapies, counseling _ "pretty much any supportive stuff I could," she said.
She learned dealing with addiction in clients is far different than dealing with addiction in the family.
"I only have control over myself and my own wellness, that's it," Neena said. "So I stopped. I stopped nagging, I stopped giving money, I stopped enabling ... I stopped reacting to it, and I think things got quieter. And when it got quiet, then Danny was left with himself."
DANNY'S JOURNEY
Neena distancing herself from Danny had a profound effect.
It gave him alone time and made him communicate with his wife differently. It also forced him to reflect on the path his life had taken.
The day after his birthday in 2010, he realized something needed to change.
"I went out and got a bunch of dope and I said, 'Either I'm going to die tonight, or I'm going to get clean tomorrow,' " Danny said. "I tried the first, and I think God chose the second for me."
Danny walked into the St. Thomas emergency department the next day, where a doctor helped him find a bed in a detox center.
He's been sober since April 29, 2010.
Danny went through St. Thomas' intensive outpatient program that year, but afterward, he didn't regularly continue 12-step support group meetings or therapy. Over the next three years, Danny learned sobriety doesn't mean an end to addiction.
"My disease of addiction has a lot less to do with the substance and way more to do with the way my brain works," Danny said. "The drugs are just a manifestation of it."
Neena and Colin said Danny got hooked on other things instead. He bought a fish tank and soon threw his money away on fish, buying so many that he flushed existing fish to stock new ones. Next came antique lawn mowers that Danny sat inside the garage alone fixing all day long.
It wasn't until Danny started therapy and actively participating in 12-step programs that his real recovery from addiction began, he said.
"Connection is key. Addiction thrives in isolation," Danny said. "That drastically changed my perception of the rest of my life."
Colin's journey
Colin doesn't remember sitting in the car while his dad was in the "dope house."
He only learned about it years later when his dad finally felt comfortable speaking openly about his addiction.
Most of what Colin remembers about his dad's addiction involves sitting with a baby sitter while his mom was in meetings, or watching his dad's friends come over to console him.
"I remember sometimes, when my dad was crying, I was like 5 or 6, I'd bring him toys to try to make him happy and give them to him as gifts," Colin said.
He remembers the day his dad went to detox, too, and the days that ensued when it was just him and his mom alone in the house for the first time.
"He was really little," Neena said. "What he's seen is more of the recovery end of it, us fighting through that piece of it."
"I think it's affected me in a good way," said Colin, who is now 13. "Having parents that are associated in some form of way with addiction has helped me to learn what not to do and what to do and how to get help if anything in my life does go wrong in that kind of way."
MOVING FORWARD
If addiction is a cycle, recovery is a pendulum.
That's how the family views it, enduring good and bad days as they continue learning not how to beat addiction, but how to live with it.
"The recovery and the life I've learned to live these days helps me make use of those assets without turning them into liabilities," Danny said of his addictive tendencies.
Neena and Danny, now both 36, each have attended support groups for years. They said that support has been crucial in learning how to recover as individuals and as a family.
"Danny has his own journey and it's not mine," Neena said. "They do overlap. There's a recovery between us. We had to learn how to talk to each other. We had to learn how to fight more appropriately. We had to learn how to have fun together. We had to learn how to ..."
"... love each other," Danny interjected.
Addiction runs in the family on both sides, so Neena and Danny share worries about where their son's path might lead. Colin still attends occasional meetings, and his parents talk with him openly about what he can do if addiction some day stands in his way.
"I feel like I can talk to them openly with anything," Colin said. "Home is a safe place for me."
