SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU)— On Friday, a free event in Scranton brought people from all walks of life together to put addiction recovery into the spotlight.

Everyone from a county judge specializing in treatment to a former NFL quarterback who lost everything to addiction shared their perspectives, hoping to inspire more than 100 people who attended.

Friday’s Night of Recovery was all about providing hope to those struggling with addiction, and to show that no matter who you are, or where you’re from, the path towards recovery is possible.

“When I entered recovery in 2007, you had to be real quiet about it. It was something that you couldn’t talk about. You couldn’t scream from the mountain top ‘hey, I’m in recovery!’ You had to be like ‘ooh, I used to do drugs,’” Chris Dreisbach, founder of Blueprints for Addiction Recovery and Co-founder of Night of Recovery, said.

That stigma is what events like these are trying to break. Chris Dreisbach founded Blueprints for Addiction Recovery, a treatment center based out of Lancaster, in 2016.

Dreisbach and a team of advocates travel state-wide for events like this one. Their goal? To educate, and share personal stories with the goal of inspiring others to get clean.

“What’s nice about it is that even though we have different upbringings, we have different mindsets in the sense of how we came up to this problem, the overall idea that we kind of come into is how we got over it,” Jesus Rodriguez, WWE Alumni and Co-Founder of Night of Recovery, said.

Inmates receiving college-level education across multiple counties

For Rodriguez, he says it took losing nearly everything to realize he had to get clean. It started with the party lifestyle that comes with being an international wrestling star.

For former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf, addiction began very differently. His addiction began with an injury and painkillers prescribed by a doctor. He says that addiction took him to rock bottom.

“I spent three years in prison. When I got out I knew there had to be a real change, a 180-degree lifestyle change, otherwise it was just going to be the same thing. And so, for the last 11 and a half years it’s been making it about everybody else, not myself,” Leaf said.

While addiction starts differently for everyone, it ends with the decision to get clean. While that may sound easier said than done, Dreisbach says overcoming the stigma and asking for help is the first step.

“The biggest stigma exists in our own minds, and it stops so many people,” Dreisbach said.

He says until that decision is made though, help is out there.

“There is a whole community of people right behind me that will love you until you can figure out how to love yourself,” Dreisbach said.

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