A familiar face, 'Dan' of 'Seven Days' makes his way into recovery

Terry DeMio | Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption Video: 'Dan' of 'Seven Days' makes his way into recovery Dan Stieritz, previously featured in The Enquirer's "Seven Days of Heroin", a year later on his path to recovery.

Dan Stieritz was in a Florida rehab when a friend told him he was "all over Facebook."

Stieritz, then 24, had been booked into the Hamilton County jail on July 16 while Enquirer reporters were wrapping up coverage for a special report on the opioid epidemic, Seven Days of Heroin.

Seven days of heroin: This is what an epidemic looks like

He was stunned when he saw himself on the monitor. "My face looked gray."

Now 25, with color in his cheeks and about 40 pounds heavier, Stieritz shakes his head and hopes out loud that he'll never be in that state of addiction again.

He requested a visit from Enquirer journalists recently, days before he was released from the Talbert House, a locked addiction-treatment center to which he was sentenced in early July.

Time at the Talbert House was filled with hours of counseling, introspection, learning ways to cope, challenging himself on his thoughts on addiction and about his behaviors and, what helped most, he says, talking with others who have addiction.

Stieritz has been through that sort of thing before, at numerous rehabs, but this time, he says, he took it seriously. "You have to do the work," he explains.

"I feel great," Stieritz says. "I'm excited to live life."

His enthusiasm is a far cry from his mood a few months earlier, when a Cincinnati police officer arrested Stieritz as he emerged from under the Eighth Street bridge downtown.

He was charged with possession of drug abuse instruments and was named in separate warrants that accused him of having syringes and drug paraphernalia.

"I got real hopeless. I was probably at my worst," Stieritz says. "I didn't want to be here when I got here."

But he began to want to change during the intensive treatment, he says. The feeling was new to him.

His counselor, he says, listened closely to what he had to say and understood him, which surprised him. "She really treated me like a person."

Stieritz says he's ready for what most people call normal, for maybe the first time in his life.

Because much of his life was a struggle with drugs, he says.

Stieritz has a loving family. He grew up in Independence, with all the advantages a suburban kid could have, he says.

But he was drawn to taking risks.

He says he started using drugs at 12 or 13, "smoking weed and drinking."

He'd cut classes to ride his skateboard, and the truancy led him to enrollment in a boot-camp school until he was 17.

He'd thought about going into the military after that, he says, but instead, he went back to using drugs with friends.

This time, he added prescription pain pills. And that's when he became addicted, he says.

"I just kind of felt like that was the key that was missing."

He didn't inject the drugs, and that made him feel safe.

"I always thought that was really when you became a drug addict." He'd see friends get sick from withdrawal and inject the opioids. "It always disgusted me," he says.

Then one day it was Stieritz who got "dope sick." He couldn't find pills, so he found someone to sell him heroin.

It was a new level of euphoria.

"I remember my exact words afterward were, 'I'm going to do this again tomorrow.' "

He did.

"Me and my friends treated it like it was weed or something," he says. "We were living in Northern Kentucky. We still saw the cushy side.

"We loaded up in cars and acted like it was fun. And it was fun," he says.

But eventually, the consequences started. Someone would overdose, then stop doing heroin. Someone would get charged with a crime, then stop using heroin.

Stieritz could not stop.

"It's like telling somebody not to eat for 30 days," Stieritz says. "You wake up one day and you're trapped."

Again and again, he'd overdose in the restrooms on Fountain Square or at the Hamilton County Public Library.

Once, he overdosed while sitting cross-legged and fell onto his forearm. He stayed in that position so long that he got what's known as compartment syndrome. The intense pressure on his forearm impeded blood flow, and his arm swelled. He had to have surgery to restore the flow. He's lucky, doctors say, he didn't have to get his arm amputated.

The arm was wrapped in a blood-tinged, dirty bandage the day Enquirer reporters saw a wobbly, bleary-eyed Dan Stieritz at the Hamilton County jail. A jail nurse changed the bandage before he was locked up.

He thanked her.

"I'm so sick of that life," Stieritz says. "The last thing I want to do is go back to living like that."

All totaled, Stieritz survived 18 overdoses for which he was hospitalized, "which is just ridiculous," he says.

It's hard for him to explain what's different now, but he is ready, he says, both nervous and confident about a life without heroin, or any drugs.

He credits his mom, Joselind Stieritz, now of Fort Mitchell, with saving his life, again and again.

Mother talks of parenting addicted son: I count myself as one of the lucky ones - my son is alive

"My mom's a soldier," Stieritz says.

"She, you know, she just loves me. She's the best mom in the world. I don't say that lightly. She just kept me alive."

Until this Talbert House stint, Stieritz wasn't certain that he cared about his life, but he always knew his mom did.

So he'd try to "fix" himself, he says, "because I wanted to fix my mother's son. Give her her son back."

But this time, he says, he's feeling good about himself. And he's determined to use the skills he learned at the Talbert House.

"By the grace of God," he says, "I've decided to do something different this time."

And so he is.

Dan Stieritz was released from the Talbert House on Sept. 23. Within a couple of weeks, he had a job.

On Oct. 10, a healthy Dan Stieritz walked into Gateway Community and Technical College, where he'd started years ago, a student determined to get the education he needs to become an alcohol and drug counselor.