A Second Chance at Life
Written by Brian Bushard
Photography by Kit Noble
Addiction Solutions of Nantucket: Fighting the Stigma of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse
Addiction Solutions quite literally saved Holly Cunningham’s life. Cunningham, who grew up in a broken household surrounded by heavy drinking, never knew a life without substance abuse. She had her first sip of alcohol when she was a kid and started drinking recreationally before she turned 12 years old. “With everything that was happening in my life, I ran to drugs and alcohol,” she said.
When her mother passed away six years ago, drinking on her own became a way to ease the pain. Her addiction had become so severe by 2023, that the Nantucket Police were called on her during a night out at The Muse. When the ambulance arrived, the EMTs stated she had been walking like a “ragdoll” and was acting “out of her mind,” according to their report. Cunningham spent 48 hours at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, and the day she was released, took a load off with a glass to drink. When she showed up to work the next day, she was shaking, and her boss noticed.
“I decided that next day that I had had enough,” Cunningham said. “I was so sick that I could barely function. I was detoxing, and [my boss] suggested that I come [to Addiction Solutions]. The moment I walked in here, I completely, 100% surrendered, and ever since, the way I look at life is completely different.”
Cunningham has been sober for over three years, making her one of countless success stories at Dr. Tim Lepore’s Addiction Solutions of Nantucket since its launch out of Lepore’s office in 2005. While Addiction Solutions doesn’t fit the glossy, picturesque version of Nantucket, it has undoubtedly become one of the most important organizations on the island. Last year, its clinic saw a 35% uptick in activity. Cunningham was one of 230 patients treated last year.
“The island is an impossible place to live. There’s no housing and people have to work three jobs, so you’re living through stress, and it’s hard to navigate that, but it’s easy to pick up a bottle of vodka,” said Tom McCann, a board member at Addiction Solutions. Couple that with the potency and availability of opioids and hallucinogens, as well as the loneliness that comes with living on an island 30 miles out in the dead of the winter, and the picture becomes clear.
“We have an idea of what someone with addiction looks like and you don’t want to admit that it could be you,” Addiction Solutions Secretary Lauren Murray Soverino said. “We all know someone to just one or two degrees of separation who has struggled with substance abuse.”
For Brad Ciran, a spray technician at Champoux Landscaping, it started with a few parties. When he moved to Nantucket eight years ago, the bustling night scene was the place to be, and with 112 restaurants and package stores with liquor licenses on Nantucket—including a few licenses awaiting final state approval—the island seemed to be swimming in booze. Ciran partied with crowds of locals and tourists for his first year on Nantucket. He also experimented with oxycodone, OxyContin, hydrocodone and morphine.
By the end of the year, he had tried the incredibly powerful and dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl—at first without knowing he had taken it—drastically increasing his risk of an overdose. In 2023, roughly 69% of all drug overdose deaths in the U.S. involved opioids other than methadone, meaning they likely contained fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Massachusetts, more than 2,100 overdose deaths were reported in 2023, a reflection of the prevalence of opioids like fentanyl, according to the state Department of Public Health. That number is likely an undercount.
“There would be days I would be up all night going to work the next day, just not even knowing how I’m standing up, all while trying to keep a habit going, and wanting to not miss out on anything,” Ciran said. “I lookback on it and I think, ‘How did I make that work?’ Being part of the bar scene here is pretty fun to an extent. I lived it, but it got out of control.”
Ciran lost his job at Champoux Landscaping, which ended up being a turning point for him. “I begged to get my job back, and Ben [Champoux] said, ‘You’ve got to get sober and you’ve got to do this,’” Ciran recalled, referring to Addiction Solutions. So he walked into the clinic at Nantucket Cottage Hospital. Step by step, he started to turn his life around. Ciran applied for a spray technician license and studied hard. He took online classes through the University of Massachusetts’ Stockbridge School of Agriculture, and received a turfgrass management degree.
“[Going to Addiction Solutions] had to be done. It just had to be done,” Ciran said. “I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t do it—100%. There’s not even a question about it. There’s no way I would still be alive if I kept doing what I was doing.”
Opioid use has skyrocketed over the last decade, according to data from the CDC. In 2017, a nationwide public health emergency was declared in response to the opioid crisis, while in 2018, Congress enacted the Support Act to make addiction treatment more available. At Addiction Solutions, that involves not only counseling and drug testing, but the use of medication to curb addiction, including Suboxone and Naltrexone. Addiction Solutions has also launched a program with the Nantucket courthouse to give people in legal trouble an opportunity to get clean through the program rather than face jail time.
Lisa Doran started drinking and smoking marijuana when she was a middle schooler on Nantucket, and was sent to rehab her freshman year of high school. But after years of substance abuse and numerous attempts to get clean, addiction had its way. After getting into opioids, she ended up homeless, living in a shelter in Hyannis, with a daughter who was staying with Doran’s mother on Nantucket.
“People can be addicted to smoking weed or drinking their whole lives, and it doesn’t get as bad as it gets when you’re doing opioids,” Doran said. “The drive to get it is so much stronger because you get physically addicted so quickly. It gets really bad really quickly.” It got to a point where she needed to take her life back. “I had my second daughter in 2007, so for her whole life, I had been using opioids, and everything was messy,” she said. “I wasn’t there for her. I wasn’t allowed to be in my mom’s house without supervision. I didn’t feel like there was any other option.”
So, like Cunningham and Ciran, she went to Addiction Solutions, and has been sober for more than eight years. For Cunningham, who has been sober for three and a half years, the greatest joy out of sobriety is being able to remember holidays and not feeling sick the next day. After she got sober, her older sister invited her to her house for Thanksgiving for the first time. She wears a bracelet every day that reads, “Grateful”—proof to her that she has not only rebuilt her life, but redefined what it means to be happy.
“For so long, I chose alcohol and drugs over food,” she said. “I spent my last dollars on alcohol instead of food, and to me, making that decision now to eat rather than buying a substance—that’s life changing. That’s living. I’m actually living for the first time, and being proud of my life.”
“It’s finding peace in my life,” she added. “It’s having freedom from pain and freedom from hate, and finding that true inner happiness that was in me from when I was a little girl, that should have been there from the beginning, but now it’s there.”
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