Keith LaPorta’s journey from addiction to recovery has led him to Somerville Overcoming Addiction, an organization that lends hope and support to those most in need of it.

By Patrick McDonagh

Keith LaPorta remembers his addiction’s bottom: April 22, 10:17 a.m., arrested at 194 Pearl Street, Somerville, on a warrant charge of receiving stolen property over $250 and felony daytime breaking and entering.

Broken promises of sobriety drove away two daughters and wife Sandra. His mother refused contact. His father, dead since 1988, fatally shot in the Somerville Police Station.

LaPorta returned to Billerica House of Corrections for his third stint, facing career criminal charges and potential twenty year jail-time. He lies sick, lonely, awake at night, observing sleeping cell mates and questioning. “I’m not going to be anything else besides a junky. I can’t live life normal. I keep going to jail. What’s the point of even living?” He scans the room, looking for a quiet place to hang himself.

In prison, LaPorta’s methadone withdrawal exposed depression numbed by drugs since he was eleven years old. Marijuana and alcohol abuse at an early age escalated quickly. Oxycontin, crack cocaine, Suboxone, Klonopin, Xanax; any mind altering substance he could buy, steal, and abuse became weekend recreation.

“I grew up watching my brothers use,” LaPorta recalls his childhood exposure to addiction. “I looked up to my brothers, and they were doing drugs. My brother Jay always coming home and nodding out. I grew up seeing that stuff thinking it was normal.”

Seventeen-year-old LaPorta, charged with breaking and entering while blackout high, robbed a police officer’s home for drug money. Prison smuggled drugs perpetuated his addiction. “When I went into jail for the first time, that is where I was introduced to heroin,” LaPorta says. “In jail I sniffed a bag of heroin and I instantly fell in love with it. It made all my problems go away; all of the emotions I was feeling. When you feel broken inside, depressed, your anxiety kicks in; you use a substance and it glues you back together. It makes you escape feeling.” LaPorta attributes his family’s dysfunction as a source of anger.

Left alone as a child, he could hear his mother coughing behind closed doors. “My mom was forced to raise four kids on her own: me, my sister, and my two brothers. I was one year old when my dad [Franco LaPorta] was killed. My mother, she started using crack cocaine and other stuff because of it.”

Twenty-six years old, returning to prison, kicking methadone, and ready to die, Laporta describes this moment as his bottom. Relapse after numerous recovery attempts, and half a lifetime of prison had broken him. An unexpected letter kept him going.

“The only thing that gave me hope was a letter out of nowhere from my brother. My brother told me, he said, ‘I love you bro, you got to stop doing this, you’ve spent most of your life in jail. Pray to God. Pray to God and ask him to take the pain away. That is the only thing that will help.’ So just having that little bit of support out there, knowing that someone still cared about me, gave me that little push that I needed. I tried praying, and believe it or not stuff started getting better. I started feeling better after a month or two of kicking the methadone. I basically told myself, ‘I am going to prove to everyone that I can do this.’” A surprise lawyer visit informed LaPorta of immediate transition to the Charlestown Recovery House.

A half-dollar sized scar is visible on his right hand wrist, where lit with a lighter in attempt at revival from heroin overdose. Metal piecing together his split lower jawbone hides under a clean-shaven face. LaPorta rolls the left leg of his jeans, exposing red chaffed skin and an ankle monitor. “I got out July 17th to a program.” He says, “That is what started my journey into recovery.” LaPorta currently works community outreach for Banyan Treatment center, is a co-founder of the community action group Somerville Overcoming Addiction, and is a resident of the Charlestown Recovery House graduate room. He shares his story performing spoken word poetry.

Laporta recognizes the addict’s proximity to becoming a death statistic. “We don’t have to be added to the numbers,” he says. “I share my experience with using drugs through my poetry as my way of giving back. I don’t care what people think of me. The stigma? Yeah, there is a stigma. A lot of so-called normal people don’t like junkies. I am a junkie, but I am also a brother, a father, a son, a cousin. I am somebody. So what I do when I get on that stage is I pour my heart out. I don’t care what people think of me. I don’t care about the stigma. That is why I am being a voice, to break the stigma.”

Somerville Overcoming Addiction humanizes the statistic, by putting faces to names at their candlelight memorial vigil. The successful 2014 vigil publicly recognized lost loved ones in a grieving process. They urge the public to understand that relapse is part of the recovery process, and not grounds for giving up hope.

Eight months sober, Keith LaPorta combats depression as a voice for addicts. He looks forward to an awkward tan line after getting his ankle monitor off within the month.

Upcoming:
Annual Candlelight Memorial Vigil
Tuesday September 15
Somerville High School
81 Highland Ave, Somerville, Massachusetts 02143

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Keith LaPorta recites his poem Envision: