For graduates at Hofstra University event, staying sober the highest honor

Erin Dutton has been "a self-admitted alcoholic" for nearly 25 of her 42 years.

"Since I was 16 years old ... I've been part of a 12-step program," said Dutton, a Brooklyn native now living in Mastic. But over the years and decades, "it just had progressed to something that removed me from my family, my children, my husband at the time, my brothers, my sisters, everybody."

By early 2023, Dutton had been living homeless in Manhattan for nine months. She knew she had to change her life, so she made a decision to try and stay sober.

Sobriety celebrated

Inside a Hofstra University auditorium Thursday night, Dutton, and about 25 others, including some who also had found themselves in similar circumstances, donned purple caps and gowns for a commencement-style ceremony marking their days and months of sobriety over the past year.

Long Island City-based Phoenix House New York, which organized the event, had overseen treatment programs for Dutton and the rest of the participants. Rehabilitation lasted anywhere from 45 days to a year, according to Phoenix House president and CEO Ann-Marie Foster.

Thursday’s ceremony was the first in more than a decade because of internal restructuring and the COVID-19 pandemic, said Foster, who has led the nonprofit since 2019. She plans to host a graduation ceremony every year going forward. It allows those in recovery to share their achievement with their families, she added. Most, like Dutton's family, carry clear memories of darker times.

"I know they went through a lot of anguish with my missing and with my circumstances," Dutton said of her brother and sister-in-law who were in the audience Thursday evening.

She attributed her decision to stop drinking and using other substances to "God" or "the universe," as well as "the realization that my kids deserve a miracle to happen."

Relief from anguish

After a brief stint at a detox facility in Queens, Dutton was admitted to the Phoenix House New York rehabilitation facility in Lake Ronkonkoma in March 2023. She has been clean ever since.

"They deserve to experience this tonight because they experienced the other side of my addiction," Dutton said, referring to her family. "It's nice for them to be able to witness this side and to have relief of that anguish and that agony."

After watching Dutton, his younger sister, walk across the Hofstra stage, Joseph Hernandez said he "always knew" sobriety was possible for her. Now he is hopeful she will "stay on the path that she’s on."

With more than 400 beds across facilities in Suffolk County, Brooklyn and Queens, Phoenix House New York houses those in recovery in separate male and female facilities akin to college dorms, schedules their day to provide a sense of stability, assigns them mental health counselors and physical health professionals, brings them together for group therapy and if needed provides medication in an effort to curb their addictions.

Clients also engage in holistic remedies and creative outlets, from yoga to art classes.

"It was to cleanse yourself," Dutton said of her participation. "It was to open your heart or your mind to a different way of life."

While there have been recent signs of progress, with fatal overdoses declining across Long Island from 2022 to 2023, according to a recent Newsday story, opioid addiction remains a concern for Foster and other experts on public health.

"I think the number of individuals and families who have suffered at the hands of addiction and lost their loved ones to addictions has been astronomical," Foster said. "In 2022, we had well over 100,000 Americans die from a drug overdose."

A job and a second chance

Since completing her rehabilitation at Phoenix House in January, Dutton has been living in supportive housing in Mastic for Suffolk residents with behavioral health issues. She said the nonprofit provided her with a scholarship toward becoming a provisional certified recovery peer advocate, as well as a job.

Her work includes teaching community organizations and businesses how to use Narcan, the nasally-administered emergency drug that can reverse an opioid overdose. Narcan has saved her life seven times, said Dutton, who is scheduled to take the state exam Nov. 2 to become a certified advocate.

She also wants to remain a positive, permanent fixture in the lives of her daughters, 10 and 12, who live with their paternal grandmother in Brooklyn.

"Last Saturday, I took them to Empire Adventure Park," she said. "We go out to have breakfast on Sundays in the morning, we'll meet up at the park, play around, or I go to my mother-in-law's house. ... It's been a miracle."