Kaitlin MacKenzie and her dad, Robert MacKenzie, talked about her opioid use and her decision two years ago to seek recovery. Tammy Wells photo
For a long time, Kaitlin MacKenzie didn’t want anyone to know she was using opiates. She didn’t want her siblings to know, or her parents.
They all knew something was not right, and there was a suspicion it involved drug use, but they weren’t certain.
Then one day her father, Robert “Bob” MacKenzie, got a call from her sister, describing Kaitlin’s symptoms that afternoon. She was worried.
“I sent Kaitlin a text and said, ‘are you snorting or injecting?'” said MacKenzie, Kennebunk’s police chief. “She was still in denial, and I said, ‘you are dancing with the devil, you are going to die, you need help.'”
Kaitlin got help and is now marking two years in recovery. She is doing well.
And she wants others to know that they, too, can recover.
“I’m hoping to break some of the stigma of addiction to hopefully help others,” said Kaitlin.
Kaitlin MacKenzie, 28, graduated from Kennebunk High School in 2011. She took advanced classes, played softball, was on the swimming and cross country teams and participated in the Chamber Choir and wind ensemble. She was also a member of the Captain’s Club, comprised of students who didn’t drink or do drugs, and talked to other students about the dangers, she said.
She went on to Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, to study marketing and business administration.
In the summer before her senior year at university she needed surgery, as did her boyfriend at the time. As it turns out, they were both prescribed opiates for pain.
“It was easy to share, if one of us was in more pain, and we weren’t being consistent with the medication,” Kaitlin recalled. “Once we ran out, we wanted more, partially for pain and partly because we were having fun with it. We began to drug-seek without realizing it. One night we went through nearly everyone in my contacts and I still didn’t realize it was addicting behavior. I thought it was just fun.”
She graduated from college with high honors. Kaitlin and her boyfriend broke up, and she stopped doing drugs.
A year later, she met her current boyfriend, and they discovered they had both previously experimented with drugs, and decided to do so again. “We started with heroin, because that is what my boyfriend could get,” she said. At the time, she was snorting the drug, but that changed, over time, to injecting.
Bob, her father, had a suspicion Kaitlin had been using something in college.
“I didn’t see anything outlandish, I thought maybe marijuana,” he said. “Later I started seeing things that concerned me. I talked to her, but she was in denial. It got to the point where I talked to her mother and sister about what to look for,” Bob MacKenzie said.
Then came the day when Bob texted his daughter. “I drove to her mom’s house and confronted her, and I probably went overboard and added to the stigma,” he said.
He had many sleepless nights, worrying about his daughter.
Then came an arrest in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where Kaitlin and her boyfriend had gone, looking for drugs.
There was a family intervention, just like the ones you see on television, said Bob.
Kaitlin was placed on probation for nine months in connection with the Massachusetts possession charge and entered a residential recovery program in Illinois, a requirement for the charge to be later dismissed.
Bob, who has been working in the substance use field for many years prior to his daughter’s involvement, was skeptical. She was enrolled in a 24-day program. “I wasn’t convinced she was ready for recovery, and she wasn’t,” he said.
She and her boyfriend stayed clean for two to three months, said Kaitlin, but they developed cravings.
“We said ‘we’re not sick anymore and it’s not like we need to do drugs,'” she recalled in a recent interview.
One trip to Lawrence for drugs turned into twice and then back into the same routine, she said. There was another arrest in Lawrence, and this time, she was told the charge would be dismissed if she entered a treatment program for a year.
Kaitlin said neither she or her boyfriend believed they were ready to give up using drugs at that point, but a couple of days before she was to enter an outpatient treatment program and her boyfriend was to enter a residential program, she had a bad experience. She had been drinking, she said, smoking marijuana and taking heroin when she fell to the floor.
“I was aware of what was going on, but I couldn’t speak,” Kaitlin said. She recovered, and the pair decided to accept the treatment help.
Kaitlin entered the intensive outpatient medically-assisted treatment program that began with three-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week, gradually tapering down. Now, she is in a weekly program.
Bob remembers the second arrest well. He was scheduled to give a talk about opioids at Maine Medical Center in Portland that day when he got an email from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking task force, as police chiefs do when someone from their jurisdiction is arrested on a drug charge.
“I said ‘Oh my god, it’s my daughter,’ but, at the same time, it was a relief,” he said. And as it turned out, he gave the talk.
MacKenzie, 56, began working as a first responder at 14, as a junior firefighter and EMT, and later worked full-time for Biddeford Fire Department before turning to law enforcement. He has been a police officer for 33 years, 13 as Kennebunk’s chief.
He said he has seen many police calls related to substance use, and became interested in the issue several years ago, before his daughter became involved.
“I took interest in and believe in the philosophy that in order to save lives and reduce crime we need to treat the root cause, that being substance use disorder,” said Bob. “Without addressing the root cause, we will continue to lose lives and criminality will continue. As an officer, I have seen that most of our crimes are related in one way or the other to substance use, and without treatment, the cycle continues.”
Since Kaitlin’s treatment, she had her father have given several interviews and have spoken at a law enforcement conference.
“It’s hard to hear when it’s your daughter, but at the same time I have faith,” said Bob. “A lot of parents are not as fortunate as I am,” he said of his daughter’s journey through substance use and subsequent treatment and recovery. “For me to be sitting here (with my daughter), I’d take this any day.”
His advice to those taking opioids, their families and friends, is to seek help.
“Never give up, have faith, there is help out there,” he said.
Kaitlin said it had been easy to take drugs, but once she began taking responsibility for her actions, things changed for her, for the better.
“Ultimately, it’s up to that person to make the decision to stop, and I think that helped me a lot,” she said. “Once I started to take responsibility for everything I was doing, I started to question my choices, and I decided to choose recovery.”
Those looking for treatment options may call 211 or visit https://211maine.org/ or
https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/obh/support-services/substance-use-disorder-services.
For more information about support groups, visit https://namaine.org/#. Families and loved ones may contact The Family Restored at https://thefamilyrestored.org/ or Nar Anon at: https://www.nar-anon.org/
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