Show Notes
From the outside, Cassidy Matone had it all together — a makeup artist and bikini bodybuilder from Long Island with her own business. Addiction doesn't discriminate. What started as a single Roxy a friend handed her "to help her sleep" turned into a full-blown opioid addiction, then counterfeit fentanyl pills, and eventually a needle.
Her story runs from the corporate office where a boss left a Roxy on her desk like a morning coffee, through rehabs and relapses, to the streets of Kensington in Philadelphia — one of the epicenters of the opioid crisis. She's unflinchingly honest about the depths: shooting heroin and cocaine together, drug-induced psychosis, and a rock bottom in a trap house that finally broke through. Getting clean nearly killed her — her detox was so severe she went into seizures and was placed in a medically-induced coma for days.
Today Cassidy is over a year sober, has her own apartment for the first time in a decade, and is rebuilding a life she thought was gone. A raw reminder that no one is too far gone.
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More from Rise Above with Kevin Lanning
Holly Hiles has six years of sobriety and a story that’s almost hard to believe. Growing up she bounced through twelve schools, leaned on her twin brother, and lost her footing at fourteen when she got pulled off her cheer squad and fell in with a rougher crowd. What followed was a lifetime shadowed by loss — her grandmother, her father, her first love, and eventually her twin brother, a death she spent nineteen years calling a “motorcycle accident” until recovery helped her see it for what it really was.
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