Sarah Laros entered her 20s in the throes of drug and alcohol abuse . Raised in West Lebanon and Hartford, she was kicked out of college and had stolen money from her mother to feed her secret addiction to marijuana and opiates. She became pregnant while on 18 months probation for the thefts, becoming a mother herself shortly after her 21st birthday and a single mom soon after.
She also moved on to harder drugs, including heroin and crack, survived domestic violence in a new relationship and, after several other living situations, moved into an apartment in Windsor. But she lost it seven or eight months later when, she says, her landlord got fed up with the round-the-clock foot traffic of drug users and kicked her out.
“That’s when I really realized things were not going the way that they were supposed to be going,” Laros says. “It doesn’t go like this for everybody, and I didn’t understand why it continues to go like this for me.”
Laros confessed the extent of her addiction to her mother, an experience that she says “not only was extremely freeing, but it hurt.”
“I said to my mom, ‘Mom, I’m a drug addict and I need help.’ . . . It hurt to say it because it was a part of me that I had tried to keep secret for a really long time. I didn’t even really realize exactly how bad it had gotten, so I didn’t necessarily expect anyone else to,” she says.
Laros enrolled in a 30-day rehabilitation program in Underhill, Vt., emerging as a new person, she says. But she still had a long road ahead, living with her son in a sober house, the Upper Valley Haven and transitional housing over the next few years.
At one point in her recovery, Laros says, due to new medications for mental illness — she suffers from what she describes as a manic-bipolar disorder — and using food to fill the void left behind by the illegal drugs, she gained 150 pounds in less than a year.
Now, 27, Laros is working to end the decade on a much higher note than it started. This August, she moved into her own non-subsidized apartment with her son in Wilder. She credits her loss of 45 pounds to a nutrition and weight management product that she now sells to other people in the Upper Valley. A student at the Community College of Vermont, she shares her experiences with high school students in hopes of helping them avoid her mistakes, underscoring the benefits of “(going) with the flow,” even if they feel, as she did, “like a square peg in a round hole.”
“I wish I had realized that living on life’s terms was OK,” Laros says, “and it didn’t have to be on my terms.”
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Sarah Laros
Age: 27
Hometown: Hartford
Current town: Hartford
Where were you five years ago? Physically, living in Bellows Falls and Claremont, but in a mental and emotional void. “I wasn’t anywhere. . . . I was going absolutely nowhere; I had no hopes and dreams, I was a mom who didn’t even recognize herself in the mirror, and I was in need of a lot of help. And thankfully I got that help, but that was not me.”
Where do you see yourself in five years? Living in the Upper Valley to be near family and roots. “Owning my own business and getting people healthy, and making a huge impact in my own community, whether it be in a sober recovery or just in a health and wellness standpoint.”
What does the Upper Valley offer for 20-somethings? “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but as far as the Upper Valley goes, there is not a lot to offer. . . .They got rid of our bowling alley. We have a movie theater that’s very, very run down. There’s not a lot of fun, unless you’re an outdoorsy person and you want to go on hikes.
“I know that there are jobs out there, (but) it’s extremely hard to find those jobs when you’re 20-something years old. The economy and the job market are very, very hard, and I think it takes a big hit on small towns and (young workers).”