Sarah Nerad attends a Sober Tailgate hosted by the Ohio State Collegiate Recovery Community in 2017. Credit: Courtesy of Sarah Nerad
The first time Sarah Nerad entered rehab, she was 16 years old.
Nerad, an Ohio State alumna, said she started drinking when she was 15 as “practice” before going to a senior’s homecoming party. From there, other drugs entered the picture.
“When I took that first drink, something very different happened for me than happened for my girlfriends,” Nerad said. “Addiction is progressive — and for me it certainly was — and so that fun, innocent drinking with girlfriends on the occasional weekend quickly progressed to ‘How can I do this as often as possible?’”
As her addiction spiraled, her parents sent her to rehab. However, Nerad said she did not make any significant changes in her life and quickly relapsed. At 17, she was using heroin.
Four months after her initial release, Nerad’s parents sent her back to rehab. This time, she said she made the changes she needed and has been sober since she was 17. She’s spent the past 13 years of her life advocating for recovery programs for those suffering from addiction.
Nerad’s advocacy led her to Ohio State, where, as a graduate student in the early 2010s, she established Ohio State’s Collegiate Recovery Community and Recovery House — a support service for students in or seeking recovery. It is located at 097 Baker Hall.
Nerad said she founded the Collegiate Recovery Community and Recovery House after her positive experience with the collegiate recovery program she attended as an undergraduate student at Texas Tech University.
“We describe college campuses as a recovery-hostile environment. And that can be really tough when you’re feeling isolated and you don’t have a peer group,” Nerad said. “Having that collegiate recovery community really accelerated my connection to campus, to a peer group, to faculty and staff. And it really just kind of took away all the fears that I had about going to a new place, because I knew that I would have this program.”
The program includes mutual aid meetings —similar to 12-step meetings — individual coaching and small group sessions, scholarship opportunities and sober social events, Ahmed Hosni, interim assistant director of the Ohio State Student Wellness Center, said.
Hosni said the isolation due to COVID-19 has caused addiction and substance abuse to increase. However, the center continues to virtually serve students, hosting social events and other opportunities for them to support one another.
“We just hope that any student out there who may be struggling doesn’t feel helpless and doesn’t feel hopeless, because there’s a community of people who want to support them,” Hosni said.
The Ohio State Collegiate Recovery Community and Recovery House, located at 097 Baker Hall, includes mutual aid meetings —similar to 12-step meetings — individual coaching and small group sessions, scholarship opportunities and sober social events. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Photo Editor
The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as a treatable, chronic medical disease that involves complex interactions among three factors: an individual’s brain, genetics, and environment and life experiences. People who suffer from addiction use substances and engage in behaviors that become compulsive and persist despite their negative consequences.
“All three of these factors contribute to whether someone will seek out a substance and try it,” Alan Davis, an assistant professor in the College of Social Work, said. “All of those factors will contribute to whether or not someone will continue to use that substance and will contribute to whether or not they might become addicted to that substance. And all of those factors are also different pieces of how you can help someone.”
If the substance is removed from a person’s environment, the underlying reasons and factors may still remain, Davis said. This is called the disease model of addiction.
The model furthers the understanding of the brain’s chemical reactions upon consuming substances, Davis said. Some substances act differently on different parts of the brain and can create a cycle of seeking pleasure and finding it in a substance.
“The brain will start to learn and associate those pleasant, enjoyable experiences with that specific substance,” Davis said.
Depending on the person, their environment and reasons for using the substance, Davis said this process can become automatic to achieve pleasurable experiences or to relieve undesirable ones.
This is where addiction interferes with users’ lives.
“They now will start seeking out the substance more and more. It starts to interfere with their relationships, it starts to interfere with their work or their school,” Davis said. “And despite all of those disruptions and potentially even disruptions to their physical health, they continue to use the substance and have a difficult time stopping.”
That’s where recovery communities, such as the ones for which Nerad advocates, come in.
Now, 13 years after her final stay in rehab, Nerad serves as the associate director of Community Relations at Alkermes, a biopharmaceutical company that develops neurological and cancer medicine. The company is currently developing products that, in conjunction with counseling, can treat opioid use disorder, Geoff Mogilner, director of corporate communications at Alkermes, said.
In her role, Nerad said she works to combat the effects the opioid epidemic has had on Ohio.
At the time of publication, 398 Franklin County residents have died from drug overdoses in 2020, according to a dashboard from the Columbus Department of Public Health. In 2019, there were 547 deaths from overdoses among Franklin County residents.
Since Dec. 30, 2019, there have been 4,388 suspected overdose emergency medical system runs and 4,067 suspected overdose emergency room visits in Franklin County, according to the Columbus Department of Public Health website. Of those, 114 EMS runs and 75 emergency room visits came from the 43201 zip code, where many off-campus students live.
Nerad said she works to get addicts informed, appropriate treatment and into the ongoing recovery programs in their communities.
“You should be able to get treatment on demand — the treatment that is best for you,” Nerad said. “And then we should be able to help sustain your recovery, because we know that the longer you’re in recovery, the better your odds are at sustaining that recovery.”
Everyone’s recovery is unique, Nerad said. But she works to ensure that those who seek treatment all have the same access to recovery programs.
And she said Ohio State is “ahead of the curve” in working to make this happen.
Students at Ohio State can receive Narcan — a life-saving overdose reversal nasal spray that reoccupies opioid receptors in the event of an overdose — for no cost from the pharmacies at Doan Hall and the Ohio State East and James Cancer Hospitals, according to the Wexner Medical Center website. It can also be ordered for free through the mail from the Franklin County and Columbus Departments of Public Health.
Despite these treatments, preventative measures and risk-subversion programs, Nerad said addiction misunderstanding remains a major issue.
“People don’t fully understand addiction and the collateral consequences,” Nerad said. “They’re not bad people trying to get good, they’re sick people trying to get well.”
If you or someone you know experiences addiction or substance abuse, resources are available.
Students can learn more about the Ohio State Collegiate Recovery Community on its website.
Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services 24/7 Crisis Line: 330-296-3555
Ohio Addiction 24/7 Helpline: 330-678-3006
