Drug-free and timed out, woman still finds support at Sound Community Services

Twenty-seven-year-old Stephanie Bliss says if it wasn't for the staff at Sound Community Services, she probably still would be getting high.She's been drug-free since Aug. 29, 2017, when she called Orlando Ramos from Sound Community Services and took him up on his offer of help. Ramos was there before she even hung up the phone.Today she is married, employed and expecting a baby. Though she has "timed out" of the SCS AXS program, which is for young adults ages 18 to 25, she still stops by to check in with the staff."I still go through a lot of struggles," she said. "I'm an adult, but there's still a lot of things I don't know how to do."Bliss is wearing her long hair pink these days, though she says that's subject to change at any time, to any color except yellow. She wears rubber bands around her left wrist and snaps them to relieve tension or anger.She said she's been diagnosed with several conditions: bipolar, post-traumatic stress, attention deficit hyperactivity and obsessive compulsive. She thinks she might also have oppositional defiance disorder, since she doesn't always get along with those in positions of authority.She grew up in Newport, R.I., and started smoking cigarettes and marijuana and drinking at age 13 or 14. She was at a friend's house when she learned how to smoke crack. She describes her long ordeal with the drug as a "beautiful nightmare.""It starts off bad, but somebody saves you, or you wake up, before the bad things happen," she said.Bad things did happen, though. Two of her three daughters were removed from the home, and adopted, because of her drug use. She was arrested and served nine months in prison for possession of stolen property, because of her drug use.Her oldest daughter lives with the girl's father, but Bliss talks with her all the time."I used to blame DCF and the foster parents, but I realized I have a problem," she said. "So I called Orlando."Bliss had been smoking crack at an apartment building on Colman Avenue. She said she was "high as (expletive)" when she had a vision of her daughter, who was not there, walking across the floor. When Ramos picked her up, brought her to the Sound Community Services headquarters on Montauk Avenue for a shower and arranged for her to stay in a motel, she said she weighed 85 pounds, smelled bad and was dressed in somebody else's boxer shorts and T-shirt.Walking for the first time into the AXS room, which resembles a community center, she saw the pool table and realized it was somewhere she could relax.That first night, she arranged to go to Stonington Institute for drug treatment."I was crying because I was scared," she said. "I called Orlando every day. I said, 'Come get me.' He said no and hung up."k.florin@theday.com