In his darkest hours, when his inner demons raged, Colin Sevigney was unrecognizable. To his family. To his friends. To himself.

The outside world saw a Wells High School honor roll student, a two-time wrestling state champion and a young man with a promising future. Inside, Sevigney was hurting, his mind and body torn apart by a drug and alcohol addiction that threatened to take his life.

“At night, I’d drink a whole bottle of liquor or a case of beer by myself,” he said. “It’s hard to put an equivalent on it, but I was probably having 30 to 40 drinks a day. On a Tuesday. Plus, I’m smoking my weed concentrate pen all day long and I’ve got an eight-ball of cocaine in my pocket, going to the porta potty on the job site for 10 minutes.”

“To save money, I’d crush up Adderall, put some of the coke in it, find a spot that was concealed for 10 seconds and do a bump of that every 10 or 20 minutes, whenever I could,” Sevigney said. “I’d go through $50-$70 worth of weed concentrates (per day) and crush a gram or two of cocaine, plus four or five 35-gram extended release Adderall a day. That was just to get through the day.”

Sevigney, now 29, graduated from Wells High School in 2014 and enrolled at the University of Southern Maine. He was going to compete on the wrestling team, a renowned Division III program. But his drug and alcohol addiction took its toll.

He started skipping classes and dropped out of USM after one semester.

“That was (a red flag),” said his mother, Elizabeth Cooney, a sixth-grade teacher at Thornton Academy in Saco. “I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ I had no idea he wasn’t doing well, because he had always done well. I had no idea that he was masking. Bright kids can hide a lot, and he was good at it, he was very good at it… He was living a double life, right before our very eyes.”

“I was a very involved parent, so was his father and stepfather,” Cooney continued. “Because he was an involved athlete, that kind of kept him on the straight and narrow. I didn’t catch him enough to believe he wasn’t being honest (at home). He’s coming home, going to practice, on the honor roll. I didn’t get calls from school. … There was nothing atypical, really.”

Back home, Sevigney worked and bounced back and forth between his parent’s homes. Cooney and Steve Sevigney divorced when Colin was young. Both have remained active in Sevigney’s life.

In September 2015, the addiction nearly cost Sevigney his life. Wells police found him in a wooded area near his home. He was high and drunk. He charged at the officers, who then shocked him with a Taser. After passing out, Sevigney was administered opioid overdose reversal medication.

Cooney remembers hearing her doorbell ring in the middle of the night.

“It scared me to death,” she said. “It was the worst night of my life. He told me he was going (to a friend’s house). The next thing I know, it’s the middle of the night, (the younger kids) are asleep upstairs. There’s two police officers standing there, and I sort of just go into shock. One of them asks, ‘Are you Colin Sevigney’s mom?’ And I go, ‘Yes.’ They immediately say, ‘He’s OK.'”

Sevigney was arrested and charged with resisting arrest. With no criminal record, he received a year’s probation, subject to search and drug tests without reasonable cause.

The spiral continued, despite several intervention attempts from his family. Sevigney followed one intervention on Easter 2018 with a three-day drug and alcohol binge that sent him to a dark place.

“I’m having auditory hallucinations, I’m seeing shadow people when I turn a corner,” he said. “I’m getting freaked out and paranoid that I have to cover screens and outlets because I think the FBI is following me or watching me. It’s broad daylight, and I’m literally in my underwear, with a baseball bat, looking out windows.”

GETTING HELP

Toward the end of his three-day binge, Sevigney stumbled across an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, which featured actor and recovering addict Russell Brand.

“It wasn’t someone talking to me or coming at me or calling me out,” Sevigney said. “It was someone saying, ‘This is how I felt. This is what I experienced.’ I was like, ‘OK. That’s how I feel.’ For the first time, I saw some sort of truth. I was able to identify with someone.”

Days after listening to the episode, Sevigney said he encountered a breakthrough moment.

“I’m walking to go to the bathroom, and I swear, I felt hands grab me from behind to pull me in front of the mirror,” Sevigney said. “I just stood there looking at the mirror. My first thought was, ‘You look terrible.’ Scabs on my face, dark circles under my eyes. I’m pale. I stink, I probably haven’t showered in three or four days. Just a mess.”

“There was a level of fear and terror that I had never felt before, that moment of truth about this dead-end street that I’m on,” he said.

Sevigney then went to his mother. She had been ready for years for that moment.

“I had been researching, and I had the name of Granite Recovery Center on my phone, literally, as a contact,” Cooney said. “When he was ready (to get clean), I was going to be ready. And that’s my advice for any parent: Be ready.”

Thanks to an inheritance from her late father, Cooney was able to afford Sevigney’s stay at the sober living facility. He was there for nearly a year.

“I had the means,” she said. “Because we had money, he’s alive.”

“Most people that come to us, they meet the criteria of substance use disorder,” said Eric Ekberg, the chief executive officer of Granite Recovery Centers. “They check all of the boxes, with addiction being the No. 1 thing in their life. However, 80% or 90% of our clients also have some sort of underlying mental health issue going on. Low self-worth — that can be depression, anxiety, bipolar (disorder) — but there’s usually something going on.

“Obviously, we try to treat both at the same time,” Ekberg continued. “People start at a detox level of care, so we get the poison out of their body for the first week or so. Then, the treatment really starts, where we try to hone in on, ‘OK, what’s going on? Why do you continue to drink or drug? What is driving that?'”

According to the Addiction Policy Forum in 2020, 90% of Americans with substance abuse issues started before age 18. In the 2023 Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey, marijuana use by 15-year-old students within a month of taking the survey stood at 13.6%, gradually increasing in usage to 23.8% for 17-year-olds.

RETURN TO SCHOOL

Not long after Sevigney’s return from the sober living home in 2019, he decided that he wanted to return to college. He started with occasional courses at York County Community College in Wells, earning his associate’s degree in education.

Then, seven years after first enrolling at USM, Sevigney returned. One of his first objectives was to apologize to the wrestling staff for leaving the program, without warning, years prior.

Head coach Mike Morin was an assistant when Sevigney was first at USM.

“In that initial meeting, I hadn’t seen or talked to him in years, but the one thing you could take away was he was really genuine and really serious about taking ownership for everything,” Morin said. “I was half-joking, at the time, that he (had) eligibility. I didn’t really know he’d be coming, but we stayed in touch.”

Sevigney knows he’s not the same wrestler he was when coming out of Wells. Nor is he in the same shape. He’s affectionately known as “Unc” by his teammates because of his age.

“He’s in everybody’s corner all the time,” said USM sophomore Derek Cote, who met Sevigney in 2019, when Cote was a freshman at Noble High School in North Berwick and Sevigney, newly sober, was coaching him at Smitty’s Wrestling Barn in Kingston, New Hampshire. “He’s selfless. He’s like a cool uncle. He balances out a lot of the nonsense, so to say.”

Cote said Sevigney is a sort of mentor to the team.

“With college, some kids don’t make the best decisions. He can point them in the right direction, going, ‘Hey, what you’re doing, I’ve done 100 times worse,'” Cote said. “He just talks about how he’s lived with so many regrets, but on a larger scale. His big thing is to not take anything for granted. He doesn’t hide anything.”

This spring, Sevigney completed his junior season for the Huskies, going 5-6. He was one of 16 USM wrestlers to earn New England Wrestling Association All-Academic honors.

MOVING FORWARD

Sevigney is thriving in the classroom and is well on his way to a bachelor’s degree in education and becoming a teacher, and he’s giving back as a volunteer coach at Smitty’s Wrestling Barn, where he honed his skills as a kid in the offseason.

“It’s answered prayers, really,” said Cooney. “It’s because of him. He has a lot of support, and a lot of people that love him and support him in multiple ways. But it’s all him. This is the person I knew. This is my child. He didn’t change, he was back to what he was meant to be. He was born to shine. But this could happen to any family. (Addiction) knows no socioeconomic boundaries.”

Colin Sevigney may never become a Division III national champion, but he says his greatest victory is becoming healthy again. These days, Sevigney says he is in a much better place. He talks about his darkest days because he hopes in some small way they will help others.

“One of the things we say (in recovery) is, ‘I don’t have a drug or alcohol problem. I have a sober problem.’ When I’m high or drunk, I feel good, I’m personable, I’m kind. When I’m sober, my mind will not stop. I’m irritable. I’m uncomfortable in my own skin. I’m constantly experiencing fear of judgment, fear of failure, fear of not being accepted. When I have a drink or first drug, there’s a comfort that only that can bring.”

“I promise you, there’s a way out,” Sevigney continued. “I’m seven years sober, I have a life that’s meaningful, people around me that care about me. I didn’t think it was possible for me. I just want people to know, there’s a way out. Your life is worth it.”

IF YOU NEED HELP 

IF YOU or someone you know is in immediate danger, dial 911.

FOR ASSISTANCE during a mental health crisis, call or text 888-568-1112. To call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, call 988 or chat online at 988lifeline.org.

FOR MORE SUPPORT, call the NAMI Maine Help Line at 800-464-5767 or email [email protected].

OTHER Maine resources for mental health, substance use disorder and other issues can be found by calling 211.