The Journey of Maggie Young: From Fear to Freedom

When Maggie Young was just two years old, she remembers thinking to herself: “Who are these people and when do I get to where I’m supposed to fit?” That profound sense of displacement would follow her through decades of trauma, addiction, and incarceration before finally leading her home.

I just finished an incredible conversation with Maggie Young, the Chief Recovery Officer for Liberation Programs in Connecticut. Today marks exactly 33 years of recovery for Maggie – a milestone that feels even more powerful when you understand where her journey began.

Growing Up in Silence Under Alabama’s Tin Roof

Maggie’s story starts in 1950s Alabama, where she lived with her grandparents after her mother moved north for work. Nine children slept in one bed in a house with a tin roof, and while Maggie loved the sound of rain that helped her sleep, there were far more terrifying sounds that kept her awake.

“I could hear the horses and I could hear them kind of just galloping through,” she told me, describing the nights when the Ku Klux Klan would ride past their home. “And the sound that I would hear would be throw throw. And those were the times that they would then throw flames and I never knew what that meant.”

The rule in her household was absolute: children were to be seen and not heard. Questions weren’t allowed. This enforced silence became Maggie’s survival mechanism, but it also meant she had no voice when, at age five, she was sexually assaulted by her uncle. The trauma compounded her already deep sense of not belonging anywhere.

From Connecticut Culture Shock to the Basement Pipe

When Maggie moved to Connecticut at age 10, the culture shock was immediate. She walked into school wearing a handmade skirt and blouse, surrounded by children in fancy dresses with lace socks. When another child called her “poor,” she didn’t even understand what the word meant. Her first fight happened in a sandbox the next day.

This pattern of watching life from the outside continued through high school. “I still was kind of watching as though they were living life and I was kind of hanging out seeing how they lived life,” she explained. She avoided drinking because she’d witnessed her father’s alcoholism and didn’t want to follow that path.

But in college in Atlanta, everything changed. A man at a bar convinced her to try a shot, and she felt an immediate warmth that allowed her to “express whatever without any concern for anyone.” For someone who had lived in enforced silence her entire life, this release was intoxicating.

Then came freebase cocaine, introduced in a basement with what she described as a massive hookah-type pipe. “That one smooth pull was what I chased” for the next 15 years of her life.

The Hotel Crossroads and Divine Intervention

Maggie’s addiction led to years of cycling in and out of prison – always for theft to support her habit. She rationalized it all because she was still “functioning” – she had jobs, she wasn’t the person she’d seen “sleeping standing up” on the street corners of her childhood.

The turning point came at a hotel where she was working night audit. Drug dealers were offering her hundreds of dollars to open rooms for a few hours, far more than her $10-an-hour legitimate job paid. She was at a crossroads when a woman came in with a baby, terrified because she’d witnessed a drug exchange in the parking lot.

“Something said, so you can be the part of that or a part of that,” Maggie remembered. That moment of clarity, combined with her public defender telling her “you deserve better,” finally got her into treatment at Liberation Programs.

Even then, her motivation wasn’t recovery – she just wanted to avoid the long bus ride from Niantic prison back to Stamford when she inevitably got out and used again.

From Client to Chief Recovery Officer

What makes Maggie’s story so powerful is the full circle it represents. She spent seven months in treatment at Liberation Programs 33 years ago. Today, she’s the Chief Recovery Officer at that same organization, overseeing prevention programs and using her story as what she calls her “weapon” against addiction.

Her daily work involves connecting with people at every stage of the journey – from prevention in schools to supporting families dealing with addiction. Just last night, she counseled a mother whose daughter keeps sabotaging her recovery at the 30-day mark. “I felt so bad for her and she said she pretty much said that there are times that she has felt like a prison in her own home,” Maggie shared.

The message she brings to everyone she encounters is simple but profound: “You deserve better.” Those three words from her public defender changed everything, and now she passes them forward every single day.

Liberation Programs offers services across the full continuum of care, including a 64-bed residential program for men (half specifically for justice-impacted individuals) and a 10-bed program for pregnant and parenting women – the very program Maggie helped establish 30 years ago after reading that press release.

Today, on her 33rd recovery anniversary, Maggie’s voice – once silenced by trauma and fear – now helps others find their own. She’s living proof that no matter how deep the nightmare, there’s always a path to the other side.