BY TERI R. WILLIAMS PHOTOS BY RUTH ENGLISH
HOMETOWN LIVING AT I TS BEST 81
After learning firsthand
the effects drug
addiction can have
on family, Steve and
Chastity Hutchinson
decided to help others
navigate recovery.
Nearly everyone in rehab had a
horrific story of some kind of
abuse. Not Alston. He had a good
home life. Loving parents. A
great childhood. For Alston, it was the idea of
partying with friends and having fun. But the
distortion of the meaning was a dangerous
deception, and one he would not see until he
was sitting in a jail cell with an ultimatum: jail
or rehab.
Alston went to work at Plant Vogel as a
welder in 2014 right after graduating from
Toombs County High School. When he was
offered more money to work on the road, work
took him far from home. “All these young
guys were working out of town together, and
they were passing pills around,” said Steve
Hutchinson, Alston’s stepfather.
“We immediately began trying to get him to
come home,” said his mother Chastity. “I knew
our only hope was to get him into some kind of
rehab.”
It was a parent’s worst nightmare. The
heartache was unimaginable. They leaned on
each other; they leaned on Jesus. The pain
was compounded for Steve as he watched his
wife cry herself to sleep each night. Even then,
it was a shallow sleep filled with unspoken
anticipation of a phone call in the middle of
night with news that something had happened
to Alston.
Eventually, Alston did come home. But for
a solid year, he ran from them and refused any
offer of help. “He would stay with different
people,” said Chastity. “It was devastating for
us. He had not grown up in that kind of life. But
the worst part was that drugs had taken my son
from us. The person he had become was not my
son.”
Steve said, “We reached out to judges and
law enforcement and asked if they could make
Alston go to rehab. We were so afraid he was
going to overdose. Unfortunately, the law can’t
do anything unless someone is caught breaking
the law.”