Shawn Sinisi turned to alcohol and marijuana before escalating to hardcore drugs to cope with the after­effects of alleged sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky. Courtesy photo

MaryAnne Sinisi didn’t want to put up a Christmas tree in her house this year.

The tradition — in most homes, a cozy, sheltered, familial one — held no appeal after her son Shawn’s death in September from a drug overdose.

Nevertheless, Sinisi put up a tree — this year in a church.

Not only is that a quasi-public place that represents comfort in affliction, but the tree, with a picture of her son nearby, is a stand-in for the boy she no longer has, and the installation includes an appeal for funds for a pair of addiction recovery programs that Sinisi believes could save others who are having the kind of trouble that took her son.

“Where I’m at, it’s over,” Sinisi said. “There is no more hope.”

But the programs — The Foundry for men and the proposed Faith Foundation for women, both in Lower Fairview — are designed to nurture hope.

They’re transitional or “after-care” programs, offshoots of the Nehemiah Project, for people graduating from drug rehabilitation, from halfway houses or from prison, designed to ease them back into society.

The Foundry provides housing, a stable environment and accountability, Pastor John Gray said.

All given with love, Sinisi said.

There are secular after-care programs in the area — halfway and transitional homes — but the Nehemiah-related programs are different, because they’re explicitly religious, according to Gray.

“God is that higher power,” Gray said, referring to secular 12-step programs, which include appeals to a “higher power,” but one that the originators of the 12-step concept have said doesn’t need to be the “widely accepted version of the divine being” — a broadening that can accommodate agnostics and even atheists, according to axisresidentialtreatment.com.

Sinisi’s tree stands in the narthex or vestibule of the First United Church of Hollidaysburg, where, as of Dec. 18, it had prompted donations of a few hundred dollars, said Pastor John Godissart.

Shawn Sinisi, born in 1992, started using prescription pain pills recreationally when he was a student at Altoona Area High School, Sinisi said.

Over the years, he was in and out of rehabs, and he spent time in prison, Sinisi said.

The last time he came out of rehab, he was slated to go to The Foundry.

But Gray didn’t have a bed available, so Shawn went to the house of an acquaintance, his mother said.

He relapsed within days and kept relapsing, bouncing from place to place, she said.

He overdosed on heroin laced with fentanyl Sept. 4, she said.

People tend to underestimate the difficulties that addicts face, Sinisi said. “A lot of uneducated people think (addicts) have the power to magically stop,” she said.

They do not, she said.

The current rehabilitation setup isn’t working for people like her son, Sinisi said.

Among its shortcomings is the inadequate length of time that insurance companies allow for treatment and for halfway house or transitional home stays, she said.

Rehab is typically about 30 days, although drug court participants may get longer, she said.

Long-term post-rehab stays offered by The Foundry and expected to be offered by The Faith Foundation might have helped her son, she said.

Residents can stay in the first phase of the two-phase Foundry program nine to 12 months, although that can be extended, Gray said.

They can stay in the second phase “until they’re ready to make a next step,” he said.

Such transitional housing is a reasonable alternative for recovering addicts, especially when they can’t come home to their parents, in keeping with the “tough love” advice that counselors often give those parents, Sinisi said.

Without such post-rehab alternatives, “they go right back into the arms of the demons — the dealers,” Sinisi said.

Yet relapse is almost inevitable, so it must be incorporated in recovery programs in a way that isn’t destructive, according to Sinisi.

The parole and probation system tends to put addicts back in jail when they relapse, she said.

She knows of a woman who came to Blair County from out of the area in hopes of sustaining her recovery and who’d been clean for 18 months, but she relapsed.

The probation office from her home county whisked her off to jail, Sinisi said.

Gray said The Foundry gives residents who relapse a chance to go to rehab for a month, after which they can return.

“A couple guys relapsed once,” Gray said. He would deal with repeated relapses “case by case,” he said.

“Jailing is not the answer,” Sinisi said. “If someone has diabetes and goes into a doughnut shop to buy doughnuts, they don’t get locked up.”

The threat of re-imprisonment also forces many recovering addicts to lie to cover up relapses — or other violations, like living in a unit where there’s a gun or alcohol, said Sinisi, indicating that such lying can’t be a healthy component of recovery.

Residents at The Foundry must work or be looking for work, although a couple new ones are “just getting on their feet,” and aren’t required to do that yet, according to Gray.

They’re all asked to attend one 12-step meeting per day, he said.

They do their own laundry, some do daily devotionals and some do house chores.

They also do community service, Gray said previously.

Some work in restaurants, some at agencies, one at a customer support firm.

All are asked every day how their day is going, he said.

Such accountability is crucial, he said.

“There’s so much pull out there (toward addiction),” he said. “You need people asking the right questions to (residents) on a regular basis to keep it real.”

He tries to hook up the residents who need it with counselors who can help them work through “the interior stuff,” that is the root of many addictions, he said.

He doesn’t think most “use to use,” but rather “self-medicate to cover the hurt.”

Everyone has gifts and abilities, and the program tries to help find and cultivate those, “so they have fulfillment and purpose,” Gray said.

They need to get away from living “for the high,” and instead learn to get “high on life,” he said.

It’s difficult, because most don’t feel they’re worth much, based on what they’ve been told, he said.

They need to learn “what God says they are,” he said.

Gray started The Foundry three years ago when he “realized too many guys were coming out of straight rehab and dying,” he said. “I asked God how we can deal with this.”

“It’s pretty much working as I thought,” he said. “The guys are growing, dealing with their stuff.”

A couple of residents have “messed up and used,” he said.

“We can’t claim 100 percent,” he said.

The main house, where the Phase 1 residents live, has the capacity for 10.

Courtesy photo / MaryAnne Sinisi’s tree stands in the narthex or vestibule of the First United Church of Hollidays­burg, where, as of Tuesday, it had prompted donations of a few hundred dollars, Pastor John Godissart said.

Krista Knapp got the idea for The Faith Foundation in 2014, founded the organization as a nonprofit the following year, began fund­raising in 2016 and bought a house at 1606-8 11th St. last year.

It’s been gutted and is being remodeled.

She hopes to be open by summer, although as a transitional home in a residential area, it will need “conditional use” approval under the city’s zoning law, an approval that requires a public meeting before the city Planning Commission, which would advise City Council whether to grant or deny.

The operation will be modeled on The Foundry, Knapp said.

It will be a 12-month program divided into three-month intervals, said Knapp, whose organizational website is newsworthynetwork .org.

During the first interval, residents will learn what causes addiction, during the second, they’ll try to get to “the root of the problem, so they can figure out how to change the habit; during the third, they’ll try to move forward beyond addiction and during the last, they’ll prepare for graduation, Knapp said.

She plans to operate the house on income from housekeeping and landscaping jobs on which the organization will bid, with residents doing the work to fulfill the contracts, she said.

Successful graduates will get a stipend from the income thus generated to help set them up for life after the program, she said.

There will be many rules and regulations, drug testing, room searches and searches upon return from outside visits, check-in times, along with a requirement to attend meetings, she said.

When Shawn was alive, Sinisi always had hope, even though she “saw the torment in his eyes,” she said.

But she had no “magic answer,” she said.

She’s hoping to redeem that torment by helping others who still can be helped.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.