AURORA, Colo. ( KDVR ) — Community Medical Services opened a second outpatient opioid clinic in Aurora due to an increasing need for services in the community.
Richard Tafoya, who was in recovery for 20 months, said stepping foot in the doors of CMS was the best decision he made.
“I just want to tell anybody that’s struggling out there from addiction that you can recover your life,” Tafoya said.
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He said in 2021, he fell back into an opioid addiction and got in trouble with the law.
“I was facing 55 years in prison, and I realized at that time, I was like, man, I’m going to lose my son, I’m going to lose my mother, my family, I’m going to lose my life,” Tafoya said.
From there, he said he picked up fentanyl as a way to escape reality.
“I knew that it was a drug that could potentially cause me to overdose, and I didn’t really care at that point,” Tafoya said.
Then, he made the choice to step through the doors of CMS.
“They helped to heal me to where I could be a normal human being again,” Tafoya said, adding that he also found something else. “I realized at that time as well I couldn’t do it alone. So, I started going to church and applying God’s word to my life and just staying obedient to Him and being faithful to Him for everything that He’s done for me and my family, for my son’s life, for my life, my mom.”