Dallas recovery leader discusses addiction, treatment after high-profile deaths

EDITOR'S NOTE: With just a couple of days left in National Recovery Month, two recent high-profile deaths are putting a renewed spotlight on substance use disorder and recovery. CBS News Texas spoke with the head of a Dallas family recovery center who knows the struggle personally.  

The recent deaths of actress Hayden Panettiere and Cindy Crawford's son, Presley Gerber, both of whom had struggled with substance use, hit especially close to home for Heather Ormand.

Long before she became the President and CEO of the nonprofit Nexus Family Recovery Center, she was struggling with alcohol addiction. 

"I wanted to quit drinking for years," she said. "It was nearly impossible until I found the right therapist and found a 12-step program that really, really helped me." 

She's now been sober for more than 15 years and says the transformation she experienced is what drives the work she does today.

Nexus provides treatment and recovery services to women struggling with substance use disorder. 

"There's so many different ways that you can seek this," Ormand said. "The one thing they all have in common is community. How you do it can be very different." 

One option Ormand says deserves more attention is medication-assisted treatment, or MAT. 

However, she says stigma still surrounds it. Similar to what you may hear about GLP1s.

"You're not doing it on your own. You're not strong enough to do it on your own," Ormand said. "MAT helps stop that noise in your head of wanting to use."

Federal health officials say FDA-approved medications for substance-use disorders can be an effective, even lifesaving, part of long-term recovery. 

For Ormand, the recent high-profile deaths are a reminder that addiction can affect anyone and that help is available.