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Haven Helps Pregnant Women And Moms Fighting Addiction

By Jeff Todd

WELD COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) -- It's heralded as a unique kind of treatment center, but for women and their children who make it through the Haven, it's a life-changing experience.

"When I came to the program I was so broken," said Crystal Griffin. "To see other women that were in the same situation and trying to change their lives really helped."

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Griffin was nine months pregnant and addicted to methamphetamine when she got to the Haven as part of a Community Corrections sentence for being an accomplice to a murder in Weld County.

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"I have a 24-year drug addiction to meth and along the way in my last relapse I had graduated drug court and two weeks later I was in a three and a half year relapse," said Griffin. "I lost my mind, I didn't know the difference between what was real and what was fake anymore."

Griffin entered the Haven, a 40-bed treatment facility focused on pregnant and post-natal women who suffer from drug addictions or mental illness.

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The Haven allows moms to stay with their infants but requires a lengthy treatment up to two years.

"When I got here I had to find myself again. And the program teaches you that," Griffin said. "I couldn't trust myself so you learn to trust yourself and then you learn to trust these women you're living with every day."

"You figure out why you used drugs, you figure out your guilt and your shame because those were my biggest things, my guilt and my shame. From giving up on myself putting my family throughout everything I put them through," she said.

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Griffin found a mentor early on and relied on the other women in her house. Now, she's giving back mentoring other women.

"It's a life changing experience. I've turned into a success and I've turned into a role model that my peer sisters, peer brothers and my children and my family can look up to," said Griffin.

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Similar success stories will be told at the Friends of the Haven Rising Star Luncheon on Wednesday, September 12.

Jeff Todd joined the CBS4 team in 2011 covering the Western Slope in the Mountain Newsroom. Since 2015 he's been working across the Front Range in the Denver Headquarters. Follow him on Twitter @CBS4Jeff.

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