Ten years ago, Ashley Potts was a homeless heroin addict in a small Pennsylvania town in Armstrong County, about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh.

She was a high school dropout facing a state prison sentence.

Today, she’s a successful state human services worker with a master’s degree – and a message for addicts struggling today and those trying to help them.

“People can recover,” Potts said.

And if communities can come together and overcome the urge to stigmatize addicts as universally horrendous and hopeless, it will go a long way toward making their difficult paths to recovery an easier one, she added.

“Addicts already know how terrible they are. If communities can stand together … and stop stigmatizing people as worthless, there’ll be better outcomes,” she said.

On a national level, opioid use has spiked over the past few years. In 2014, opioids were involved in 28,647 deaths out of 2,626,418, and according to the Center for Disease Control, opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 2000. Pennsylvania is one of the 14 states that were hit hardest by the “opioid epidemic,” with a 12.9 percent increase in opioid overdose between 2013 and 2014.

Potts, now a supervisor for Pennsylvania’s opioid treatment “Centers of Excellence” initiative, was among a group of speakers who shared personal stories to challenge myths about drug addiction, treatment and recovery Tuesday at a forum hosted by Value Behavioral Health of Pennsylvania.

“I believe the stigma keeps many people in active addiction sick,” said Jason Snyder, a onetime Cambria County, Pennsylvania painkiller addict who now serves as special assistant to the state’s Secretary of Human Services.

Snyder believes the idea that all addicts are born-poor junkies who “deserve to die” forces people and loved ones from all walks of life to deal with the issue under a shroud of secrecy – and that it almost made him the third person in his family to lose his battle with opiates.

“For years I built a facade around me … there was no way I’d admit I was an addict,” Snyder said.

Snyder grew up in Mundys Corner, roughly 60 miles east from where Potts lived, in a “prototypical” middle-income, blue-collar family with active, caring parents who supported him.

But drugs – “something we didn’t discuss” at home – became part of the lifestyle for Snyder and his two brothers.

In a two-year-span, he ended up losing both to drug overdoses, he said.

And Snyder described his own life as “a house of cards built on lies” until he entered a long-term treatment center in 2011. It served as the first step in what has led to five years of sobriety and a career dedicated to helping others overcome their own struggles, he said.

Potts lost everything in 2006 – her daughter, her home, her relationship with her parents and even a car she’d crashed on the way to a court hearing for charges that stemmed from her need to feed her addiction.

“Tough love” from her family and a string of arrests warrants prompted her to give recovery a serious chance that fall. In the months that followed, she began to turn her life around one small success at a time, she said.

A job at a sandwich shop.

A warm place to sleep.

And by the time she became a convicted felon for her crimes in 2007, she was already on her way to the path toward her career today.

It hasn’t always been easy, she said. Potts said she’s had to rely on connections she’s made at jobs she’s excelled at to get her foot into new doors, ones that might have turned her away otherwise because because of her criminal history.

“There are real consequences to (the life of addiction). I’ve got a master’s degree but I still can’t work at American Eagle,” she said.

By speaking out about addiction – and sharing success stories – can some of the massive layers of barriers that exist for current and former addicts begin to break down, Potts and Snyder said.

“My mission is to demonstrate addiction can and does effect anyone,” Snyder said.

Snyder stressed the state is beginning to embrace a more holistic approach to addiction treatment, noting that Centers of Excellence are taking steps to help people overcome the physical and mental cravings and underlying factors that likely lead someone to begin abusing drugs in the first place.

If a mental health issue is behind it, they’ll be ways to treat that, he said. If a chronic pain issue led someone to addiction, Centers of Excellence care team workers at places like Alliance Medical Center will be able to get someone outside help they need, too, he said.

“We need to get more people into treatment. We need to help more families get the help they need and (begin to) heal,” he said.