FARGO – Stepheny Verhoeven had been clean and sober a solid year when she got into her car one day and, in a moment of frustration, hastily backed out of her driveway, nudging a passerby from behind. Getting out, she realized it wasn’t a stranger, but someone from her old life. The man was OK but agitated about something.
“Will you hold this for a few minutes?” he asked, handing Verhoeven a bag before dashing off. If she’d been a sugar addict, it would have been like asking her to hold a platter of decadent desserts. But it was fentanyl — Verhoeven’s most recent vice — and in an instant, the willpower she’d been clinging to for 12 months vanished.
“My last thought was, ‘I wish I could hold a bag of fentanyl like a normal person,’” she says, realizing later that most “normal people” don’t hold illegal drugs. “I snorted the fentanyl and died.” With the help of a 911 call and Narcan, Verhoeven was revived, but was soon arrested and brought to the Cass County Jail.
Despite promising her 5-year-old she’d never miss another birthday, once again, Verhoeven would be behind bars instead of watching her daughter blow out candles on her cake. “There’s such a stigma of addiction, breaking the law, being a felon, and having to raise your kids with a past,” she says. “I’ve been in the paper before, but never for anything good.
” But since finding Jesus in jail, through Jail Chaplains ministry, the shame is over. Verhoeven recalls hearing a v.