Gilly's House offers hope and memories for families facing addiction

WRENTHAM, Mass. — For years, they watched their son struggle with drug addiction until he could struggle no more.

From their grief and loss, a Wrentham couple found a new purpose.

"Steven is the typical kid who started off smoking marijuana and stepped his way up to heroin addiction," David Gillmeister said. "The demon was stronger than he was. Ultimately it came down to that."

After years of detox, rehab and bouts of sobriety, that demon killed Steven Gillmeister. He died of a drug overdose two and a half years ago at the age of 25.

"After Steven passed away, my initial reaction was now I don't have to have anything else to do with the world of recovery, with drugs, with anything that I thought I could put it in my past," his mother, Barbara Gillmeister, said. "So, we honestly really have been blessed."

But the past had a strange way of becoming the future for Barbara and David Gillmeister.

"He loved living in sober houses," Barbara said. "He liked the camaraderie. He liked the support."

And so, last year, Steven Gillmeister's parents bought an abandoned old nursing home in Wrentham and turned it into Gilly's House, which was Steven's nickname.

It's a sober house, where 21 men can recover from addiction.

The Gillmeisters hoped to give recovering addicts what Steven did not get in sober houses where he stayed. For example, lessons in life skills -- simple things like how to open a bank account.

The idea is to keep stress at a minimum.

"Eliminating stress as much as possible is an important part of getting that first part of the recovery going," David explained.

From there, the hope is residents truly can write their own stories. And that those stories will not end like Chris's, or Ian's, or Terry's. These are all young men who died of drug overdoses whose loved ones adopted rooms at Gilly's House in memory of their sons.

The Gillmeisters know recovery is not something they can control. They know that failures are inevitable, but they've heard their share of success stories too.

"We've had some parents say to us, 'you saved my son's life.'" David said.

Cox Media Group