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FEATURE<br />
Left: Johnny, his daughter Jacklyn,<br />
his wife Marian, and his mother<br />
Barbara at his program certification<br />
ceremony at Macomb Community<br />
College, December 2022.<br />
Hopeless to Heroic<br />
The Johnny Shamou story<br />
BY CRYSTAL KASSAB JABIRO<br />
It is hard to hide a secret when<br />
one is randomly babbling, chaotically<br />
removing everything from<br />
the freezer, or suddenly talking to an<br />
imaginary cat on the top of the fridge.<br />
These were Johnny Shamou’s odd<br />
behaviors in front of his family while<br />
he was addicted to heroin. His addiction<br />
began with illegally prescribed<br />
drugs as a teenager, and before that he<br />
had smoked cigarettes and dabbled in<br />
marijuana and alcohol once in a while<br />
if it was around. This was because of<br />
his need to “fit in” with the crowd.<br />
The need to be accepted by peers<br />
in school is not a new concept. But for<br />
Shamou, the “newness” was constant<br />
because his family moved several<br />
times over the span of a few years. In<br />
1997, his father Jack went to federal<br />
prison for a couple of years for bootlegging<br />
movies, and the family lost their<br />
big model home in Sterling Heights.<br />
They moved first to a rental in<br />
Rochester and then to a townhouse in<br />
Troy. The Shamous tried to reassure<br />
their son– who was nine and ten years<br />
younger than his older siblings– that<br />
everything would be okay. His mom,<br />
Barbara, and his brother and sister<br />
wanted to protect him from the stress<br />
and pain of their father’s absence.<br />
When Jack came back home, the<br />
Shamous invested in a restaurant. The<br />
dad went back to his gambling ways,<br />
which caused a financial and emotional<br />
strain on the whole family. In a<br />
span of ten years, Shamou had gone to<br />
eight different schools before he finally<br />
graduated from Royal Oak Churchill<br />
Community High School in 2005. It<br />
was after that when his life took a turn<br />
for the worse.<br />
At 18, Shamou tried Vicodin, a prescription<br />
pain-reliever, from a friend.<br />
It gave him a euphoric high and made<br />
him feel powerful. It made his whole<br />
body numb and it made lifting heavy<br />
furniture easier at his job in a local furniture<br />
store. So he craved it more and<br />
more.<br />
“Once you become dependent on<br />
it, you need it to function,” said Shamou,<br />
now 36. “If you do not take it, you<br />
get withdrawals.”<br />
Withdrawals include restless legs,<br />
no sleep, aches and pains, and even<br />
vomiting.<br />
Each pill typically lasts 4-8 hours,<br />
but since Shamou had become dependent<br />
on it, the numbness did not last.<br />
So he was taking 10-15 a day, and one<br />
time, he took 20.<br />
After the opioid epidemic hit and he<br />
was unable to illegally obtain Vicodin,<br />
he started improperly acquiring Oxycontin<br />
and Oxycodone. Then he started<br />
doing heroin, which was cheaper than<br />
the pills and more intense. He was fired<br />
from his job at a local hospital for having<br />
fallen over on a stretcher. The hospital<br />
gave him a second chance because they<br />
support recovery, but he refused to keep<br />
up with their demands, which included<br />
taking Suboxone, a medicine used to<br />
treat opioid use disorder, and reporting<br />
for drug-testing. After one month, he<br />
failed his drug test and was fired again.<br />
Shamou tried hiding this from his<br />
parents, but they caught on. He believes<br />
they were initially in denial, but<br />
they confronted him the first time he<br />
went to jail. He was pulled over for<br />
swerving on the road as he tried to<br />
inject himself with heroin while driving.<br />
He stayed in the Macomb County<br />
Jail for one week before a friend bailed<br />
him out since his parents refused to.<br />
He went home to get clothes and told<br />
his parents he was not on drugs, that<br />
the police were lying. He knew that he<br />
had hurt them but did not care at the<br />
time. All he was thinking about was<br />
how he was going to get his next fix.<br />
The next few years were a battle.<br />
Shamou was in and out of jail and<br />
rehab. His mother and sister, Eva,<br />
started going to Peter’s Angels, a drug<br />
awareness program held at Mother<br />
of God Chaldean Catholic Church in<br />
Southfield. They met other family<br />
members of drug addicts and learned<br />
about a treatment center in Hawaii<br />
that a recovering addict had gone to.<br />
They resolved to send Shamou there<br />
for the two-and-a-half year program.<br />
At first, Shamou thought it was<br />
going to be a vacation. He thought it<br />
might help. He thought he would just<br />
shut his family up. He did not know<br />
the place was going to break him down<br />
to build him back up. He did not give<br />
it a chance. After two months, Shamou<br />
checked himself out and became<br />
homeless in Hawaii, sleeping under a<br />
tree for a week until he got a job and<br />
found a room to rent. Two months<br />
later, he showed up on his parents’<br />
doorstep.<br />
Of course, the Shamous were upset<br />
and urged him to go back, but they<br />
26 CHALDEAN NEWS <strong>MARCH</strong> <strong>2023</strong>
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