CHICAGO — Michael Seminetta, a recovering heroin addict, is riding his bike from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, to raise awareness and money for drug rehab centers after spending 20 years in and out of prisons.
It’s a ride many thought the now 40-year-old wouldn’t be alive to make.
Now clean for two years, Seminetta initially turned to heroin in his late teens and spent decades chasing the drug amid prison stints.
“Going in and out of jail, rehab, and mostly my family being heartbroken was a very big motivator for me to get clean,” Seminetta told WGN-TV.
Born in Chicago, the Evergreen Park native’s life was unlike that of most kids. Baseball was Seminetta’s love, but things changed when his parents divorced when he was 9 years old. His mother, Colleen, would soon find herself doing drugs regularly. When Seminetta and his siblings stayed over, parties often went into the early morning hours.
“I did expose my children to some bad things,” admits Colleen McCann, Seminetta’s mother.
“They weren’t hungry and they weren’t living on the street, so I made up a whole lot of excuses to make it seem that it was OK.”
Soon after graduating high school, Michael developed an addiction himself, forming a habit so bad that he would regularly steal from retailers.
“Horrible guilt,” he said. “It wasn’t easy for me to go and steal from a store. It’s not that I didn’t feel guilt about it, but something inside of me, the addiction, wouldn’t let me not get my next fix.”
After six stints in prison and one too many close calls, Seminetta decided, with a renewed faith in his Christianity, he would finally leave all the madness behind. Holding true to a promise, he would chronicle his odyssey in a book he authored entitled, ‘Ripple.’
Seminetta’s sister, Jessica, said she is thankful for both her mother and brother’s recovery.
“I’m just really proud of how far my mom and my brother have come,” she said. “It’s been a really long time coming, watching them drown themselves, practically, in their addiction. I’m really glad that they’re still here and that they pulled themselves out.”
Riding his bike cross country to encourage others still struggling that they, too, can find a better way, Seminetta has already made it 297 miles to St. Louis with a lot of water, protein, Advil, and several overnight stops along the way at rehab centers.
While Seminetta said he knows the roads traveled will be filled with flat tires, exhausted legs, wonderful sights and people, and greater perils unknown, he noted that some uncertainty summed up the challenge of leaving behind the life of addiction.
“I don’t know what I don’t know,” Seminetta said. “But like getting clean, no one knows. You just got to venture into it. I don’t think anyone’s prepared for getting clean and sober.”