Pottstown resident Randy Winder, second from right, shares his personal story during a Sept. 9, 2025 Reflections in Recovery event hosted at Theatre Horizon in Norristown. (Rachel Ravina – MediaNews Group)
Randy Winder held a microphone on stage at Theatre Horizon to share his struggle with addiction and journey to sobriety.
“Two years later, the battle is just as hard for me today,” Winder said.
Winder, 41, of Pottstown, is the brother of Montgomery County Commissioners’ Vice Chairwoman Jamila Winder. The siblings engaged in a candid discussion about his first-hand account with addiction during Reflections in Recovery at Theatre Horizon in Norristown.
Coinciding with National Recovery Month, Montgomery County hosted the Sept. 9 event, complete with two panel discussions showcasing addiction at multiple levels. The audience was filled with elected officials, judges, county staff members, advocates, and others who’ve had their own struggles with addiction.
“We went to some really dark places, but that journey has made me better as a commissioner, and it certainly informs my work,” Jamila Winder said.
While substance abuse has impacted the Winder family personally, other aspects of the forum touched on policy discussions at the county level and the importance of recovery centers in helping treat those battling addiction. Additional panelists included Montgomery County Coroner Dr. Janine Darby, Northampton County Council President Lori Vargo Heffner, and Delaware County Council Chairwoman Dr. Monica Taylor
Jamila Winder stressed the importance of public input in the greater conversation surrounding substance abuse to better inform elected officials making decisions. Taking a holistic approach, involving providers, loved ones, and those with lived experience, remains top of mind.
“We have made it a priority to center our decisions on community voices, community needs and community experiences. Real people have guided our opioid settlement fund allocations,” Jamila Winder said. “This helps us launch new initiatives to directly support where it’s most effective, including our upcoming emergency behavioral crisis center. Because policy, programming and even recovery itself can’t get very far if we don’t listen to people.”
In the first fireside chat, moderated by Dr. Latika Davis-Jones, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, Jamila and Randy Winder were joined by Darnell Hinton, founder and president of Teach One Feed One, and CEO of Unity Sober Living Homes, where Randy now works as a house manager.
While it hasn’t been an easy road, Jamila said, his “journey through recovery” was “nothing short of humbling and inspiring.” She beamed with pride as she told the crowd that her brother was approaching an important milestone on Thursday, Sept. 18.
“Fast forward to 2025, and he’s sitting here almost two years clean and sober. I couldn’t have predicted that, but it’s a testament that people can and do recover,” Jamila Winder said.
‘It just started out very small’
The Winders moved from Philadelphia to Montgomery County in 1983 when Jamila and Randy were small children. Raised in East Norriton Township, Randy said he had a “great life by all societal norms.”
“I had a story very similar to a lot of people. Just a happy, loving home,” Randy said of his family. Their father was a deputy warden at the former Pennsylvania Correctional Institute at Graterford, now SCI Phoenix, and their mother was an educator at the School District of Philadelphia.
“My dad worked in the Department of Corrections his entire life,” Randy Winder said. “So I think his biggest fear was to ever see his son, a state member of the Department of Corrections, and I think he did everything in his power to prevent that from happening.”
Randy Winder recalled being in sixth grade in the bathroom of East Norriton Middle School when he first “started using substances.”
“It just started out very small,” Randy said, adding that “it started really early. It started with socially acceptable drugs” such as marijuana. “It just slowly progressed, and for a long time I was able to be a weekend warrior or [an] afternoon kind of thing.”
While Randy Winder went on to graduate high school, earn a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from Penn State and work in the corporate sector, he candidly shared how things had escalated.
“It turned into prescription pills. It turned into other substances, and it eventually got to the point where I was introduced to some areas like Kensington … just open-air drug markets that were seeing a lot of overdoses,” Randy Winder said.
“I was able to function for a very long time, but addiction took such a great hold on you. Like all the things I thought I would never do, that list started to become shorter and shorter and shorter,” he continued. “My college degree started to mean less and less and less. My career ambitions started to decline … and my interest became, how can I get the next one?”
As her brother went through numerous treatment programs, Jamila Winder recalled the strain it put on her family over the course of the 14 years. She participated in family-related programs coinciding with Randy’s treatment.
“I would be there with my mom and dad, and it got to a point where it was so repetitive that I just stopped, and at some point, there was a moment where we didn’t speak for almost three years because it got so out of control and I had to set a boundary,” she said.
Jamila Winder spoke of a time when her mother was sick and she remembered getting a call from her brother one Valentine’s Day, and he told her he’d received “an 18-to-36-month sentence for drug-related charges, and it was the first time I had talked to him in years.”
Something in that moment struck her, she said, as she made a decision.
“I’m going to step up because my mom was sick and she couldn’t any longer, but I was going to set those boundaries and I was going to have an expectation of him,” Jamila Winder said.
“I will never forgive myself if something happened to my mother, and our relationship was not repaired,” she said.
Randy Winder acknowledged the “negative impact I’ve had on my family” during his time in active addiction. It was something he realized during his recovery journey.
“We create a lot of wreckage when we use and abuse substances,” he said, adding that “I would venture to say that the family around them suffers more than the addict that’s actually in the addiction.”
“They’re the ones that are having to get phone calls from a state penitentiary,” he continued. “They’re the ones having to put out their resources for commissary, spend our time in rehab centers on visitations, and it just completely crippled the relationship that my sister and I have…”
At one point, Randy Winder questioned, “Why doesn’t she help me?” But he eventually understood.
“Thank God. I’m so grateful to God that Jamila was not an enabler, because if she was, I may not be sitting [and] … being able to share,” Randy said as applause filled the room.
As Randy navigated the criminal justice center and recovery, Jamila Winder acknowledged that “our systems are set up to fail most people that are in active addiction.”
She shared how, at one time, Randy Winder was leaving a correctional facility “and had nowhere to go because we had set that boundary.” She went on to say he ended up at Kintock Group halfway house near Kensington.
“So what happened? Can you guess what happened? Relapse,” she said, underscoring “when you have people with a known substance use issue, and they might be clean and sober for the period of time that they’re in the system. Sending them to a halfway house like Kintock keeps perpetuating the problem.”
‘You have to honor those moments and those successes even if they feel small’
She applauded Hinton’s Unity Sober Living Homes, located in Pottstown, as an “example of a recovery house program that is working.”
“But our municipalities are so quick to say, not in my backyard,” Jamila Winder said. “We don’t want recovery houses in our backyard, and you have families … from all walks of life that are suffering from addiction that could leverage a resource like a recovery house. Now, I know there are bad ones out there.”
“But if it was not for Darnell and his program, and giving my brother a safe place to land where he could just focus on his society, I don’t know where we would be,” she continued. “So that I applaud counties that are investing, and I applaud municipalities for welcoming sober living homes in their neighborhoods.”
As Randy Winder continues on his own path, he’s encountered challenges, but receives support from his sister in the form of “weekly pep talks” where she encourages him to stay positive and enjoy his time with his 7-year-old son, family members and those who love him.
“You’re going to be two years clean and sober. You were out and got to see mommy before she passed away. You have to honor those moments and those successes even if they feel small,” she said.
