Project Renewal: Fighting drug addiction through farming

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NEWS) - Forty miles outside New York City, a town known as Garrison is quietly fighting the opioid and heroin epidemic that is tearing apart families and communities across America.

Cory Weimar is from Suffolk County, Long Island. When he was a kid, it was beers and weed in the woods with friends, usually on the weekends, he says. But after a back injury at work in his early 20s and the endless supply of pain pills his doctor supplied, he had an addiction that soon turned to heroin.

Project Renewal is a place for people who are clean and sober and are in the early stages of trying to get back on their feet. It's unique because it's a farm.

There is something empowering about planting a seed in March and seeing it turn into a plant or a vegetable. That kind of nurturing nurtures them.

This week, Cory will celebrate one year of sobriety. His heroin habit has been replaced with a job at Home Depot. His desires for dope have been replaced by wanting to be a better dad.