“Reality hit me and I realized I don’t have any real friends, I’ve been f***** stranded on the street,” Jennifer, a recently re-arrested drug abuser whose name was changed to protect her identity, writes in an online plea for help. “Gimme a reason to keep on living.”

Hers is just one of countless similar stories of compounded despair that emerged, then snowballed, after the historic Oct. 29 hurricane.

Far from the camera glare cast on heroic nurses who evacuated newborn babies from the Sandy-crippled NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan at the height of its wrath, local drug rehab facilities faced similarly Herculean tasks in fighting a surge of relapses among patients. Three months later, treatment providers who were already unable to meet the demand of LI’s drug epidemic warn of a coming wave of additional substance abuse cases, sparked by the widespread trauma still reverberating throughout the region and among those in addiction’s grasp. The new onslaught strikes as many of the region’s addiction treatment services are still on life support due to the damage they sustained and others remain shuttered—such as the Long Beach Medical Center, one of LI’s main detox centers, which is closed through March.

“Like any other crisis, if things were not good before the crisis, the crisis will make things worse,” says Jamie Bogenshutz, executive director of Massapequa-based YES Community Counseling Center and president of the Nassau Alliance of Addiction Services, a rehab umbrella group. “The crazier life becomes for people, it becomes more obvious there are not enough resources.”

Studies show illicit drug use spikes in the aftermath of natural disasters. Adults who were displaced from their homes for more than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina—the one storm more damaging than Sandy—had increased drug use, more mental health issues and unmet treatment needs, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

In New York, 40,000 were displaced after Sandy. Providing them and others with Psychological First Aid are 17 LI mental health agencies among 35 statewide deploying 1,000 door-to-door crisis counselors as a part of “Project Hope.” The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded $8.2 million to the New York State Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which allocated $1.8 million to Nassau and nearly $1 million to Suffolk in November for the program, which runs nine months.

“The enormity of the personal challenges and material loss experienced has overwhelmed the usual coping capacities of most people,” said Dr. James Dolan, director of the Nassau County Office of Mental Health, Chemical Dependency and Developmental Disabilities Services, in a statement.

That includes previously sober superstorm survivors self-medicating with drugs or alcohol to deal with catastrophic losses of their homes, vehicles and belongings, as well as pre-Sandy substance abusers who’ve upped their doses to cope.

AFTER SANDY

With trains, gas, power and phone service largely unavailable in the days, weeks and even months after Sandy, an untold number of Long Islanders with heroin or prescription-drug dependencies were unable to meet their dealers and went into withdrawal—in some cases, revealing hidden addictions to their unwitting families.

“You had a whole bunch of young people literally hiding in their basements going through withdrawal, and their parents thought it was the flu,” says Jeffrey Reynolds, executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence [LICADD]. He recalls a client telling him, “A few days in the house with no lights, no power, no heat, and the demons are bound to come knocking—and, boy, did they.”

Many of those who were getting help found themselves displaced from blacked-out inpatient substance-abuse facilities or cut off from outpatient service providers, who were often dealing with their own stormy troubles at home. The severity of the fallout for this particularly unstable and vulnerable population varied.

“Some of those people were disengaged from treatment; they have been almost impossible to get back,” says David Cohen, director of Outpatient Addiction Services at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Riverhead and president of the Quality Consortium of Suffolk County, another rehab umbrella group. He’s most concerned with chemically dependent patients he describes as “pseudo homeless”—those one step from the streets.

For others in treatment, the disruption was relatively minimal, such as those at the Phoenix House Hauppauge Center Men’s Program—though residents were moved to the Phoenix House Brentwood Campus for one day until the power was restored at the Hauppauge facility.

Stories of doctors making house calls—or in some cases, shelter visits for displaced patients—were also commonplace in the immediate aftermath as providers desperately sought not to have their clients’ recovery undone by the storm’s disruption, considering the difficulty of getting many into rehab to begin with.

“If they couldn’t make it to us, we were going to get it to them,” Christina Noonan, program director of the Huntington outreach facility for Daytop Village, Inc., says of her staff’s doctor delivering Suboxone to clients despite blocked and flooded roads. “He somehow found a way.”

Not everyone in recovery was as lucky. A Daytop facility in Far Rockaway was forced to release 150 court-mandated patients onto the streets west of the Nassau-Queens line after the New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services stalled patients’ transfer to upstate Daytop facilities, the New York Daily News reported.

Some from the Rockaways joined those from LI’s ravaged South Shores, packing mental health wards as a spike in substance abusers became suicidal—along with people without prior mental health diagnoses.

“We were full, full to capacity for the first two months,” says one LI psychiatric nurse who asked that neither she nor her employer be identified in order for her to speak freely. “There was an increase in suicidal patients because they could not get their medication or because the pharmacies were closed or a lot of addicts who had no place to go.”

THE COMING STORM

Local substance-abuse professionals and anti-drug advocates worry that having the additional Sandy-inspired substance abusers referred to the already overburdened inpatient and outpatient treatment facilities limited by government austerity measures is a prescription for failure.

Bogenshutz of YES says Project Hope, while beneficial, will ultimately “unearth the next layer of issues” that will require additional resources.

“We just don’t know how far-reaching the demand for services is going to go,” concurs Joe Smith of Long Beach Reach, which has joined Project Hope and has been treating patients spilled over from the still-shuttered Long Beach Medical Center. “The resources are limited already…it’s really eaten into the safety network.”

Before the storm, Nassau cut funds to youth groups involved in anti-drug counseling last year, and Nassau University Medical Center replaced some of its detox beds with outpatient care. Post-Sandy, LBMC’s repair costs are estimated between $32 million and $56 million—although hospital officials are reportedly prioritizing their rehab’s reopening.

LBMC representatives did not respond to requests for comment, but Patricia Hacken, director of alcohol and substance abuse services at the hospital, told the Press last summer that LBMC had applied to double its detox beds from eight to 16 because of a “significant increase” in requests for inpatient care.

“It is a significant loss, and I don’t necessarily see anybody picking up the slack,” says LICADD’s Reynolds, who fears the treatment gap will force some into “do-it-yourself detox,” which “isn’t a winning formula for most people.”

Smith, whose offices were not damaged in the flooding but finally got power and heat back the day after Thanksgiving, expects the surge of additional people seeking treatment to last into next year.

“We know from past experience that in the aftermath of disasters the surge in demand for treatment begins…three to six months after,” he says. “That surge in demand lasts for quite some time.”

Others interviewed for this story were optimistic that some of the recently approved Sandy aid funds will eventually be allocated to help fill the gap in post-Sandy substance-abuse services.

“Not surprisingly was that folks most impacted by the storm were somewhat isolated,” says John Cappola, president of the New York State Association of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Providers. “It took a while before we had a sense of how people were doing out there…I’m hoping that we learned a lot from this.”

New York State residents experiencing emotional distress as a result of Hurricane Sandy can access free, confidential crisis counseling 24/7 by calling LifeNet at 800-543-3638.

Omar Santiago suffered a head wound after allegedly stealing from a West Sayville wedding.

It turns out 2012 was a bang up year for stupid crime on Long Island as local suspects—some of whom are still fighting their charges—raised the bar for WTF police news moments.

And it wasn’t an easy year to be a stand-out crook. Remember the Sandy crime sprees, gas line assaults and post-superstorm price gougers? Then there’s the alleged public corruption, including the conviction of former Nassau County Legis. Roger Corbin, the arrest of Hempstead Town Clerk Mark Bonilla and a half dozen Nassau County police officers and officials facing various charges over the past 12 months.

While those who made this list didn’t leave anyone dead, some came close or, at the very least, put the suspects and public at risk. Move over Lindsay Lohan, these are our local candidates for TruTV’s World’s Dumbest Criminals.

10. Alleged West Sayville Wedding Gift Thief

Weddings are always nice. Love is in the air. There’s usually an open bar. Families put aside their feuds for a day. But someone always makes an ass of themselves. Or, in Omar Santiago’s case, Suffolk County police said he ruined one couple’s nuptials over Labor Day weekend by trying to steal a box of gift envelopes. The New Jersey teen was quickly apprehended by fellow guests as he ran from the West Sayville Country Club after stuffing a bunch of the envelopes down his pants. Smooth. The gifts were returned and Santiago pleaded not guilty.

9. New Cassel Man Plays Dentist

The tools Nassau police said Manuel Carranza used.

OK, this one is kind of disturbing. Many people are scared of the dentist, but Nassau County police said more than 100 folks had no problem having an undocumented immigrant with a sixth-grade education use unsanitary second-hand tools to perform dental work on them in his dirty New Cassel home/office. A tipster dropped a dime on the wannabe tooth fairy in April—after he’d been running his cash-only business for at least a year. Manuel Carranza was charged with unauthorized practice of a crime, criminal diversion of a prescription and other counts.

8. Bellport Teen Allegedly Brings Drugs to Court

Ah, to be young again. That feeling of invincibility that gets so many kids in trouble is apparently strong with this one. Authorities said that Keandre Hudson swallowed bags of cocaine and heroin before being arrested for fleeing police in October. He passed the drugs while locked up at Suffolk County jail, where he is being held after not posting bail. The 17-year-old Bellport man then allegedly brought the drugs with him to court while pleading not guilty Nov. 20 to fleeing cops and other charges. That’s when investigators searched him, found the narcotics and added new charges, authorities said. What more convenient place to get arrested than before a judge?

7. Garden City Man Accused of Mailing Poo to Ex-wife

Love stinks, as The J. Geils Band famously sang. But federal authorities alleged that Gerald Desiderio took that song a bit too literally when he reportedly mailed alimony checks smeared with poop to his ex-wife in Arizona. The 51-year-old Garden City man apparently took a cue from the likes of drug dealers who don’t realize they can get busted for dropping narcotics in the mail. The feds said Desiderio also mailed vulgar notes, “tasteless objects” and a photo of a knife with a serrated blade. He will face the charges in Arizona, although if there’s any upside to the charges being on the federal level, he won’t have to deal with “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” Joe Arpaio.

6. Drunk Driver Saved by Cops Before Train Hits Her Car

This one could have ended a lot worse. In a scene torn out of The Fugitive, a drunken driver mistakenly turned onto the Long Island Rail Road tracks in Bay Shore last spring, got stuck and had to be rescued by Suffolk County police officers moments before a train smashed into her car. Police had tried to radio ahead to get the train to stop, but there wasn’t enough time. Neither the officers, the driver nor anyone aboard the train were injured, but the Volkswagon was totaled. Oh yea, and the 43-year-old Islandia woman was arrested for DWI.

Suffolk police found this alligator in Mastic Beach Sept. 28.

5. Nine Alligators Found on Long Island in Six Weeks

Here’s the lone stupid crime on this list that remains unsolved. Were there more alligators dumped across Nassau and Suffolk counties before the temperatures dropped to sub-Everglades levels? Maybe. But now that winter’s in full swing, any baby gators that turn up next will likely be frozen to death. The tiny killing machines started popping up Sept. 28 in Mastic Beach. Others were found in Shirley, Wading River, Lake Ronkonkoma, Yaphank and two turned up in Baldwin in two days. The most recent one was discovered in Southampton on Nov. 11. Who knows how many more would’ve been found had Sandy not struck in the middle of this mysterious gator dumping spree.

4. Jason Kidd Nabbed for Hamptons DWI Crash

Jason Kidd in his Southampton police mugshot

What makes the NY Knicks’ point guard arrest stupider than any other drunken driving charge or celebrity brush with law enforcement? The 39-year-old NBA All Star had only signed a $9-million contract with the team 10 days before allegedly wrapping his SUV around a utility pole near his Water Mill home in July. Adding to the stupid timing of the allegations was that they came just as team owner James Dolan decided against matching the Houston Rockets $25-million contract offer for breakout star Jeremy Lin. Kidd’s fighting the charges.

3. Williston Park Man Charged With Shooting Girlfriend Over Zombies

People have strong feelings about the fictional zombie apocalypse. But none more so than The Walking Dead fan Jared Gurman, who Nassau police said was so adamant in his argument that the government can release a zombie virus that he shot his girlfriend of four years in the back outside his Willison Park home Dec. 4—about three weeks before the world didn’t end for the Mayan “apocalypse.” The woman survived and Gurman was charged with second-degree attempted murder. He’s being held on $1 million bail.

2. The Long Island Hot Dog Hooker

Catherine Scalia, aka the Long Island hot dog hooker.

This is one for the ages. Longtime stripper, bikini lover and tube-steak slinger Catherine Scalia, 45, propositioned undercover cops at her Baldwin hot dog truck last May. They charged her with prostitution when they showed up at her East Rockaway home. She argued she only was giving lap dances, not selling sex, then pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor prostitution charge and was sentenced to seven days time served. We’re not judging strippers or wiener salespeople here. What’s so stupid about this case—aside from the hilariously incongruous combination of professions—is that she was busted for doing the same thing in the same spot on Sunrise Highway years prior. And vowed to continue.

1. The Jones Beach Faked Death Plot

Sometimes people joke about faking their own death, starting their life over under an alias and living off the life insurance money. Most people have enough sense to know that it’s too ridiculous an idea for it to ever work. Then there’s Raymond Roth of Massapequa, who Nassau authorities said tried to do just that after allegedly cleaning out his wife’s bank account, putting his house up for sale and faking his own drowning at Jones Beach in August. He later turned up in Florida, sped back to LI when the alleged plot unraveled and turned himself in after a stop at the psych ward. He pleaded not guilty, along with his kid who’s accused of helping him. His wife’s filed for divorce.