Peer Recovery Support Offers

Hope To Addicts

By Nancy K. Crevier

Gregory Williams, a 2001 graduate of Newtown High School, is pleased to be presenting two of his recent video documentaries at the Ridgefield Playhouse on November 10. (See accompanying story.)

Central Pride tells the story of The Leadership Group at Central High School in Bridgeport, a peer-to-peer recovery support program with more than 300 student participants in just four years. Vinnie documents the road to sobriety of a 22–year-old Ansonia man.

Mr Williams is a graduate of Quinnipiac University, a video editor, co-director of Connecticut Turning to Youth and Families, and believes in the power of peer support groups for young addicts. “My hope for this event is that people will hear about successful recoveries and find out about the many community services available statewide. I want to make the awareness of sustained recovery for youth greater in communities,” said Mr Williams. “Seeing and hearing people who have walked the walk is a powerful resource for recovery,” he added.

He should know. At age 17, after four years of abusing alcohol, marijuana, a plethora of pharmaceuticals, barely graduating, and finally becoming addicted to OxyContin, a synthetic heroin, Mr Williams was committed by his parents to an in-patient program at Caron Treatment Center in Pennsylvania, following a 45 mph car crash into a tree while under the influence.

“At age 16 I had started blacking out after using pharmaceuticals. That became ‘fun’ to me, not remembering what I had done the night before, hearing from friends what I had said and done and not recalling it. My thinking was insane,” Mr Williams said. “People would tell me I had to cool it, but I would just say, ‘No, I just like to party.’ I thought I was fine, I thought I was too young to have a problem,” he said.

By the time he got treatment, said Mr Williams, he was “doing things I never thought I would do.” He had had numerous brushes with the law, other car accidents, frequently stole from family and family friends, had unsuccessfully tried an outpatient program, had little connection to his family, and was supporting a $100 dollar a day OxyContin addiction, as well as drinking and smoking pot.

“I never intended to get addicted. I come from a good family, I had a lot of things I wanted, everything I needed, loving parents. But when I started experimenting, I found I had no ‘off’ button,” Mr Williams said.

He counts himself lucky that doctors at the hospital and his parents intervened before he turned 18. “I would never have gotten the help on my own,” he said.

At Caron Treatment Center, he discovered a common bond with the other young people in the program. “Through peer support, I was able to see that what I was thinking and doing was insane. The peers gave me a sense of perspective and I developed a desire to stay sober. Before that, to live with myself sober was a frightening thought. Through the years,” said Mr Williams, “having the peer network to stay sober has been important.”

Following his treatment, Mr Williams pursued a degree in media production, honing an interest in video production begun in high school. As part of a class project at Quinnipiac, he put together a documentary about a friend in recovery. “I realized that video could be an avenue for helping people find out about the recovery support system,” he said.

Since then, he has made three videos previous to the ones being shown November 10, thanks to minigrants received from Connecticut Turning to Youth and Families, an advocacy group of the Department of Children’s Services. The videos capture stories of young people through their eyes, allowing other young people seeking recovery to “hear someone who talks like them, who is their own age, and hear what it is like to dig themselves into a hole and dig themselves out again,” Mr Williams explained. “So many young people using drugs don’t realize that it is the drug use that is causing them all of their problems,” he added.

Helping others to know where to connect for peer recovery is one of his goals, said Mr Williams, who attributes his own sobriety with having peer groups to support him. “Studies show that if we can improve someone’s connection with recovery in the area in which they live, it can help with extended recovery,” he said.

He is also hopeful that viewing Central Pride will result in cross-fertilization of the Leadership Program to other schools. “We need to help each other to connect communities. In Central Pride you see a whole community where it is cool to be sober. There was a lot of drugs going on at NHS when I was there, and from what I hear and see, there still is,” said Mr Williams. “But it’s not just Newtown. It’s not just Bridgeport, or Ridgefield. [Drug and alcohol abuse] is in every school. I found it; people who are looking for that culture find it.”

But what he has found beyond drug addiction is the power of peer recovery support and his ability to carry that message to others.

“Part of the reason I am using my name in this article is to reduce the stigma of drug addiction in families,” said Mr Williams. Families need to ask for help, to find intervention as early as possible when they are aware of a drug problem, he urged. “[Drug problems] don’t have to be handled in the family. If we start treating drug addiction like the illness that it is, it is possible to overcome.”

Mr Williams actively offers support and encouragement to adults and friends who seek his help, since leaving treatment, and the video presentation is one of those efforts. It is a way to pay back how others help him stay sober. “Peer support,” he emphasized, “really works for young adults.”