{"id":41459,"date":"2016-05-10T11:46:45","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T16:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=41459"},"modified":"2016-05-10T11:46:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T16:46:45","slug":"chicagos-former-addicts-help-addicts-recover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/chicagos-former-addicts-help-addicts-recover\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago\u2019s former addicts help addicts recover"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anna Boisseau<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s nearly 12:30 p.m. when a rushed young man drops by the Chicago Recovery Alliance\u2019s parked silver truck in West Garfield Park. He\u2019s turned away for HIV testing, but told to come back next week, but just a bit earlier. The truck can\u2019t be late for its next stop in Austin. If the staff and volunteers don\u2019t show up, addicts might think the program, like others facing budget shortfalls, is unreliable. And that means next time they need clean syringes, they might not come back to the truck.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t show up because it\u2019s raining out or you know it\u2019s going to be slow\u2026then they might not get the stuff they need,\u201d said John Gutenson, who has been with the program for 15 years. \u201cAnd they might not rely on you the next time because you weren\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The number of participants fluctuates at each site, but non-profit Chicago Recovery Alliance (CRA)’s message stays the same: to advocate for any positive change. The organization\u2019s idea is to reduce harm among drug users by giving them access to hygienic supplies like syringes and “cookers,” a small container used to prepare heroin for injection. CRA also provides information on how to use naloxone to overturn an overdose, and free testing for HIV and Hepatitis C.<\/p>\n

If and when participants are ready to seek help for their addiction,\u00a0 CRA can refer them to a treatment provider. But that doesn\u2019t happen with everyone, and that\u2019s not really the point. The alliance focuses on treating addicts like other humans, and letting them know someone cares about their wellbeing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Gutenson knows the importance of just being there until an addict seeks help. A former user, he is one of several staff members of CRA that decided to help other addicts after becoming clean.<\/p>\n

\u201cHelping people until they figure things out made perfect sense to me,\u201d he said<\/p>\n

After losing a stepson to an overdose, Gutenson wanted to deal with his feelings of guilt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did get high for a few years while he was around me, so I was feeling badly that I might\u2019ve in fact influenced his life in a negative way,\u201d he said. A friend and staff member of CRA suggested he get involved with the organization. Gutenson ran his own business at the time, but gave it up to work full time at the Recovery Alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kept finding myself wanting to be at the van when I was out making real money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Chicago
Chicago Recovery Alliance’s silver trucks make daily stops throughout the city. (Anna Boisseau\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, the room where he used to shoot heroin has been converted into a storage space for clean needles, he said. Drug users in the western suburbs can swing by if they are in need of hygienic supplies. Though he is a full-time employee of the alliance, and goes out on site visits at least three times a week, he does this outside of work.<\/p>\n

Wednesday evening, volunteer Benjamin Wegner is at the Chicago Recovery Alliance\u2019s Lawndale location getting supplies ready for a site visit. He uses tweezers to put white cotton balls into little plastic baggies. He calls it a \u201cmundane task,\u201d but enjoys the work enough to have come back to volunteer weekly since August.<\/p>\n

\u201cI work part time as a barista and let me tell you that the participants of the CRA \u2026are much friendlier than people who come up to pick up coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wegner is a graduate student in clinical psychology, a contributing factor to his interest in harm reduction, but not the source of it. It was his personal experience with 12 step programs that made him want to see what other treatment options existed. Wegner became active in AA to deal with a severe drinking problem, he said.<\/p>\n

While he still supports the organization, Wegner said he had a problem with the one-size fits all approach to addiction. In particular, he said he didn\u2019t like the lack of information provided about naloxone, the drug that reverses overdoses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey know you\u2019re going to relapse. Most people relapse dozens of times before they get sober,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you know someone\u2019s going to relapse, why don\u2019t you tell them about naloxone?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"chicago
Chicago Recovery Alliance gives out naloxone, a drug that helps reverse overdoses, to its participants. (Anna Boisseau\/MEDILL)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He found he connects more with the Chicago Recovery Alliance\u2019s focus on bringing people into the fold of care.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are getting access to care because we\u2019re not judging them. If we said you couldn\u2019t receive any of these things until you don\u2019t have drugs in your system, what we\u2019re doing is to set a really high threshold that people need to meet in order to reach services,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re simply lowering that threshold to where people are actually at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back on the truck, CRA staff members Cheryl Haull and Susie Gualtieri note that it\u2019s been a slow day in West Garfield Park. They never know what to expect from site visits because there are many\u00a0 contributing factors to whether participants stop by for supplies.<\/p>\n

Faces brighten when one familiar client, enters the truck. Haull and Gualtieri run up to him and give him a hug.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow\u2019s the hustle been, babe?\u201d Gualtieri asks him. He takes a few boxes of syringes and other supplies and says he\u2019s been lucky and hasn\u2019t had to hustle much this week. However, he also shares that one of his friends died that morning.<\/p>\n

Haull asks if it was an overdose and if he tried to revive his friend, but learns he wasn\u2019t with him at the time. If they are open to it, participants of the CRA are trained in how to use naloxone and given supplies.<\/p>\n

Haull has worked for CRA for 22 years, but she said she wasn\u2019t convinced by its methods when she first started. Early on, she found herself being critical of some of the program participants, as she herself had been in recovery for two years at that time. \u201cI\u2019m looking at the people who are still coming on the truck\u2026and I found myself being kind of judgmental.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the late founders of the program, George Williams, talked to her about how to think about participants who were still actively using drugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned how to meet people where they are and understand a lot better,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I was using drugs I didn\u2019t have anybody tell me, \u2018Hey I love you.\u2019\u201d Haull decided to seek help for her addiction after she got to the point of smoking crack with her daughter, something she had told herself she would never do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember one day I gave her some money to go get some [crack]. And she took too long. And I was\u2026calling her all kind of names,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I said \u2018What the hell, what has happened to you?\u2019 And I went and looked in that mirror and that was not Cheryl.\u201d Even when she quit using drugs, she never expected to make a career around working with drug addicts.<\/p>\n

Haull realized the value of her work after being placed in Englewood, the neighborhood where she had lived and used drugs. As a lot of the drug community in neighborhood knew her, it was easy to build trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter working on this van for\u2026some years, it got to this point where…it was like I remember being right there,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it was so good to give somebody a hug. And it was so good to tell somebody that \u2018I love you.\u2019 And when they leave off this truck, they would feel so much better about themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this sense of helping others go through a tough time that Gutenson says keeps volunteers and staff invested in the program. \u201cThey see that it actually changes people\u2019s lives, that it keeps people alive,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re able to do something like that, it makes all the other shit you have to do in life just to get by and survive a little more tolerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susie Gualtieri, a staff member at Chicago Recovery Alliance, waits for participants to stop by her organization’s truck in Humboldt Park. The non-profit provides free hygienic syringes and other supplies to drug users. (Anna Boisseau\/MEDILL)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Anna Boisseau It\u2019s nearly 12:30 p.m. when a rushed young man drops by the Chicago Recovery Alliance\u2019s parked silver truck in West Garfield Park. He\u2019s turned away for HIV testing, but told to come back next week, but just a bit earlier. The truck can\u2019t be late for its next stop in Austin. If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":252,"featured_media":41634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[452,28,29,675,2582],"tags":[1003,2758,192],"class_list":["post-41459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-chicago","category-general-interest","category-health-and-science","category-social-justice","category-spring-2016","tag-addiction","tag-chicago-recovery-alliance","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"\nChicago\u2019s former addicts help addicts recover - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/chicagos-former-addicts-help-addicts-recover\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chicago\u2019s former addicts help addicts recover - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Anna Boisseau It\u2019s nearly 12:30 p.m. when a rushed young man drops by the Chicago Recovery Alliance\u2019s parked silver truck in West Garfield Park. 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