Michael Lewis, director of the Recover Project in Greenfield, hasn’t even been able to get his coat off, and he has been at work for a half-hour already.
The women’s writing group needs to be let in and assisted; the chair arrangement in the back of the building has been considered a fire hazard and needs moving; the group’s temporary slogan “Got Recovery?” has a patent against it by another group, and now Lewis and his team must create another catchy line to earworm its way into the heads of those who need help.
All these issues and many others are what Lewis deals with on a daily basis. But these issues are nothing compared to the ones that he dealt with on his way to becoming the director of the Recover Project in Greenfield.
“I had no job, and my friend was trying to starve me out of his house. I ran out of cocaine and was using crystal meth,” Lewis said. His friend’s house was in El Paso, Texas.
“I was crashing on my friend’s couch and blood was pouring out of my nose, and I just started crying at 3:30 in the morning,” Lewis said.
“That’s when I knew I needed help.”
From that point on, Lewis, now 56, began a long and difficult journey toward curing his addiction and becoming a contributing member to Franklin County. Today, he is someone who is respected and revered by those around him.
“Michael has rapport with every member here, and he sits and talks with everyone,” Penelope Davis of Greenfield said.
“He helped me get housing just two weeks ago. Called up the section eight (goverment-subsidized housing) officials and talked with them. Within five minutes they found my paperwork and everything was fixed,” Davis said.
Davis is a member of the Recover Project. She did not battle addiction like many others in the program, but instead has dealt with years of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She has claimed to have been in abusive relationships with her parents and her significant others in the past.
“(The Recover Project) isn’t just for those with substance abuse,” Davis said. “Compulsive gamblers, those with PTSD and veterans are all welcome here, in addition to those with substance abuse.”
People like Davis often find themselves in the Recover Project, working with Lewis. And Lewis said that this is because he and his team have what they call “lived experience,” which allows them to have a close relationship with the people who come in for help. Or as Lewis interchangeably calls them: “family” and “community.”
“Everyone has gone through something here, every team member has ‘the lived experience’,” Kaitlyn John, Lewis’s team member said. “Most of us go through drug or alcohol addiction, and some go through dual diagnoses. But we all go through something.”
Dual diagnoses may include a combination of drug or alcohol abuse, in addition to mental illnesses like depression or anxiety. Other dual diagnoses may be PTSD and depression, or OCD and schizophrenia.
Lewis had a dual diagnosis.
His life was tumultuous, by most accounts. He was adopted by his grandmother, after his mother gave birth to him when she was 15 years old.
Lewis never knew who his father was, and his mother was raised as his sister. According to Lewis, this was a Southern tradition his grandmother, Ella Nora Johnson Lewis, bestowed upon him and his mother.
“This created a lot of resentment between us,” Lewis said of the relationship between him and his mother. “She was living in another home and I would visit her on the weekends, and she would beat me for doing something wrong, and I never understood it.”
Lewis said that he found out, when he was 12 years old, that the woman who was being referred to as his sister was actually his mother.
Lewis, who was already dealing with emotional turmoil, didn’t know how to process the information. So, he began to be violent and angry as a teenager, in part he feels, because of these unresolved feelings and turmoil.
Eventually, though, Lewis found an outlet in football.
“As a teen I used that anger on the football field,” he said.
But it didn’t fully erase the feelings he had.
Lewis began struggling with depression throughout high school, and when he was 16, he attempted suicide.
“I graduated as the number 2 running back in Mass., but I was still alone. I just felt alone,” he said.
The same year Lewis graduated — two years after attempting to take his own life — more tragedy befell his family.
The grandmother who had raised him -, the only parental figure he knew – was diagnosed with bone cancer.
Lewis began to care for her, helping her to the bathroom, feeding her, massaging her muscles so they wouldn’t break her now-fragile cancer-stricken bones — but he couldn’t handle it alone, so he sought a way out.
With his grandmother at home and sick, Lewis joined the US Marine Corps.
“I went into the Marine Corps to run away, to escape,” Lewis said. “I was running from my grandma, the one who cared for me, as she deteriorated. And I was running away from the destructive childhood.”
Eventually, Lewis’s grandmother lost her battle with cancer, dying in 1979, shortly after Lewis returned from boot camp.
Lewis, with no reason to stay in Massachusetts, decided to continue with his military career, and proceeded to do two tours with the Marines.
But during that time, more unresolved emotions took their toll.
Lewis said that when he got out of his second tour of duty and ended up in Texas, he had developed PTSD. In order to escape, he began using drugs.
“I started self-medicating with cocaine. That’s when I started down that road,” Lewis said.
Lewis tried to stop using the drug several times during this period, but couldn’t.
“Anytime I stopped using, the pain would come back. So I kept using until I crashed and burned.”
And that crash-and-burn happened on his friend’s couch in El Paso.
From there, Lewis was determined to get his life back on track. As members of Alcoholics Anonymous say, “he hit rock bottom.” He decided to struggle his way back up.
Lewis gave up drugs, became a truck driver, delivering beer full-time, and eventually had a family — a wife and a set of twins. He enjoyed his job and he was good at it. Life for Lewis was good.
But then, tragedy struck again — Lewis was arrested in 1995.
“I got a job at the Grand Canyon and I stayed clean,” he said. “But then I went to jail for a crime I didn’t commit.”
According to Lewis, a family member used his license to take a car dealer’s vehicle for a test drive. He never returned with the car.
Lewis was sought in connection with the missing car. He said he had a lock-tight alibi — he was working during the time of the theft and couldn’t have possibly done what he was accused of.
Lewis worked with a lawyer who claimed that the problem was settled and he would receive a deferred adjudication for lack of evidence. A judge placed him on probation.
Lewis continued to work and serve his probation, and said that he followed all the rules laid out for him. However, after changing probation officers two times and, as Lewis claimed, “paperwork not being filed,” the state saw that Lewis had not followed his probation protocols.
In 1997, with twins and a wife and a steady job, Lewis was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison for violating parole. He served 11 months.
After getting out of jail, Lewis felt that he needed a change.
“I kept hearing a voice telling me to go back to Mass.,” he said.
So, Lewis moved back to Massachusetts. He was having trouble finding a job however, due to lack of an education.
“In Mass. people told me that in order to get a job I needed a degree,” he said. Lewis contemplated getting a degree, and applied to Greenfield Community College.
At the same time, a factory job opened at a factory where several of his friends worked.
“GCC still didn’t come through. I called and told them I have a job offer and I was about to take it,” Lewis said.
“The GCC rep said, ‘no no, you get your butt down here. You’re going to school here’,” Lewis said. “Five years later I have a bachelor’s degree from Elms College.”
Lewis attended college knowing that he wanted to help people, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. He eventually enrolled in the social work program at Elms, and became an intern at Recover Project. After his internship, Linda Sarage, then-director of the Project, hired Lewis.
Lewis felt that he fit the position well and was genuinely helping others. But Sarage, his mentor at the program, was about to retire and someone needed to fill her position. Many people asked Lewis to apply, and he kept refusing.
He finally gave in, and in 2015 Lewis became the new director of the Recover Project. Along with that new position came a new attitude as he took over the program.
“We don’t tell people what to do here,” Lewis said. “We help you along.
“We tell people that we’re walking along with you. It works to have that human interaction, that human connection,” he said.
He said the Recover Project provides something for those with nothing — community.
“That’s why I work at the Recover Project,” he said. “Because I had nothing and fell through the cracks in El Paso, and there are millions like me who fall through the cracks.
“It takes a village. People aren’t going to get well just going to detox. Getting them clean, connecting people, giving them resources — that’s what works,” Lewis said.
Lewis has six children and 16 grandchildren. His former wife and twins, who are now 24, live in Texas. His oldest son has been in the Navy for 15 years. He said he has relationships with all of his children.
“I’m very proud of all my kids, they’re wonderful people,” he said.
But Lewis, in spite of his successes and all that he has overcome, refuses to take credit for what he has done, both in his life and with the Recover Project.
“I don’t do anything any team member doesn’t do,” he said. “I’m part of a team.”
If you feel that you need help, whether it is with addiction or it is with emotional distress or something indefinable, you can reach out to the Recover Project at (413)774-5489, or stop by at 68 Federal St., Greenfield. Also, visit: www.recoverproject.org