As a major in the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management, Abbi Cushing of Greenfield will spend her days this fall learning how to lead a business.
But her path to higher education was far from easy: Cushing has been in long-term recovery from an addiction to heroin and other substances for more than seven years.
Now, she has found a calling as a leader of another sort, using her past to help guide others who are trying to pull themselves out of the spiral of their own addiction. She is a mentor in the Center for Human Development’s new Recovery Coaching program, which launched this spring through a federal grant.
Justin McNary, CHD’s case manager who oversees the program, said similar initiatives have been going on for years in other parts of the state, including Hampden and Suffolk counties. Originally, the programs were started to serve more targeted populations — recently released inmates, veterans, and other high-risk groups and later became popular as a private service. Now, they’re common at institutions like Massachusetts General Hospital and North Suffolk Behavioral Health, he said.
CHD’s program is funded through a grant that was secured by the regional Opioid Task Force. It connects the coaches with clients to help them navigate the sometimes-complicated road to recovery.
After an initial clinical assessment and enrollment as a patient in CHD’s outpatient program, the clilent works with a coach to help the recovering addict obtain the things needed to establish a life beyond addiction — opening a bank account, repairing a credit score, sorting out a criminal record or establishing a work history, skills and resume.
“You’re going to get people with some real broken time that needs to be explained, and when you do credit checks and you’ve got a terrible one, you might not be able to open a bank account because you left a huge overdraft tab,” McNary said. “All this stuff that, frankly, you can address some of it but even getting a primary care provider is not the easiest thing in the world when you have this low threshold of frustration. It can be really overwhelming.”
The recovery coaches work to identify those challenges and barriers and work toward developing a plan to overcome them, McNary said. “Why reinvent the wheel every time? Why make everybody go through what the coaches went through alone when they are in a good position to be very helpful to people?”
For Cushing, it’s “been there, done that.”
“I know what it feels like to have an active addiction, to struggle and feel completely hopeless, or not know where to go and have that addiction haunting you all the time,” she said. “That’s what makes recovery coaching work. You get me, I get you. We’re peers.”
Having direct “lived experience” like that, McNary said, makes it much easier for a coach and client to connect without the client having to explain their situation or worry about the stigma involved.
“There’s a point (in addiction), if you’ve had your life taken over by this obsession and impulsive behavior, this really self-destructive behavior… If you haven’t sat there and done something that you know you’re stuck in this spot and you have one last chance, one break, all you have to do is not do that — and you do it anyways,” McNary said. “There’s a point where if I’ve been through that and you haven’t, there is a certain built-in lack of communication between us.”
Starting with a drinking problem as a teenager and quickly progressing to harder substances, Cushing said she spent years using drugs to cope with trauma she experienced early in life and to get through her days. A pregnancy — deemed viable after four miscarriages, dispelling her assumption that she was unable to have children — changed everything for her, she said, and set her on the first steps down a path to sobriety.
“When I got pregnant, I tried to get sober for many years. I was on methadone and did 12-step meetings — I really did it for my child,” she said. She was able to maintain sobriety for most of her pregnancy, though she relapsed at one point. “When I looked at her I knew I’d never use again.”
As a student at Greenfield Community College, Cushing and other students in recovery helped found a peer recovery center at the school. She also attended workshops on recovery and trauma at the RECOVER Project.
This spring, Cushing was one of the first people to receive training to become a recovery coach at the RECOVER Project, a peer-supported addiction recovery program in Greenfield.
“Finally, people are realizing that 12-step is not the only way to recovery,” Cushing said of the program. “I want other people to have what I have — a life in recovery. I want to help them find what works for them.”
Delia, one of CHD’s clients, is one of the roughly 15 people Cushing has been working with over the last few months. She agreed to speak with The Recorder on the condition that her real name not be used for her own safety.
Delia’s situation in many ways mirrors Cushing’s. She, too, experienced traumatic events early in life, developed substance abuse problems that led to heroin addiction, experienced relapse, and eventually decided to work toward becoming sober after losing custody of her child.
She was referred to the Recovery Coach program after she ran afoul of the law in connection with her drug addiction and found herself facing charges in court. She took an offer to enter the Northwestern District Attorney’s drug diversion program, which offers non-violent drug offenders a chance to enter treatment before being arraigned and have their case dismissed if they successfully complete it. She was sent to CHD in March.
“That’s a tremendous deal,” said McNary, the case manager. “It’s not productive to have the police always dealing with them, or have them always hitting EMS, or the courts even. Mental health and substance abuse takes up quite a bit of time and dollars in these systems.”
McNary said intercepting low-level, typically young, drug offenders through recovery coaching can effectively stop the progression of addiction if the client is willing to see it through.
Delia said working with Cushing has made finding recovery much easier. “She knows everything; anything I need I can call her and she’s there to help, and if she can’t she can point me to where there’s someone that can do it.”
Cushing and McNary were there for her after she relapsed three weeks after enrolling in the program and descended back into addiction. When she decided to try quitting drugs for good, she texted both of them and asked for help getting to detox.
“They helped me. I just didn’t want to live like that. You wake up and you’re sick and you have to find some way to get high,” she said, through tears. “I lost custody of my son a few months before that, and I wanted him back. I knew that if I didn’t get clean that I’d never get him back. I’ve been clean every since.”
Now, Delia lives in a sober living facility for women and she gets to occasionally see her child. “I have help and a lot of support. Before I was too afraid to ask for help. But I’m really happy in my life today. I’m not dependent on a substance to get me through the day anymore and there are people in my life like my recovery coach who are there to guide and help me out. That fact that she has gone through this reminds me that I can do it.”
“We’re immensely proud of her,” McNary noted.
The Center for Human Development can be reached at 1-844-CHD-HELP, or at chd.org.
You can reach Tom Relihan at:
413-772-0261 ext 264,
or trelihan@recorder.com
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