LYNN — The non-profit Spectrum Health Systems will open a peer-led addiction recovery support center in downtown Lynn early next year.
Spectrum’s Executive Director of Peer Services and Recovery Supports Athena Haddon said that the recovery center site on 31 Exchange St., will likely open its doors Jan. 1.
Unlike traditional rehabilitation centers, in which doctors and specialists help patients stop using drugs, Haddon said that the peer recovery model helps those who have already quit, and are in recovery, navigate life and learn the necessary skills to move forward in their recoveries.
The peer recovery model, Haddon said, can teach addicts in recovery, in a community setting, skills such as opening a bank account, balancing a checkbook, cooking and serving food, voting, and even childcare for free.
“These are the gaps and some of the services like people complete detox or they complete a halfway house, but then what we throw them into the community. And we forget that many people started using it at a very young age, that some of those life skills are not in place,” Haddon said.
In 2008, The Commonwealth’s Bureau of Substance Services funneled $2.5 million into the creation of five recovery centers spread out across the state with one in Worcester, Marlborough, Brockton, Lawrence, and Greenfield. Now, the state funds 30 different recovery centers, four of which, Spectrum Health Systems manages.
Haddon said that when these centers’ members feel a sense of community, they tend to take better care of their facility, and, keeping them clean, work toward reducing the stigma around addiction. She said that her organization prides itself on being a “good neighbor” to its community, and often invites members in recovery to take part in community service activities such as cleaning glass off of sidewalks and running bicycle drives.
“It helps to reduce stigma,” Haddon said. “Very early in the morning, I had people in recovery, waiting to get in to start getting up center ready for the day’s activities, if it meant setting up the chairs, if it meant cleaning the bathrooms, mopping the floors, dusting the furniture, whatever it was, there was people very eager to come in because they felt like this was a safe space. And they felt that it was their space.”
On year 30 of her own recovery, Haddon said that she originally made the decision to get clean while she was serving a two-and-a-half year prison sentence in Woburn. She said that while she was able to stop using drugs using the 12-step method, she recognizes that others might be responsive to different recovery methods. Haddon said that while Spectrum’s peer recovery centers are open to all forms of education and recovery, they do not welcome those with an active addiction.
“These are for people that are already in recovery, we will not be a place where there’s active addiction, we don’t allow that in the center,” Haddon said. “Active people usually don’t want to be around a lot of people in recovery, because they don’t want to hear it.”
Haddon said that driving around and seeing homeless addicts, she can relate to them. She said that she dedicated her life to helping those in recovery because she has experienced homelessness, prison, and the road to recovery herself.
“I love to give people I love to, like just cheer people on because I really do see the good in people. I just know where I was, I was homeless, I was hopeless. I was in prison several times. I was a street addict,” Haddon said “What you see out there in the streets, that was me, I drive by people today, and I say, ‘for the grace of God, there I go.’ I’m grateful. My gratitude speaks in the work I do.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected]
