NOT TAKEN ALONE –
June 5, 2023 – Willard Sexton, a staff member and former Allen House patient, says the most important part of his job is speaking with each resident daily. Most of them, like him, came to treatment straight from jail or prison, and he knows as well as anybody how stressful it is to stop using.
“It’s similar to grief and loss,” says Sexton, 35. “The drug was their best friend for a long time.” Interacting with them, he says, helps him in his own ongoing recovery.
At a time when drug use is among the nation’s gravest public health crises, a visit to the Allen House offers key lessons: Addiction is a chronic illness requiring constant vigilance, there’s no one-and-done solution, and relapses are part of the journey to recovery. Peer mentoring is an invaluable element of drug counseling, since people who have plodded the difficult path from dependence to sobriety understand the mindset of patients on a visceral level.
