Fellow Peers,
It is amazing how becoming a peer-mentor can be so empowering and fulfilling. It is an opportunity to share your lived experiences, wisdom, and hope with a clear understanding and purpose from one Veteran to another. The struggle of opioid addiction can be very isolating, demoralizing, miserable, shameful, and lonely.
I can personally attest to the devastating, destructive, and damaging behavior opioid dependence has caused me and its impact on family and friends who cared about me. My journey into the abyss of heroin addiction began soon after my discharge 1976 and continued till 2008.
Now, I had been through notwithstanding at least 15 VA treatment programs and private rehabilitation facilities--not to mention all those Narcotics Anonymous meetings I attended over the years. It was not until in 1996 when I was serving a nine-year prison sentence, walking across the prison yard, I had an epiphany. It was not that those programs and meetings weren’t great support systems for recovery. See, it wasn’t recovery I was seeking; it was healing I needed. In that moment, I experienced a spiritual awakening. I realized it was time for me to stop faking it ‘till I made it and start facing it, ‘till I made it. The ‘it’ that I am referring to is the trauma before military service, the trauma during military service, and the trauma I self-inflicted upon myself after military service during active addiction.
The time had come for me to disconnect my bond with opioids and begin to reconnect my bond with family, friends, and the community.
The QRF Manual: Volume 2 for Opioid Use Disorder is a “must” course for peer mentor specialists who are dealing with peers struggling with opioid addition or are in recovery themselves.
The pathway to healing begins now.
Otis Winstead
Executive Director, Great Lakes Dryhootch Dryhootch Training Facilitator MHA National Peer Specialist (NPS), WI Peer Support Specialist (PSS) U.S. Army Veteran