Zed Kosowitz wants to change the narrative around addiction.
Not just because of his work at Valley Community Services Board, but also because of his own story.
“Addicts in general, we aren’t bad people trying to get good,” said Kosowitz, a peer recovery specialist at VCSB. “We’re sick people trying to get well. It’s a journey to become the person I was meant to be before I started using drugs and alcohol.”
Addiction can be as harmful as it is misunderstood.
Fatal drug overdose has been the leading cause of unnatural death in Virginia since 2013. Drunk driving causes 27% of fatal car crashes.
“Opiates are so heavy hitting, because it just takes one time to overdose, right? It just takes a second,” said Jesalyn Moore, CEO of The Farley Center in Williamsburg. “But alcohol is equally as problematic. It’s still a leading cause of death of adults in America.”
Many people draw comparison between the current opioid epidemic and the crack epidemic of the 1980s.
“We really are in year one or year two of Drug War 2.0,” said Tom Jackson, registered peer specialist and organizer for Virginia Recovery Advocacy Project. “The penalties are staggeringly harsh. A trillion bucks, and we’re in worse shape now than we were 50 years ago.”
How addiction begins and how recovery begins are often two vastly different stories.
“In the beginning, it’s fun,” said Ernie Smith, a Staunton resident who started on his sobriety journey February of 2000. “In the beginning, it’s exciting.”
Admitting that the initial experimentation has become beyond a person’s control is challenging.
“I started using in 2005, and I didn’t get clean until 2014,” Kosowitz said. “I started having this dialogue with myself like, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’”
Kosowitz’s story isn’t uncommon.
“Really, anything can become an addiction at some point in your life,” said Nitch Narduzzi, founder of the 51st Collective in Staunton. “Most always people are searching for a solution to a problem, and then the solution becomes the problem itself.”
It’s a story that Moore hears often.
“A lot of people look at addiction as something that happens to other people, until it infiltrates their families or their own lives,” she said. “There’s definitely a stronghold stigma still, and I think that’s why people have trouble getting help. It’s not just about access to care. It’s about willingness to navigate that first phone call.”
Shame isn’t the only barrier to making the call.
“The system now is that in order to access services, you have to meet certain intake requirements,” said Jennifer Kitchen, harm reduction outreach worker for On Our Own. “You have to be willing to jump through certain hoops. You have to be willing to say, ‘I am ready to be completely abstinent and sober. And for a lot of people, those first initial steps into recovery don’t look like that.”
Deeply embedded past negative experiences can also be a barrier.
“These are folks who come in with trauma, mental health disorders, addictions,” said Kevyn Burn of Light of Life Energy Medicine in Staunton. “That’s all generated, because people have been hurt. There are just so many ways that we hurt each other. Sometimes, that’s economic. Sometimes, that’s isolation. Sometimes it’s the direct assaults people will do upon people. You can get traumatized so easily in our current life.”
That’s why Kosowitz believes so strongly in peer recovery.
“A peer is essentially somebody with lived experience,” he said. “Recovery in a peer means I’ve been where you are. I’m still there. When you’re in a clinical thing, you’re with a professional, but there’s always this thing: ‘I’m the teacher. You’re the student. I’m the clinician. You’re the addict.’ A peer kind of levels the playing field.”
However, there are challenges to implementing the peer recovery models.
“Virginia has over a hundred more barrier crimes than the next state down – 175 of them,” Jackson said. “There’s this huge pool of peers who are trained, willing and ready to work in this environment, and they can’t get hired. Their experience with that criminal background and jail history is critical in being able to support other people with the same history.”
The good news is that despite barriers, recovery is possible.
“You can stand up. You can dust yourself off,” said Missy Flavin, a Staunton resident in recovery. “And you can do that with the help of your peers. The more that we’re out there, and we’re as honest as we can be about where we’ve been, that’s what it’s all about.”
Kitchen believes that timing is everything.
“Everybody hits a spot where they’re open to recovery,” she said. “If you’re not there for that person in that moment, who knows how long it will before they get to that moment again, if they ever make it to that moment again.”
Kitchen’s words resonate with Moore. Although she works in recovery now, she was once a teen mom experiencing homelessness and battling addiction.
“No one got here on their best day,” Moore said. “In fact, it may have been their worst. At the root of it is our willingness to be vulnerable enough to recognize what it feels like to be desperately in need of help. And are we going to put our hand out and pull them up, or are we going to continue to put things between us and them?”
This article is based on the Recovery episode from VPM’s Life in the Heart Land Season 2 docuseries. The series gets to the heart of those creating unique solutions to rural Virginia’s toughest challenges.
Watch Mondays at 9:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on VPM PBS — or anytime on the PBS App.
Visit vpm.org/heartland to learn more.