No doubt you’ve read the Baltimore Magazine article by now. Thing is, the article’s thesis, that the American addiction epidemic is directly linked to a broader post industrialization economic malaise is not news to us at Ladders To Leaders. We figured it out a while ago that exploding addiction statistics follow or correlate with unemployment or underemployment. We have always understood that the antidote to addiction is the sense of personal responsibility and purpose that comes with having solid meaningful vocation. That’s exactly what our program is.
We teach, we preach, we model, that together we can find a way to beat addiction, and that way is through good, hard, meaningful work, through service to community. And we provide the path and the program and then the very jobs that allow a still shaking and batpoop crazy addict or junkie transition from the utter abyss of addiction back into community and into the workforce.
At L2L our goal is get our folks to work in a vocation that suits their talents and inspires their passions. To teach our people what we have learned, that when our souls are filled up with the purpose of a good soul-enriching job and with the joy of giving back to our fellows and to our community, our cup runneth over, and their ain’t no way we’d taint that with a drink or a drug.
But the first rung on the L2L ladder is the work of stabilizing newly clean and sober folks, which is a tall order. Imagine, if you can, starting your life over again from scratch, fresh out of prison or rehab or the homeless shelter, or fresh off the streets, no money in your pocket, most or all of your bridges to friends and family burned long ago, likely struggling with a dual diagnosis like bi-polar disorder or PTSD (and yes at any given moment, veterans make up 25% – 40% of our participant pool; but you’d be amazed by the other horrifying PTSD-invoking life events folks come to us with, quite often scars from childhood or from life on the streets); no steady source of food and nutrition; all the clothes, all the possessions you own only halfway filling a black trash bag; a thin or by now rusty or atrophied set of work skills; a beleaguering set of court, parole, probation, restitution obligations to be navigated through.
Unless you’ve lived it, you probably can’t imagine how daunting a restart like that would feel. But, the point is, unless we devote a few weeks to rehumanizing a soul ravaged by addiction, incarceration, homelessness, estrangement from family, we will be setting that soul up for failure.
So, first comes the 30, 60, 90 days it takes to stabilize a participant coming up off the streets or out from behind locked gates. This is a time to ease back into the workforce while placing primary emphasis on mental health care and stabilization, establishing residence in a safe, structured transitional setting, and learning good personal and socialization skills in that home. A time to get deeply and passionately immersed within recovery fellowships and into service to the community at large. A time to learn what it really means to be a good neighbor, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, employee. A time to work through all the criminal justice restitution and commitments which often stack up as direct impediments to steady, meaningful employment.
This is the work we at L2L have stepped up to do, and which we are absolutely passionate about. Work we feel we have been called to do; work that is our own antidote, our own vocation filling us with purpose and passion we would never poison with a chemical.
We have so many miraculous success stories. Men and women who share horrific details of where the life of addiction took them, of how they fell into that life in the first place; so many wounded souls and broken hearts – ourselves, the friends and family we hurt so badly…but today, as a L2L Ninjas, we are thriving with great jobs and careers and living joyful lives of service to friends, family, and to our fellows hungry to climb up behind us, up that ladder out of addiction, that ladder to leadership. For those eager to begin a new life of sobriety and purpose, we L2L ninjas offer out our hand. And show the example, of what a beautiful life a life in Recovery looks like.
Examples like:
– Anthony – 2 years sober, L2L’s drill sergeant Peer Recovery Coach and House Manager
– Mike – 7 years sober and running his own contracting business
– Another Mike – alumnus L2L house manager, now 7 years sober and well on his way to earning his electrician’s license
– Mark – 4 years sober, a fully employed maintenance engineer and plumbing apprentice
– Diane – 13 years sober, a feisty peer recovery professional and QC and invoicing manager within our construction enterprise
– Eva – 1 year sober, now L2L’s amazing Program’s Administrator
– David – 16 years sober, L2L founder and ED, and CEO of our construction enterprise
– Eric – 7 years sober, construction contractor and project manager
– Jimmy – 4 months sober, using his impressive construction experience to rebuild his now business and put our other Ninjas to work!!
The list goes on and on and on…
Please help us. Donate what you can. Come visit us some time and see how ridiculously hard this work is, but how overwhelmingly meaningful it is. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Your cup will runneth over.