Recovery Heroes

Executive director of Full Circle Recovery, a peer-led, nonprofit recovery community organization with centers in Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Ankeny, Harlan and Neola. Services are nonclinical, low barrier and free. Between January 1 and July 30 of this year it logged 7,357 engagements with people in recovery and 3,047 recovery coaching sessions.

"People don't recover alone. Recovery happens in community."

He bought back the house where his worst years happened and opened it as a sober living home for up to eight men, on his eighth year clean. It is run by Recovery Renaissance, which the Elizabethton Star describes as a nonprofit. In between he robbed a pharmacy, went to prison, and started a recovery program for the men he was locked up with.

"I think change is subconsciously what I wanted more than anything at that point in my addiction."

Sixteen years after walking out of an Idaho prison, she co-founded Cornerstone Wellness and Recovery, a treatment business offering day treatment, intensive outpatient, therapy, peer support and recovery coaching. She is its chief operating officer and tells every client she has walked the same path.

"Anything is possible. Recovery is possible. Your past does not define who you are."

In 2008 he started renting rooms in his own house to people trying to get clean. That grew into the Vermont Foundation of Recovery, which he now runs and which operates recovery homes across the state. He also directs housing policy and planning for Vermont's Agency of Human Services, so he works the problem from inside the building and inside the house. He opened Vermont's Coming Together summit this year in front of about two thousand people.

"It was this magic elixir that allowed me to move through the world and, for the first time, be comfortable in my own skin."

Fourteen years in active addiction, ten years out. Warren is lead peer support specialist for Project Save Lives, which puts peer specialists in the emergency room at Ascension Sacred Heart Bay, so somebody who has been there is at the bedside when a person wakes up after an overdose.

"I really thought I was going to die on the streets. I never thought for one second I'd live the life that I live today."

Dalton started using at 11, trying to cope with feelings he had no words for. At 15 he first walked into Rise Recovery, a San Antonio nonprofit now in its 50th year of serving young people and families at no cost. The turning point was the hardest one imaginable, losing his father to an overdose. Seven years sober at 27, Dalton now works at Rise as a Youth Recovery Specialist, walking teens through the same door he came in, helping with everything from staying clean to college applications.

"That purpose that I found, that passion that I had, was definitely motivated through that experience of losing somebody so close to me."

A decade of addiction that started with prescription pain pills and slid into heroin. A husband lost to an overdose. Nearly losing her kids. Jenny got treatment at BrightView Health and is now five years sober, a homeowner, a business owner, and a mom raising her two children. She tells her story publicly so people still in it know the way out is real.

"I just lost my husband to an overdose, so I had to get it together for them... I own my home now. I own a vehicle. I have a company that's in my name, that is what kept me going."