Jay Hill

For 15 years I was drinking and doing heroin, 7 of those years were before I entered the Village and 5 of the years were while I was a member. For the last four years, I have been sober.

I had an early recovery in sober living. After I was there a year and three months, they let me manage the place. That was good for me. It made me feel better about myself.

I ended up at a sober living apartment building. It was hard for me. It is a hard time living alone. You do better when you are with other people who are recovering. I went back to the hospital a couple of times. It took me a long time to realize that I could be miserable on my own or miserable in the hospital so why spend $1000 a day to not have it work? There is no recovery at Long Beach Community Hospital. The day starts out with goal setting and arts and crafts, like basket making, whatever they do.

Then I moved to Freedom House. I was there a couple weeks more than a year. I liked it there but the hardest part is when I built relationships with people who left and got loaded. Friendships end. I was there with 3 years recovery and what had changed, nothing. (What do you mean that nothing has changed?) Actually, a lot had changed. I went from being angry, cussing people out and fighting, to surrendering. I still get mad at people, but now I walk away. Sometimes I come back and blow it all up, but I’m getting better. I did lots for people at Freedom House. I held meetings 2-3 times a week. I helped people out if they were new to the program. When you are new everything is scary. I tell them that it gets better over time.

Wisdom house was the first place that I went to when I was new to recovery, so I wanted to go back there because it is familiar to me.  When I left Wisdom house I went to a different sober living that was like Wisdom house because they are both less structured than most sober livings.  Now I am looking for my own apartment.  

I was a Life Coach for about a year. I learned how to build communications with members. I visited them and talked to them to try and build a friendship between me and them. I told them that it was o.k. to go outside to do things, and that it is not o.k. to focus on your illness all of the time. One guy had health problems that he wouldn’t take care of. He was a hypochondriac, also. Several people on the team tried with him and had the same response, no. It was frustrating, a hard time, and I needed support. One member had a substance abuse problem and a filthy apartment. Now his apartment is nice. I took him out to breakfast and tried to get him to go to activities. He goes to activities that involve food and are free. I worked with those two members for about a year. I went grocery shopping with them and helped them with their budgets, too.

I had a three month contract at the Front desk. Then I work as a stocker from 7 p.m. until midnight 6 days a week. It is hard work but I had goals of saving for a car.

Next I worked for Telecare in Norwalk as a Personal Service Coordinator.  It was a really good learning experience.  It taught me how to work with a team of people as a team member.  I was the person that people saw when they first walked in the door, the person who first interacted with them.   I had to talk to them and figure out what they wanted and how we could help.  I had to ask people a lot of questions and learned what kind of questions to ask and how to respond by meeting with my supervisor once a week, asking him about different situations that were going on while I was working and getting feedback from him about certain things.  It was a dream for a long time that I wanted to be a PSC and when I became one and worked there for 6 months it was very difficult to give a notice to my supervisor when I was ready to leave because before that point I had always just walked off the job.           

 During my last two weeks at Telecare, I started to work at PR:TNS.  I am the Dual Diagnosis Liaison for PR:TNS.  I oversee three 12-step meetings,  and I oversee one 6-step meeting: Schizophrenia Anonymous.  I like working with people and I think that the biggest thing is that I get to work with people who have similar experiences to my own.  I have gone to Sacramento to lobby on certain bills that they are trying to pass, and I will be going to Minnesota in October to learn how to work with people with schizophrenia and learn about schizophrenia.  I have gone to different trainings including a 2 day intensive Motivational Interviewing training.    

 All of that wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t have God in my life. Sometimes I wonder if he is really working, but I know he is. I almost died. When I was out there, I weighed 109 pounds. I would eat about once every two weeks. In recovery I got up to 210 pounds and now I am down to 165 pounds, which is where I want to stay.