November 22, 2023 at 12:15 a.m.
On recovery
By By Louise Ronald, Bailey Cline
In June, Ally Raines became director of the Peer Addiction Support Team (PAST) recovery program under the umbrella of the Jay County Drug Prevention Coalition.
Coalition seeks to develop facility
Addiction can be a never-ending cycle.
Ally Raines, who is director of PAST (Peer Addiction Support Team) Recovery Services for Jay County Drug Prevention Coalition and in October celebrated five years of being drug-free (see related story), explained how those suffering with addiction can get stuck in a loop because of their surroundings.
“Sometimes people will go to treatment, or they get out of jail and have nowhere else to go besides the place that they got sick at, and so they start using again,” she said.
A key factor in recovery is providing those struggling with addiction a safe, positively charged space to thrive.
Jay County Drug Prevention Coalition and local officials are working toward establishing a recovery residence, also known as a sober living facility, for those living with addiction.
Indiana is receiving about $507 million over an 18-year period as the result of the National Opioid Settlement with distributors McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen and manufacturer Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and parent company Johnson and Johnson. House Enrolled Act 1193, which was passed by Indiana General Assembly and signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb in March 2022, splits the funds between the state and local entities and defines how much each entity will receive.
So far, Jay County has about $171,800 available from the settlement, with additional dollars expected before the end of the year. According to Next Level Recovery Indiana (in.gov/recovery), the county is expected to receive a total of $1.33 million over a 15-year period. (Each of the county’s municipalities will also receive funding from just over $1,000 for Salamonie to about $52,500 for Portland.) Those dollars are subject to change depending on pending lawsuits and other factors.
Approximately $143,000 of that amount are restricted funds, meaning they must follow specific guidelines outlined in the settlement agreement. Establishing a recovery residence falls under those guidelines, specifically under the category to “support people in treatment and recovery.” The remaining unrestricted dollars must be used in the same manner as dollars in the county’s general fund, according to guidelines from Indiana State Board of Accounts. Indiana is also requiring entities to follow five guiding principles from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
•Spend the money to save lives
•Use evidence to guide spending
•Invest in youth prevention
•Focus on racial equity
•Develop a fair and transparent process for deciding where to spend the funds
Per Jay County Commissioners’ request, Jay County Drug Prevention Coalition created an opioid task force in order to determine how to spend the allocated dollars.
Kimbra Reynolds, executive director of Jay County Drug Prevention Coalition, explained the task force looked at two years’ worth of overdose fatality statistics. In 2022 alone, there were a dozen deaths from overdoses in Jay County.
It also looked at the “paper trail” for each of those individuals, including information about whether they had spent time on probation or in community corrections or if they visited health clinics or hospitals.
“We put a timeline together of an individual’s life to see where the missed opportunities could have happened, what we can do system-wise to change things to make these (deaths happen) less and less,” she explained.
Jay County Opioid Task Force made several recommendations. Ultimately, it landed on creating a recovery residence.
“Sober living, that’s one of the things that we are missing in Jay County, so that’s what we decided to do as a committee,” explained Raines.
The closest recovery residence to Jay County is Fresh Start Recovery Center, a Winchester facility for women. (Reynolds noted the Randolph County group has been looking into opening a place for men.)
Jay County’s first facility, conversely, would serve males. That’s the primary need right now for individuals coming out of incarceration, said Reynolds. If the facility is successful, a long-term goal would be to open another house for females.
“When a person is in early recovery, you don’t really want blended services,” said Reynolds. “If you have some blended services, the person tends not to focus on themselves. So that’s the goal, is to make sure we are focusing on ourselves and getting healthy.”
So far, Jay County’s recovery residence project is still in its early stages. Jay County Opioid Task Force has been meeting in recent months to review available dollars, learn about other funding opportunities, look into potential sites for the new facility, discuss estimated annual costs and other related topics.
Sustainability is a particular challenge. A regular influx of dollars stemming from the opioid settlements, grants or other revenue will be necessary to keep the facility up and running. Some of that funding would come from residents contributing toward the facility once they have returned to employment.
“The goal is to make sure that these individuals that are in need of this home are able to get out into the community and work, (are) able to contribute back,” Reynolds said. “We don’t want it to be just a handout. We want it to be a hand-up.”
In order to receive continued funding for long-term sustainability, Jay County’s facility would need to be certified by the Division of Mental Health and Addiction, meaning it would need to follow certain structural guidelines, such as sleeping space allotments and amenity requirements for each resident. Raines noted she’s been looking at Inspiration Ministries — it’s a faith-based residential recovery program with five established facilities in northern Indiana — as a model.
According to Inspiration Ministries’ website (inspiration-ministries.org), the program is intended to “see individuals experience a total renewing of their minds, knowing that lasting change can only happen with the willingness to let transformation happen on the inside.” Inspiration Ministries focuses on addiction and life recovery, financial responsibility, career building, driving restoration, family reconciliation and spiritual transformation.
Jay County Opioid Task Force hasn’t yet established formal policies or procedures, which will likely come after the group selects and purchases a building.
Experiences at the facility, such as how long their stay would be, would vary for each resident, explained Raines. Once it is established, those living with addiction will be able to apply to live at the residence and will go through a vetting process. They will need to be clean from all substances, meaning it would be open to those fresh out of addiction treatment or the detoxing process.
Raines expressed optimism for the project moving forward, saying individuals living with addiction need a safe space and positive environment. Raines also referenced the following phrase: “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.”
“Having that sober living (facility) would give them a positive connection to people on the same path,” she said. “You are working towards a better life and working towards (your) recovery.”
PAST offers free support from trained peer recovery coaches in Jay, Blackford, Delaware, Randolph, Huntington, Wells and Adams counties (including programs in the Blackford and Delaware County jails). It also makes available medicated-assisted treatment, overdose-reversal medication and counseling to overcome the shame and stigma of addiction.
It’s a big job.
But Raines is familiar with the territory of addiction.
A decade ago, she was in a downward spiral of pills, heroin and meth, that landed her in jail twice in 2018.
She’s also familiar with the territory of recovery.
On Oct. 20, Raines celebrated five years of being drug free.
She’s decided it’s time to tell her story.
“I just think it’s important to know how you can go from the depths of hell to … where I’m at now,” she said recently in her Portland office.
••••••••••
Raines was a junior at Jay County High School when her family moved south of Bloomington and she transferred to Bedford North Lawrence High.
“I moved to a place I didn’t know,” she said. “I connected with the wrong crowd of people there. … They were the ones that welcomed me.”
Like many students, Raines experimented with marijuana and alcohol.
“That was what you did in school, so I didn’t think that I had a problem,” she said.
Her schoolwork didn’t suffer. Raines graduated with academic honors in 2012. After that, she moved back to Jay County, where her parents already had relocated.
Again, she “got in with the wrong crowd.”
This time, it was people she had known for years.
“They were who I looked up to. I just wanted to hang out with them,” Raines said.
They were using pills, so Raines did too. But it didn’t end there.
“In a matter of two years, I switched from the pills to heroin,” she said. “It was a rough time.”
Then came a big scare.
“I was like 21, and someone really close to me overdosed in front of me,” said Raines.
Fortunately, the overdose wasn’t fatal, but Raines was frightened enough to go to her parents.
“I told them what all I was doing,” she said. “They had no idea at all. They were shocked. They didn’t know how to deal with it.”
That night, she said, her father didn’t say a word to her.
The next morning, she discovered he had spent the night on the internet “reading about how to help, just getting more information,” she said. “It made me feel good.”
Her parents let her stay with them while she got clean. They put her in contact with Randy Davis, founder of A Better Life – Brianna’s Hope, which helped pay for Raines’ rehabilitation at The Harbor Light Center in Indianapolis. Ally’s mother, Gina Raines, was so impressed with Davis’ organization that she got a job there and is now office manager and executive board treasurer.
After rehab, Raines was to participate in the recovery program in Redkey. She went, but she didn’t participate.
“I tried to do it by myself,” she said. “I’d go to the recovery meetings and not connect with anybody. I wouldn’t talk, put myself out there, anything. I did that for nine months to a year.”
Then she became involved with a man and started using drugs again.
Not heroin, though.
“I didn’t want to die,” said Raines. “I switched to meth.”
That continued until January 2018.
“Then I went to jail,” she said.
The couple was living in Blackford County, where the man was on house arrest. Police came to do a compliance check and Raines ended up in jail.
“I was scared,” she said.
In March, Raines was out on probation.
“I didn’t do anything for my recovery,” she said. “I didn’t hit meetings or connect with people.”
Within months, she was using again.
And on Oct. 20, 2018, she went back to the Blackford County Jail.
That marked the first day of her recovery.
••••••••••
Raines’ probation officer, Mike Winegardner, jailed her after she repeatedly failed drug tests. Although angry at the time, she now appreciates Winegardner’s help.
“He saw the good in me when I couldn’t see it in myself,” she said. “Even though he sent me back to jail … he was just trying to keep me safe. I can see that now.”
After Winegardner testified on her behalf, Raines went on probation again. Moved by his confidence in her, she changed tactics.
“I decided I was going to do stuff different this time,” she said.
“I started going to recovery meetings and I connected with a group of people,” she added. “We started going to all the Brianna’s Hope meetings around the area. There’s one almost every night of the week. … I think that’s what kept me sober was that connection — becoming friends with people that were still clean — and feeling like I was a part of something, actually being a part of something that was good this time.”
Five months later, Gina Raines told her daughter that the coalition had gotten a grant to train peer recovery coaches and suggested they go to the training together.
That was where she met Kimbra Reynolds, executive director of the coalition, who was looking for a part-timer to clean the coalition office and organize paperwork.
Raines got the job.
She had worked during most of her years of addiction, only becoming unemployed a few months before her last stint in jail. Most of the jobs were entry level, and all of the earnings went to paying for her next high.
This job was different.
Reynolds began to give her more responsibility and more hours. Raines’ self-esteem grew. She worked her way up to the position of special projects coordinator, which she described as “whatever anybody needed, I would do.”
Then in June, Reynolds asked if Raines wanted the PAST directorship.
“I knew this was what I wanted to do,” said Raines.
Five years of sobriety is just the beginning.
“I think being in recovery, you’re constantly working on yourself,” she said. “Today, five years into it, I still work on things in my life … But I also have a healthy support system now.”
Life has taught her that to recover, “you need that connection with people that are on the same mission as you or that are willing to be there for you. You just have to find your people.”
Her advice to anyone wanting to join her in recovery: “Get connected. I think connection is key. Come to the coalition. We can help.”
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