By Mar­cie Timmerman

Angry at the world. Emo­tions so close to the sur­face every­one could see them. It was clear when Jeramie first came to Par­tic­i­pa­tion Sta­tion, he was a very trou­bled young man. He clear­ly need­ed us. It turns out, his win­ning smile and nat­ur­al curios­i­ty would end up serv­ing him very well in the months ahead as he began his recov­ery journey.

Jeramie reports he was dropped at Par­tic­i­pa­tion Sta­tion by a pro­gram he had been attend­ing. The peo­ple who cared about him hoped the “mag­ic” of the peer-run, recov­ery-ori­ent­ed
the envi­ron­ment would do what day treat­ment pro­grams hadn’t been able to. He was on his last chance, real­ly, and need­ed some­where to go.

When he intro­duced him­self, Jeramie explained some of his behav­iors with the labels of diag­noses – the med­ical lan­guage he’d known most of his life and which made him “dif­fer­ent”. He used the terms in hopes peo­ple would bet­ter under­stand him. At Par­tic­i­pa­tion Sta­tion, every­one had labels and diag­noses. That’s not what made him “dif­fer­ent”. In time, par­tic­i­pants,
NAMI staff and many oth­ers got to know the Jeramie behind the med­ical labels. As we looked to the trou­bled but spunky young man beneath, Jeramie began to do to the same.

When he became agi­tat­ed or got stuck on an idea, oth­er par­tic­i­pants would encour­age him to “chill out”, their way of remind­ing him to use emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion tech­niques he’d learned in ther­a­py. Reg­u­lar sup­port group atten­dance led to iden­ti­fy­ing some of Jeramie’s behav­ioral trig­gers, and peer sup­port spe­cial­ists helped him to reflect on his anger and how they them­selves con­trolled impul­sive behavior.

Even­tu­al­ly, Jeramie revealed he had a sub­stance use prob­lem as well. He start­ed attend­ing the Dou­ble Trou­ble in Recov­ery (DTR) groups at Par­tic­i­pa­tion Sta­tion, obtained a spon­sor, and start­ed tak­ing back con­trol of his life. In DTR, he found sup­port from oth­ers who had self- med­icat­ed with sub­stances when their under­ly­ing prob­lems were relat­ed to men­tal illness.

Sud­den­ly, Jeramie wasn’t try­ing to do every­thing on his own. He had a sup­port sys­tem he could rely on. He even began mak­ing friends.
Over the course of a year, Jeramie has improved. He still wears his heart on his sleeve, but he’s not as angry. “I’ve watched Jeramie grow and change and become much calmer over the course of his time here,” one pro­gram mem­ber said. “This place has been mag­ic to Jeramie, I think,” said anoth­er.
He is serv­ing as a co-facil­i­ta­tor for DTR groups and con­tin­ues to work his 12 steps every sin­gle day. When he comes into Par­tic­i­pa­tion Sta­tion, he sees friends as well as a place where he can be himself.

Jeramie’s past involved being home­less (even stay­ing in a local men’s shel­ter for a while), behav­ior prob­lems, symp­toms of sev­er­al men­tal ill­ness­es, and sub­stance abuse. His present involves a path to recov­ery he’d nev­er envi­sioned — help­ing oth­ers, mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact, and fur­ther­ing his edu­ca­tion. He’s a liai­son for Par­tic­i­pa­tion Sta­tion to the men’s shel­ter where he once lived, and he’s an active advo­cate for his peers. “Some days, I just want to bot­tle his advo­ca­cy ener­gy!” one of our board mem­bers said.

“I believe in recov­ery”, Jeramie says, his voice laced with excite­ment. He’s burst­ing to spread the word about what he’s learned. “Tak­ing the path of recov­ery = a des­ti­na­tion of men­tal health” is a say­ing he uses to encour­aged oth­ers to begin the recov­ery jour­ney. “You can get
better.”

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