LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Starting the journey of recovery can be a scary process, but a new recovery organization is helping people navigate the unknown and connecting them with valuable resources.
Andrew Turner has been coming to the Louisville Recovery Community Connection since shortly after it opened in September. But what led him here started years earlier.
“Having a place like this means the world to me, really,” Turner said. “All my money was going to an opiate of one form or another."
He became homeless and ended up sleeping on the floor of a friends place with his wife and kids.
“I'm like, 'What am I doing? Like I just moved up here and ruined these people's lives,'" Turner said. "And I don't want to ever forget that kind of pain, because that's what's one of my greatest motivators."
Slowly but surely, with the help of LRCC, he's learning recovery is a step-by-step process.
LRCC is community collaboration between Young People in Recovery, People Advocating Recovery and Centerstone, and it partners with other organizations in the community.
Louisville Recovery Community Connection
“During the day, I have nowhere to go. So this gives me a safe place to go in recovery," Turner said. "They give me resources and stuff and help me out and try to find me a job. Actually, I just got a job today."
And that’s exactly what LRCC does. It helps people in recovery get plugged into numerous resources.
“Just helping people figure out what their most pressing needs are and then helping provide them with the tools to be able to access those needs,” Direct Support Specialist Anna Kate McWhorter said.
That can include finding meetings, a job, housing, food, peer coaching and more.
“Walking into a place that looks like this and feels like this and knowing that you belong here goes a long way for individuals, especially early on in their journey,” Recovery Services Coordinator Jeremy Byard said.
The space located at 620 S. Third St. has a meditation room, a computer lab, meeting rooms, a children's room and lounge area with a dream wall.
Meditation room
“In addiction, a lot of times, we'll forget how to dream or how to even think about the future as a possibility," McWhorter said. "So right at the entry way, we want to have something like that that encourages people to start dreaming again. So people can come in and put specific dreams or bigger, overarching ones on the wall."
And for the first time, Turner wrote a dream down on a piece of paper for the dream wall. He said he wants to “continue helping the next addict” as a way of paying it forward for the help he's been given.
Dream wall
Anyone is welcome at LRCC. To get connected click here.
Copyright 2020 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
