There Is Strength In Sharing Your Recovery Story

Recovery Month is observed nationally every September. It promotes and supports new evidence-based treatment and recovery practices. Each person’s road to recovery is unique and entails a lot of different things. To convey the importance of this observance, sharing a personal story seems most fitting. My name is Brian Bailys. I am in long term recovery from a co-occurring disorder.

I began my career as an accountant, then started my own business consulting firm. All looked good on the outside, but I was dying on the inside. I’ll save you the details, but I had alcoholism coupled with deep depression and anxiety.

I bounced around treatment and ended up in a lifesaving partial hospitalization’s program. There were seven other members in the program with me. We were very much alike, but we had socioeconomic differences. But that didn’t matter. My peers in the group helped me get my smile and my confidence back.

But within 90 days of starting the program, I learned that six of those seven members relapsed, and at least two are now dead. I was not ready to go back to work after completing the program, and thought there must be a better way to deal with recovery.

I spoke with many experts in the recovery field, and they told me the gap in treatment was continuing care. What do people do after treatment? With the help of a partner (New Directions of Cleveland) we found an answer… peer support. My peers in that treatment program helped me get my life back. If that kind of support could help me, I knew it could help others.  We developed a continuing care solution that ultimately became Thrive Peer Support in 2018.

Over the course of three years, we quickly grew from a company of six to a company of 150, serving thousands of people across the state of Ohio in recovery from substance use disorder or a mental health diagnosis.Because Thrive Peer Support embraces all pathways to recovery, we offer support in over 20 hospitals (both inpatient and outpatient settings), provide peer support in the drug courts and jails, and within the community. We also educate people on harm reduction through the Thrive Outreach Tour, which will allow us to distribute approximately 10,000 doses of Narcan this year.

I am living proof recovery works if you work your recovery daily, and I am proud to be a part of an organization that makes a difference every day in the lives of those struggling with mental health disorders and SUDs. Recovery is possible.