Life is filled with contradictions. For example, most of America’s mental health and addiction treatment currently occurs in houses of punishment—that is, in prisons. As a prisoner, I am not trusted with the everyday items that most people take for granted. It has been more than a decade since my hands have turned a key or pulled money from my wallet. Yet, as a peer support specialist in the Mental Health Department of London Correctional Institution in London, Ohio, I am trusted with the responsibility of helping others to thrive and flourish. On any given day I might run a group to teach people how to cope with their time in prison, help somebody talk to the staff so they can sign up for GED classes, listen to somebody’s problems with an empathetic ear, or, when asked, give them advice based on my own lived experience.
My first day as a peer support specialist was in June 2022. I was part of a group of about twenty people hand-picked for this role by the mental health and recovery services staff. We walked into the Mental Health Department lobby at London Correctional. The room was fairly large. On the far wall opposite us, I noticed a mural of the Amazon rainforest, where lush, green canopies concealed snakes and insects I had to squint my eyes to see. In the painting, the sun shone through a clearing above a massive waterfall in the center. A bright red bird of some exotic jungle species careened across the chasm, ruffling the colorful flowers peppered throughout the foliage.
My inner cynic reminded me of the exception written into the Thirteenth Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime . . . .” I’m almost certain the artists were never compensated for this or any of the other paintings throughout the building.
All twenty of us walked through a door to our right. This room contained several tables and chairs and had a smart TV mounted on the wall. Although we were all incarcerated, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections was not training us.
Instead, the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services led us through a two-week course where we watched videos, took tests, shared personal stories, and role-played conversations with “peers,”—the word we use in place of “clients.”
That’s because peer supporters are not therapists. With only fifty-six hours of formal training, our greatest strength comes from the fact that we ourselves have grappled with mental health and/or substance abuse problems. Lived experience allows us to relate to our peers in ways that many clinicians cannot.
I began drinking and using drugs when I was sixteen years old. I would do anything I could get my hands on: alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, inhalants, opioids, or any other drug. By the time I was eighteen, I was smoking K2 (a synthetic cannabinoid) every single day. My neighbor and I would buy a five-gram bag from the corner store and smoke a bowl every thirty minutes until it was gone.
My brain and my body were suffocating. At one point it was my job to clean the school’s cafeteria for disciplinary reasons. I would always smoke some K2 outside before coming in to move the tables and chairs so I could sweep, mop, and buff the floors. One day, when lifting a plastic chair, it immediately clattered to the floor as the left side of my body, from my temple to my foot, went completely numb.
I sank down to the floor but did not panic. I felt relieved that I was going to die. No more abusive household and no more nightmares. No more lonely nights without any romance or friendship. No more feeling like a stranger in my own skin, lying in bed all day feeling like there were ten thousand pounds on my chest, staring at the ceiling and wishing the sun would explode.
Much to my disappointment, the stroke was psychosomatic. But this experience was an epiphany. A month later I wrote a suicide note to my parents and siblings. My plan was to drink all of the alcohol in the house and go lie down on nearby train tracks. But fate would have it differently. The day led to me serving a life sentence in prison. While I certainly regret the crime, I no longer regret that I’m alive. I’m grateful that I now have the insight to keep myself from falling into such a dark headspace.
The fact that I’ve had these experiences allows me to win the trust of my fellow sufferers. This is especially valuable in prison, where people have learned never to trust a staff member. I can honestly tell my peers that I know what it’s like to serve months in solitary confinement. I know what it’s like to constantly walk on eggshells, because if you so much as grab a cup of water while forgetting the day room is closed, an officer can write a conduct report that may result in you serving extra time in prison. I know what it’s like to wake up screaming in the middle of the night in an open dorm where everybody can hear you, the stares of all one hundred of your cellmates piercing through your skin and into your soul the morning after.
I know what it’s like when the entire world tells you that everything is your fault, that you will be held to a different standard for the rest of your life. When a “respectable” member of society gets pulled over for speeding, it’s a mistake; but when a prisoner goes to the chow hall with their shirt untucked, it’s proof of continued criminal thinking, of their permanent impulsivity and incorrigibility. I wish I were exaggerating.
It’s my job to share all of this with my peers. But I also share a sense of hope. Despite these forces pressing down on me, I continue to grow. I am healthy and in shape. I have been sober for eight years, and not for the lack of availability of drugs. I have completely renounced violence, theft, and fraud. My biggest concern in life is contributing to social justice, and I sincerely believe that the movement for criminal justice reform will be America’s next civil rights movement.
Making substantial change for those who have been through the criminal justice system will involve creating greater access to more holistic, community-integrated mental health and recovery services such as peer support. Peer supporters on the streets can visit their peers at home or perhaps take them to the gym, the park, or the movie theater. Here in prison, we can only visit peers in the yard and in the dorm. A person’s mental illness or addiction does not dissipate upon leaving a therapist’s office, so it’s important that we are here to provide continued support.
This doesn’t mean we can’t offer services in a more formal setting: We peer supporters have our own desk and access to private conference rooms in the mental health center. This is especially useful if a peer wants to concentrate on creating a comprehensive recovery plan, or if they want to talk about traumatic events.
We do not provide services in lieu of the licensed therapists staffed from Ohio Mental Health; we often work alongside each other. I cannot speak for any other institution in the state, but the Ohio Mental Health staff here at London Correctional have supported us from the beginning. They do their best to make sure that we have supplies and that we have plenty of rooms in which to run our groups—dealing with topics such as depression and anger management. They have allowed us to participate in continuing education and live peer support seminars via the Internet. And, they are here to listen when we need our own mental health support.
As peer supporters, we are encouraged to use our lived experience rather than any particular kind of education. But for me, education is also part of my lived experience. There was no college program at the first prison I was in when I was eighteen. Nonetheless, I made a commitment to learn everything I could. Among the first books I read in prison were The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan and The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. Thus, science and social justice became the twin pillars of my worldview.
By teaching these topics to others, I have learned how valuable I can really be. The dark fog clouding my life began to dissipate. I learned to cope with my shame and social anxiety, and would eventually grow the courage to share more personal details about my life. Now, at thirty years old, I am no longer ashamed of my trauma, my mental illness, or my previous addiction. I recently came out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and have not looked back.
I am fully aware that there are people in the world who believe I have not suffered enough. Some of them work in this system. Even those who want to help us often inflict unintentional harm with their implicit bias and unexamined beliefs. The greatest contradiction of all is not that we heal despite such discouraging experiences, but that we are able to help each other heal precisely because we share these experiences. That’s what peer support is all about.