Robby is an outreach worker at Recovery Consultants, a referral service for individuals seeking substance abuse treatment in Atlanta

I am an outreach worker.

Q: How did you get lined up with this program?

They hired me, they called me and said they had a position open, they thought I would be good for it.

Q:How did you get involved in this field?

Actually, a couple of years ago I was in treatment. Once I completed the tx phase, I began to do volunteer work for the facility. Then, I ended up being an employee for them. And, prior to that, I had did some volunteer work at another facility doing groups and just going and sharing my story, like that.

Q: What’s your story?

My story? AhaHa. It’s hard. Mmmm. I think I started using when I was about 12 years old. I was drinking and smoking reefer. Until I was about 17- I began to snort cocaine and freebase. Still, at that time, I managed to do it without any real consequences so to speak. But, after I had my, my first child, got married, had my second child, my disease really started kicking in. It progressed from the drinking and the smoking reefer to I was introduced to crack. And… When I started smoking crack it just escalated from there. I used… real hard.

I immediately began prostituting, selling myself. My first child was with my mother at the time because I couldn’t take care of her. My second child, I would abandon her and not take care of her. The money and stuff, supposedly for her, I would use for the drugs. I was a terrible mother… At the time, my husband was locked up. He eventually got out and when he got out he ended up taking my daughter and moving to California, which just let my disease progress even more. I was able to just run rampant. And I did for maybe another year. I was here in Atlanta and I used… pretty hard… So, after having a moment of clarity so to speak I called my mother.

My mother was living in South Carolina at the time with my oldest daughter, my first daughter, and I asked her if I could come home. She said yes. So I came home, tried to get clean for a minute. I tried to re-establish my relationship with my child. But I didn’t do anything to stay clean. I wasn’t making meetings, I wasn’t in any type of treatment, no detox, the disease just got quiet for a minute. After that, maybe a year and a half after that I ended up using again. So I decided to leave South Carolina and I moved to Virginia, to Richmond Virginia. I didn’t know anybody there. But, I thought if I went there, my disease would get better. That’s how most of my life was, moving from place to place thinking it would stop my disease, but it didn’t.

So I moved to Richmond Virginia, I stayed clean for three and a half years. I had my own place, I had a sponsor, I was sponsoring people, you know, I had surrendered. But after three and a half years, I used again. Lost everything. Lost my apartment, my job, my car. I went back into outpatient treatment for a while. I used again after nine months. Then I met a man. We ended up getting married. But when I met him I was in active addiction. I ended up getting pregnant by him. We have a daughter and a son.

I used the first six months of my pregnancy. I ended up having her and shortly after I had her, we got married. When I was right at six months I stopped using and I didn’t use again. At that point I stayed clean for seven years. In between that time that we moved from Richmond here to Atlanta. I was still clean, I began to go to meetings. I got connected here. Ended up getting pregnant again. I have a son by him. We subsequently separated and then divorced. I stayed clean through all that. About, right about maybe six and half years clean I- I also suffer from depression, I have most of my life, I wasn’t on medication or anything like that. That’s not an excuse for why I used again, the fact was that I didn’t surrender to the fact that I couldn’t use at all. I forgot what it was like for me. I forgot I was powerless once I pick up the drug. I didn’t want to deal with the feeling, so I would have rather felt with the pain of using rather than deal with what I was facing.

So I went back to Virginia to my old playground. I ended up going back into the same area I used to use in. I knew I was going to use. I knew I was going to use, I just didn’t tell anybody. I used for one week. I was real grateful because I already had some people in my life there in Richmond from going to treatment, meetings, so I knew a lot of people in the treatment community. When they got wind that I was out there using, they tried to help me.

My last day using, I was in a crack house and they had some people in recovery and a friend of mine in recovery had set up some sort of intervention. I don’t know how he did this- but it was a multitude of cars honking around the crack house- they were trying to get me out. I wouldn’t come out. They told the drug dealers they were going to stay there until I came out. What I didn’t know was that a friend of mine had a judge sign- they had me green-warranted. Eventually they had something set up where I ended up leaving the crack house and I was paranoid, I tried to jump off a bridge, they stopped me. I went to a hospital for three or four days. I was in a drug-induced psychosis.

I ended up coming back here to Atlanta, that’s when I went into treatment and I’ve been clean since. Next Monday will be two years this time. That’s not all my story- that’s just little pieces of it. My story is real lengthy. It’s a lot of… my story is filled with a lot of violence. A lot of tragedy… a lot of drama. It will probably take me all day to tell you my whole story. I have lived on the streets because of my drug addiction. Not even going from shelter to shelter, but prositituing myself to have a place to stay, prostituting myself to get a meal, prostituting myself to be able to take a shower at someboyd’s place and wash my clothes. Seeing what the consequences of the lifestyle- people getting hurt, people getting killed you know. The neglect, the despair. It’s an awful life. It’s an awful way to live. I don’t know, I just take things a day at a time now. I just do what’s necessary to stay clean.

I am working in a field that I love and I love what I do. I help get people into treatment. It keeps me fresh, it keeps me focused… It reminds me where I came from and I need that. Sometimes I think everything is okay and it’s not okay. I try to think about what’s going on with me today. I often times, I don’t know if you’re going to ask me about this, but I am frustrated with the lack of facilities for people. And the process- it’s so much drama to get somebody into treatment these days. It really is.

I understand with some of the things that are going on, you don’t know who you are going to let into your facility, you don’t know what they’re going to do. But, it seems like there is so much resistance to get people help these days. It is so frustrating, because there are people who want to get clean. There are some people who are tired of living this life. There are a lot of people who want to get help. And a lot of people are turned away because they don’t have the insurance, because they don’t have the money, because they don’t have… a TB test! We need to make it accessible for people who don’t have these things.

I try to get somebody in treatment and if they haven’t had a TB test, that’s an all-day thing just to get that done. Then you have to find some place for them to go for another day, or maybe two. By that time, they are not considered “eligible” for detox, but they need it. They need to get somewhere and get stable first and then begin the process of getting treatment, how to live without the drugs, finding out about the drugs, why they use in the first place. I know I used hard, and I was in detox a week and a half or two weeks. That’s what I needed to get all that stuff out of my system. I know it’s a revolving door, that people don’t stay, but I just wish it was easier. Some of this stuff can be put to the side. Some of this stuff can be worked on.

To me, it seems like it stopped being about trying to get people help and it started being the numbers.

My best day, when somebody calls after being in treatment for three or four months because took the extra time out for them- it’s stuff like that that makes a difference, that keeps me here. Because other times I feel like I’m not making any leeway, I don’t feel like I’m making a difference. I do this because I love what I do. It helps me give back. I think, I know it’s my calling- this is what I was put here on earth to do. I know where people come from because I was there. I know what it feels like, to feel like you don’t have nothing. It’s hard to come for help when there is so much resistance.

Q: Why do you think you started using drugs when you were 12?

I know I had the disease of addiction long before I picked up. The obsession, the compulsion. I was raped when I was eight years old. I didn’t tell anybody until- I actually blocked it out until I was about twenty-four- but I knew something had happened to me. I was gang raped at fifteen. But the rape when I was eight years old kind of set things in motion because of the lack of self-esteem and thinking that I wasn’t nothin’. Thinking that it was my fault. Thinking that I had to have a man, thinking I had to do whatever that man wanted me to do. I lived my life thinking I was put here on earth to please men because of my sick thinking from the rape and the gang rape and the abuse you know. I… used that as an excuse… I used that as an excuse to use.

Because of the low self-esteem I wanted to fit in. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Because of my feelings associated with the rape, I didn’t tell anybody, I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t reach out to anybody, but I still wanted to fit in, I still wanted to be a part of. I was a people pleaser. Whatever crowd I could get with, I would do that. It happened to be with people that were drinking, you know, elementary school and junior high, smoking cigarettes and a little weed, skipping school, these were the people that would accept me and that is what I went with.

But I had the behavior long before I picked up. My mother, she had went into the service, I never knew my father and… that’s not the reason I used. Those are the things that happened in my life. My mother is a good mother. I never knew my father, but I… I just never knew my father. I used that for a long time as an excuse, but that’s not an excuse. I made decisions to do what I did, you know what I’m saying? I have to take responsibility for that. I didn’t like who I was. I wanted to be somebody other than who I was. I didn’t want to be me. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be loved and I was willing to do whatever I had to do to ensure that. If it means I didn’t believe in what you were doing, but I did it anyway. Just accept me.

Q: How were you able to suppress that experience when you were eight while it was also affecting your behavior?

I just shut down. I shut down and then when I was fifteen and I was gang raped, I shut that down, too. I remember that happening, but I just shut down. I lived my life wearing a mask. If something bad happened to me, you don’t say nothing, you don’t act like nothing’s happened. It all stays on the inside. You don’t try to show a whole lot of emotion. That’s how I did, but I acted out because I was promiscuous. I have always been with older guys. I was real promiscuous though. I got pregnant when I was 13. I had unhealthy relationships, abusive relationships. I ran away from home a lot. I was in juvenile a couple of times, in a group home a couple of times.

Q: How old was your boyfriend when you were 13 and got pregnant?

He was 21.

Q: Did you know the man who raped you when you were eight? Was he family?

He was a friend of my grandmother’s. I was living with my grandmother at the time. He was a friend of the family. He would come by to see how my grandma was doing.

Q: When you were going in and out of the juvenile system, what was that for?

I was never like, arrested. I went to a group home, a couple of group homes. I tried to commit suicide a couple of times. They had me seeing a psychiatrist. But the group homes were, my mother thought I was crazy. She wasn’t sure what was wrong, so she got me into a group home. At one point I was in Albany for a month. I was in Cedartown for a few months.

Q: How did those experiences help you? What did you get out of them?

Nothing at the time because I was so angry. They didn’t really help me. I was there because I had to be there. I complied you know. But they didn’t really help me because I wasn’t willing to do anything different. I was just there to do my time. I didn’t think I had a problem. I thought it was everybody else’s fault. I was there because I had to be there.

Q: You said when you were about 17 that was when the disease really started settling in-

I was freebasing and snorting cocaine around 17. I think I had Michelle when I was about 18 or 19. But the crack I didn’t start until I was about… 21 or 22 when I started smoking crack.

Q: Why do you think things escalated?

That’s the way the disease is. It runs rampant. If you don’t get a hold on it, it’s gonna just take you out. I think tied in with other behaviors and other things, you know, I know for me, I kept using because I didn’t want to stop and feel. So the number I could stay, the better off I was. I was on a non-stop journey of self-destruction. I just didn’t want to feel. I didn’t want to stop and feel. I wanted to stay in a state of denial.

Q: Are you from Atlanta?

I was born in Macon. I lived in Macon for about eight years. After I was raped, I moved back with my mom. She came and got me and we traveled a little while. She was in the Service.

Q: Did your mom know about the rape at the time?

She knows now, she didn’t know then.

Q: What division of the Service?

My mother? Air Force.

Q: You said at one point that there is a lot of violence in your past. Why do you think there has been so much violence in your life?

Because of the life I lived. Because of the neighborhoods. I lived my life around, when I began using real heavy, I was out on the street. I was on the shadier side of addiction you know. Stuff you see on TV today, it might start off like that, but it ain’t that.

Q: You said you used prostitution when started smoking crack, why was that your main hustle?

It was the easiest job I knew. At the time, I did try to keep a job. But it cut into my using time. I needed quick, fast money. I didn’t want to wait on a check. Because of my past history of being promiscuous and feelings that the rape was okay and was suppose to happen, that’s what I knew. That’s what I knew how to do.

Q What was it, I guess it was your third child when you used six months into the pregnancy, what happened at six months? What was the process? What were you thinking?

I just know I was sitting in the tub one night and I was smoking crack and I felt, she just started kicking real hard and it was like, “Okay, okay Robby, it’s time, you need to be doing something different, you’re going to kill her.” She was kicking so hard. So I just stopped. And she’s fine. All my babies are healthy.

Q: Was it the father of the first two that took the daughter to California?

Yes, he was my first husband. He’d been in and out of jail, I think for drugs. I’m not real sure. My daughter’s not with him anymore. It might have been drug-related.

Q: Has there been a history of addiction in your family?

My aunt, she’s an alcoholic. I know, me growing up, she was an alcoholic a long time. She stopped one day. I think she had stopped for like fifteen years before she died. She got saved and she just stopped. She was a straight alcoholic though. I remember her being drunk all of the time.

Q: What is going on in Georgia? How can someone get into treatment with no money? Is private treatment available?

If you have money and insurance, it’s much easier to get into treatment. They have some facilities that are strictly insurance and self-pay. We have a place called Single Point of entry .They come to see us, we are a referral agency- they come to us. We call Single Point of Entry. They do an interview with them, see if they are eligible for detox. It depends on if they are in Fulton or Dekalb County.

There are a lot of residential facilities. A lot of them are not licensed. A lot are transitional housing. Most require some type of fee coming in. You have some programs that are licensed. It just depends. We have a listing of some agencies. A lot of them are transitional. That’s what we have to send a lot of them to. Most of our clients ain’t got no money, no job, no insurance. There’s some agencies that will let them come in for a couple of weeks, help them get a job, but pretty much, if they come see us, we call a number, see if we can get them into detox first. After detox, they either call us back or the detox will refer them somewhere else. It’s not a lot of treatment centers in Atlanta, I mean actual, licensed facilities where they can go. It’s not.

Q: How long does it usually take to find someone a slot or a bed?

If they don’t have any health problems and they haven’t been in detox for a long while and they call early in the morning, if they fit the criteria and there is space available, I can get them in that day.

Q: How often do those places have space?

It depends. It depends. Not everyday. Sometimes you have to wait a day or two. They be so full at different times of the month, or the week that sometimes they real full.

Q: What counts as a health problem?

They have to go get a medical clearance first. If they have diabetes they have to be on medicine, they have to be on their prescriptions. If they are already on medicine and have it under control, it’s usually not a problem. High blood pressure and they not on medicine, they have to go to Grady to get a clearance from a doctor to say it is okay for them to go to treatment or detox.

Q: For those unlicensed or across the board this is necessary?

I think across the board, you don’t want to be liable. Sometimes, we do have clients come in, with no health problems, but once you get them into treatment, they go to the doctor for everything they been having for years! Ok, so now you tell me…

I wish we had a couple of facilities that were straight medical/detox treatment so they could address their physical issues as well as their substance abuse issues. That would be nice, too.

Q: How would you describe what is going on with drugs in the Atlanta area? Is this a small-scale problem?

Knowing what I know, drugs are real rampant in Atlanta, but you’re not going to hear about a lot of them because I don’t think the public sees, you know, they see drugs like a nuisance. People know it’s a problem, but it’s really not addressed the way other things are. Drugs are real rampant in the inner-city, in the black community. We are finding out now, Hispanics, they do a lot of drinking. We went to a conference last year and they were talking about the African community, they have their own drugs. For the most part, it is mostly inner-city, poor blacks, some poor whites that live in the inner-city. But, it’s everywhere. It just might not be as… exposed as it is in the inner-city. Most of the time when you hear about something going on, it’s in the projects, but every once in a while you hear about it in the suburbs. It’s rampant, but you don’t hear about other places as much as the inner-city because it’s more visible there. A lot of time people from Buckhead, from the suburbs, they come to the inner-city.

Q: What could be done at this point that would be most effective at combating drug abuse and addiction?

We need to get people out on the forefront talking about it. People who’ve had the experience. People who’ve been there. People who care about saving lives- not the numbers, but the people. Advocate for more facilities, especially for people that don’t have insurance. We need to get people to try to change the laws, let the lawmakers know we need to set aside money for it, for people that really want to get into treatment, to hire more people, to open more facilities that can address the medical and the substance abuse needs.

A lot of people won’t go into treatment because they’ve tried before or they’re stagnated because of a physical problem. We need more facilities for women and children, too, my God! We need more for them. We need facilities that will let women go in with their children.

My main thing is that people need to realize we have a disease of addiction. That doesn’t make us bad people. When we using, we do bad things, we have bad judgment, but if we get the help we need- there are a lot of people in recovery that do great things. There are a lot of people in recovery that you probably don’t even know are in recovery; people in the limelight you know what I’m saying?

There are a lot of people that have recovered from the disease of addiction that’ve got skills, that can make a difference, but we get this stigma attached to us, “Once an addict, always an addict.” I didn’t get clean and stay clean the first time, it took me a few times to get this and I’m still taking this a day at a time, but that doesn’t make me a bad person.

Now I am dealing with my issues, I am coming to terms with it, why I kept on using. People need to see us for who we are. I don’t have a problem letting people know I am in recovery today. We need to get the people who want some help, some help. There doesn’t need to be all this resistance.

Q: Why such a stigma?

I guess because for so many years addicts were considered the scum of the earth; being an addict was not a good thing. Still, they talk about it in the basic text, the last thing to be lost is the stigma of addict. That’s how society sees us. We’re always going to be dopefiends. We ought to at least be a recovering dopefiend. But they don’t see that people can change. They say sexual offenders can change, and murderers can change and thieves can change. Well, dopefiends can change, too. Why are we so different?

Q: Back when you were running the streets- did you know other women working?

When I got high with other women. Some.

Q: Were the other women using too? Was it common?

All of them were. Everybody that was out there at the time I was, was using. Some of them I would see one day and they would be gone the next because somebody had killed them.

Q: Did you get beat up often?

…A couple of times.