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People have an
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idea of
what an addict might look like
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and someone who's
in a rehab or detox.
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They come in the room and they see me
and they're like, Yeah,
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this is another guy
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from my insurance company
to tell me what I need to do.
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And I tell them that I use drugs
and alcohol for 22 years,
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and they sit back in their chair
and they go, What?
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That's the magic of peer support.
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When you tell them who you are
and you watch that
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wall come down.
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Our roles
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within the health
plan is to literally partner
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with the individuals
that are receiving services.
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So if that individual needs community
resources.
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There is nobody better than a peer
support to be able
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to identify
what those community services are
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and travel with that member
to those organizations.
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They're really known
as the individual that's walking
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the step by step journey
with our members.
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Most of us are known
for being transparent
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with our stories in that there's
just this honesty that occurs.
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Being a person who has
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lived with HIV for nearly 30 years,
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it's an honor
and a privilege to be this age
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when most of my friends did
not make it out of their thirties.
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It became very clear to me
that I did not know how to cope.
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What used to be what we would call
party favors, you know,
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drugs and alcohol became the thing
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that kept me from being so afraid.
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Every day
I realized that I was in trouble.
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One day when I got out
of the hospital and went to the bar.
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Who does that?
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Homelessness for me
looked just like it does
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for most women who experience
homelessness for the first time.
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It's shocking.
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It's demoralizing.
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Really, It's a state of confusion.
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There wasn't a recognition
of my coping skills
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that I had developed my entire life.
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Were actually feeding
a diagnosis of extreme
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anxiety, swinging into very
serious depressive disorders.
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I started feeling like
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my life as I knew
it was never going to be the same.
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And I didn't know what to do
if I didn't have the peer encounter
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that I had.
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I don't know
that I would be sitting here
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today.
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Having peers come from different
backgrounds is very, very important.
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I often tell people I might not have
walked in your shoes,
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but I probably walked down
that same block.
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We come from the places where
the people that we serve come from.
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I think having peers
in our behavioral health system
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is not only important, it's essential
because peers understand
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the complexities of different
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diagnosis
and living through those complexities
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on a day to day basis
and different circumstances.
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But also peer support can
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and does drive down health care costs
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because people are using prevention
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rather than, you know,
after the fact, health care.
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There's a settling of oneself
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that occurs
when you're a peer support.
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There's a transparency that happens and that makes us
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better people.
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Doing this work has made me feel like
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I have the life that I only imagine
other people have.
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I'm a black gay man living with HIV
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with 20 years free from addiction.
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Life is good.
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