YAKIMA, Wash. –
As the number of drug overdose deaths continues to go up year over year according to data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse: Washington politicians have been looking into how to help people facing substance use disorders. One group asking for more support is the recovery services helping people out of homelessness and addiction.
Merit Resource Services’ Recovery Navigator Program helps people with recovery and has staff that have gone through the process themselves.
The program has helped enough people to build up a binder of thank-you notes from people.
The binder of letters is sent to the Department of Health as examples of how the program is helping people recover and as a reminder of the successes they’ve seen according to Yvonne Lakey, a Recovery Navigator with Merit.
She said seeing people’s progress from start to finish helps with her recovery.
Lakey worked closely with James Lowe, a former member of the program and recovering alcoholic. She said his story holds a special place in her heart as well.
“It’s a win. It’s heartwarming and just seeing his health get better from what he was when he first came into the program to what he is now is wonderful.”
Lowe said he was on the verge of death after the COVID eviction moratorium ended.
He said he found himself homeless when his former landlord raised the cost of rent, and in January 2023 he relapsed and drank for the first time in over twenty years.
“You know, I was so down and out that I was grateful for any help at all. I mean, I didn’t know I could be that grateful. You know it was my life,” Lowe said.
After talking with other people working on recovery at his current home, he said he’s learned it can happen to anybody and all it takes is the perfect storm.
“It’s like getting sucker punched. You know? One minute you’re standing there, the next minute you’re on the floor going, what the hell happened? And you’re dying,” he said.
His sister Sāra Earthdove-Tinker said she recommended the recovery navigator program to him after she saw his health getting worse.
“There’s no words that I can wrap around. Seeing him on the streets, going down, down, down,” she said.
The program helped him, but it didn’t do all the work for him according to Lowe and Earthdove-Tinker
Lowe said after working with the recovery program he’s been able to reconnect with his son and granddaughter whom he hadn’t spoken with in years and regain hope.
“Just letting people know that there is help and that it is so isn’t hopeless. You know, there are things that can be done. Resources. That’s what they’re called Navigators, I suppose,” Lowe said.
