CARLTON FLETCHER: Change Center is where hope lies

When you feel the heat, Look into my eyes. It’s where my demons hide.

— Imagine Dragons

What you believe or don’t believe about a divine or supreme being is none of my business, just as my beliefs are none of yours. I believe spirituality is a private, one-on-one thing.

That being said, I believe that God (and, again, you do you, I’ll do me) puts us in certain places at certain times for a reason. I experienced that Friday.

I went to Aspire’s new Change Center at 500 (not 501!) Pine Ave. on Babs Hall’s and B.J. Fletcher’s suggestion. My friend B.J. wanted me to take a look at the way the staff at the center had remodeled the building, which she owns. Babs, who is the corporate compliance officer for Aspire Behavioral Health and Development Disability Services, said I should meet the people who are on the staff at the center, which is an addiction recovery support center.

Turns out they both were right.

It took me maybe 15 minutes to realize the center’s staff — Director Kathryn Newcomb, Outreach Coordinator Daniel Fleuren, Program Coordinator Michele Anduze and Volunteer Coordinator Deneral Campbell — are special people. An hour or so later, I knew that my initial assessment was understatement.

These four people — and others I met, Ginger and Dave among them — are superheroes, I discovered. No, they don’t jump buildings in a single bound or even tie up bad guys with golden lariats. What they do do, though, is even more remarkable.

They offer hope to people who have none. They offer refuge to individuals who have nowhere left to turn. They show people who have found their rock-bottom that there is a way back to, as Dave said, a new life.

All of the people I met at the Change Center are recovering from addictions. That they shared their stories with me, some guy they’d just met whose purpose was to shine a light on their worst of times, was a blessing and a gift. That they allowed me to impose on their very private and personal struggles just on the chance that it might help someone else not only offers a glimpse at the power of redemption, it opened my eyes to a nobility that is beyond my ability to understand.

The Change Center, which is another of Aspire’s outreach programs — and how fortunate are we in south Georgia to have this amazing organization in our community — is what Newcomb called a “safe place.” Now that might seem like some of that new-age, agency-speak mumbo-jumbo, but after talking with the principles at the center and some of the people who are frequent visitors, I came away convinced that Newcomb had given the perfect description of the facility.

Fleuren offered a perfectly logical explanation for why he and his colleagues — little “family” that they are — have the capacity to reach out to others who are now where they’ve been.

“When you’re having trouble with your vehicle, you go to a mechanic,” he said. “When you’re sick, you see a doctor. When you’re having an issue with something that makes you want to take a drink or do drugs, who better to talk to than a recovering addict?”

Long Island native Anduze (whose accent and hair stand out) said it takes being committed to long-term recovery to get that the process is about change.

“You can’t think your way to a new way of living,” she said, “you have to live your way to a new way of thinking.”

Campbell, the veteran of the group who has now logged 20 years of sobriety, said addiction is a fight no one can win.

“I fought addiction for years and years, and I lost every fight,” the Chicago native said. “It’s when I surrendered, though, when I stopped fighting that I joined the winning side. That’s why I’m here; that’s why we’re here. We’re responsible for giving others that glimmer of hope that we received.”

This group, this multicultural, multi-ethnic, multigenerational collection from all points of the globe are united, bound, by the things they overcame. They open their hearts and bleed hope to help others avoid the demons that they have been facing down for years now.

That, to me, is what superheroes are made of.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.