CT addiction recovery program finds success by pairing patients battling substance abuse with coaches who have similar survival stories

This is not the first time George Craig has been hospitalized for his addiction to opioids, but he hopes it will be the last. And according to his doctors, it has to be.

For the first time in years, the 37-year-old from Winsted said he has plans for his future - a real, tangible hope for recovery from the drugs that have had a stranglehold over his life since he first touched them almost a decade ago.

 His newfound hope for recovery, he said, comes from the story of another man who once lay in a hospital bed just like his, fighting for his life after at least 13 failed attempts at recovery. A man who is now helping Craig as a recovery coach with Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery (CCAR), which partners with the majority of Connecticut's hospitals.

His newfound hope for recovery, he said, comes from the story of another man who once lay in a hospital bed just like his, fighting for his life after at least 13 failed attempts at recovery. A man who is now helping Craig as a recovery coach with Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery (CCAR), which partners with the majority of Connecticut's hospitals.

Kevin Shuler, manager of the Emergency Department Recovery Coach Services program, visited Craig in the hospital last week alongside U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and shared his own story of addiction, relapse and recovery.

After more than a decade of intravenous drug use, Shuler found himself in a life-or-death situation much like Craig's. He showed the patient and Murphy a photo of him taken about five years ago clinging to life in a hospital gown with tubes and wires pouring from him.

Shuler was hospitalized repeatedly for his addiction, he said, and was rushed to the emergency room and resuscitated more than once. But each time, he said, he was "sent out the door with maybe a list of programs that I could reach out to, but no real physical tangible connection or believable hope.".

Coaches at CCAR guide patients to self-directed recovery plans, aiming to meet people where they are and follow them along their recovery journey. Their work strives to end discrimination surrounding addiction and recovery, open new pathways for different types of treatment and break down barriers that may prevent recovery.

"I saw that this was a void that this recovery coach movement was trying to fill," said Shuler, so he made it his new life's mission to help stand in that gap. About two years into his own recovery journey, he became a recovery coach who visits hospitals across Connecticut helping people fighting substance use disorders make self-directed decisions to change their lives.

 Shuler told Murphy during their visit to the hospital on Feb. 20 that he himself had been hopeless, overwhelmed by what he felt were too many failed attempts at recovery.

"My life I felt like was over, I had really no hope, and I had had those multiple failures and attempts at recovery," Shuler said. "It wasn’t until I met members of the recovery community, people who had no ulterior motive other than to try to motivate me" that he was able to avoid relapsing, he said.

"Now here I am, five years removed from my addiction," he said, describing his life as one filled with a fulfilling career and fatherhood.

"It’s been miraculous."

Murphy, who has been an advocate of the recovery coach model, visited the hospital to see coaches like Shuler in action. He spent hours last week observing the work coaches do with patients and meeting with health care providers who have taken the partnership with CCAR and made it an integral part of treatment plans for patients who come into emergency rooms with acute addiction-related issues.

After seeing the way the coaches share their own lived experiences with patients who are often facing life-and-death recovery choices, Murphy said the model is a pivotal piece of the recovery process.

"I’ve come to believe that access to peers and access to other people who have gone through what you’re going through is vital," said Murphy. "Whenever you hear about somebody who is in a long-term recovery, somewhere in there there’s a story about access to a person or a group of people who had recovered and gave them a path to recovery."

The recovery coach model, a partnership between CCAR and hospitals across the state, helps put people in contact with those peers immediately rather than delaying that connection until they are in a formal treatment program.

Murphy said that introducing people to others who have survived their own substance use battles in crucial moments that bring them to the hospital with emergency situations or medical events can be a lifesaving step.

"This is often the first time they are facing life-or-death stakes," said Murphy at the hospital last week.

"When you’re here, it is kind of that eye-opening moment, but it can be really scary because you might be faced, for the first time, with the fact that you can’t survive this."

And that moment is when stories of inspiration, hope and connection are the most powerful.

"This is the moment where you need to put all the resources around this person because this is the moment where the opportunity exists, and the highest risk to them exists if they continue using," he said.

Craig said hearing another survivor’s story was inspirational, and a much more effective approach than he had received at other hospitals, including one where a nurse tossed a body bag at him and told him that is where he would end up if he didn’t stop using drugs.

"[Shuler] went through the same thing I went through, and just to see that he made it out of that, and now he’s a recovery coach, he’s doing something good with his life. It’s nice to see," said Craig. "It makes me want to become a recovery coach."

That statement alone is what the coaches hope for. Their work is centered around the core belief that recovery is possible for every single person, no matter how long it takes. Hearing Craig hope to someday be on the other side of the coach-to-patient model created a cycle of inspiration in the hospital last week, with coaches, medical providers and lawmakers feeling reinvigorated by his excitement about a future he can build for himself.

"That’s a testament to the impact you’ve already had on his life," Murphy told Shuler after their visit.

Recovery coaches are paired with patients like Craig when they come into the hospital, either as an emergency room patient or a patient experiencing a medical event like a heart problem or kidney failure that is a result of their substance use.

CCAR coaches respond within two hours between 8 a.m. to midnight 365 days a year and meet the patients at their bedside.

"It was all about making sure people have immediate access to somebody with lived experience, because when people are having that traumatic event, an overdose or a health trauma, it’s an opportunity for them to really make some decisions about their life moving forward," said Murphy. "Having somebody who has been through it sitting with them in the emergency room is often life-changing."

Rebecca Allen, director of recovery advocacy for CCAR, said that coaches provide a humanistic, patient-centered approach without judgment, which can help patients open up without fearing the shame that often accompanies the stigma of addiction. The coach and patient experience a shared vulnerability that allows for honest, open conversations.

Dr. James O’Dea, senior vice president of the Behavioral Health Network for Hartford HealthCare said that after years of helping patients fight addiction as a medical provider, he learned that recovery coaches were the missing piece to the puzzle. They have become genuine, must-have members of the treatment team at Hartford Hospital.

"Everybody’s recovery is an individual personal recovery," he said, "and it’s up to us to find out who are the people who can make the connection, engage that person and take the next step. This partnership just makes us that much better."

CCAR coaches are partnered with every hospital in Connecticut except for Sharon Hospital and Waterbury Hospital. Their team of 14 coaches helped about 4,000 people last year alone.

Murphy said that spending time in the hospital, meeting with patients like Craig and seeing the in-person impact of recovery coaches underscored the need for more resources for CCAR and convinced him that it is a model the state needs to invest in.

On the day Murphy visited the hospital, Craig’s older sister, Jessica Craig, sat by his side in his hospital room, hearing the hope in her brother’s voice as he described his desire to recover and become a coach someday.

Jessica Craig, who works with recovery coaches in a methadone clinic in Massachusetts, said she has seen the impact of their role from a clinical perspective, and now from the viewpoint of a family member.

"It’s such an important thing to have because when you catch someone in the beginning stages, they’re in the hospital and they are contemplating," she said. "It’s one thing for a clinician who doesn’t have [a] similar experience, but when someone comes in with [a] similar [lived] experience and clinical experience, it helps someone want to get into recovery and know that they’re not alone."

George Craig said the visits with recovery coaches have become something he looks forward to every day.

"Just having someone come in who understands what you’re going through," he said.

George Craig said he feels like he is watching an entire generation being wiped out by fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has increased opioid-related overdose deaths in recent years. He hopes that because he survived, he can be a voice that helps others know they can, too.

"I never thought in a million years I would go down this road, it could be any of us," he said. " I just want to be able to help out. For the younger people, I’d like to step in and let them know you don’t have to go down this route."