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Are you someone who cares about people? Do you seek information to support people you care about who have families? Do you care about people affected by addiction, substance use disorders, or work in the field of family support or peer recovery support? Spend about twenty minutes each month with the President and CEO of Archways Recovery Community Organization and Family Resource Centers who shares hope, strength and stories from the field and practice of Peer Recovery Support Services and Family Support & Strengthening.
Narrator 00:02
Welcome to Archways Threads, a show focusing on the threads of family and recovery support services that help make up the tapestry of life in recovery. Join us as we share stories from peers and participants in the field and practice of peer recovery support and family support and strengthening. This podcast is sponsored by Health Market Connect, providing unbiased health insurance assistance for New Hampshire residents. And now your host: Archways' CEO, Michelle Lennon.
Michelle Lennon 00:36
Hello, everyone. My name is Michelle Lennon, and I'm the host of Archways Threads, the podcast for family support specialists and peer recovery specialists, coming to you from New Hampshire. Today, my guest is Cheryle Pacapelli. Some of you probably know her; she's kind of a rock star in New Hampshire for the recovery world, having been first an advocate with New Futures for us, restoring—doing a lot of work, really—to see the Alcohol Fund restored to help support recovery in New Hampshire. And then, taking on the very exciting—and very involved role, I would say—as the Project Director rolling out the first recovery centers that are state-supported in the state of New Hampshire. So, Cheryle, would you like to say some things about yourself?
Cheryle Pacapelli 01:19
Thank you so much, Michelle. I'm so honored to be the inaugural guest on your podcast. Just a little about myself: I am a person in long-term recovery for 35+ years, and a huge advocate for recovery support and the benefits of peers helping peers. It's really been an honor and a pleasure to work here in New Hampshire to build this system alongside people like Michelle, who are just—she said I was a rock star; I can't be a rock star without those 10 or 11 rock stars I have working with me.
Michelle Lennon 02:03
Of course, peer recovery support was a big part of your background. Do you want to share a little bit about that?
Cheryle Pacapelli 02:08
Sure! As a person of long-term recovery, when I had—I don't know, maybe 13 or 15 years of recovery—I opened a recovery house and that was my first entrance into peer recovery support, aside from 12-step-type programs, so I started with that. Then around 2004, I got hired with a recovery community organization in Connecticut to manage their recovery housing program. Through that role, I learned all about peer recovery support. SAMHSA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration] was just beginning to talk about peer support. We were one of the first grantees in the country. And we started going around the state of Connecticut and just saying that we were people in recovery, this is what we look like, we're your neighbors, your friends—and taking that veil away from what substance use disorder looks like. So that experience is what allowed me to come to New Hampshire and share all of that in New Hampshire, where it was just getting started nine years later.
Michelle Lennon 03:26
So you mentioned 12 steps. I would say when we first started doing advocacy in the state of New Hampshire, there was a lot of confusion about what is a 12-step sponsor vs. what is a peer support specialist. Would you like to share your perspective of what that means?
Cheryle Pacapelli 03:41
Yeah, sure, there is always a lot of confusion about that. I always try to go to my own recovery for examples of that. When I first got into recovery, my sponsor helped me to not use drugs or alcohol for a day, and learn how to live a better way of life. What she couldn't do for me was tell me where a food bank was if I needed food, or tell me how to get help with my electricity bill, or things like that, where peer recovery support specialists have this wealth of knowledge. And it's all community driven, so what's available in your community, how we can help from building a resume to a ride to drug court to anything like that. Typically, your sponsor can't do that for you. They're working, they have other obligations, and they're there to guide you through the 12 steps and help you to learn how to live without drugs and alcohol and where peer supporters help you to build that life back up again, the things that you lost.
Michelle Lennon 04:56
Yeah, that's probably specifically in recovery community organizations I would say at this point, right? Because we're seeing peers being drafted into other realms of what we call the continuum of care. I think about the changes over the years, and I think you've probably been frontline seeing the difference from the acute care model we used to have to a recovery-oriented system of care, and peers being inserted into different realms of what we call peer support. Could you talk a little bit about that, like what we can expect from the community centers, because really that's where your specialty has been?
Cheryle Pacapelli 04:56
Right. And you're right, there has been—I think people have identified that this model just works of peer support. Therefore, they want to insert them everywhere in the continuum. My personal opinion is that it works best when they are associated with the recovery community center, because emergency departments—where peers have been inserted into—they work in a medical model. They know how to treat the trauma that just happened, give you a blood transfusion, but they don't know how to talk to you about recovery supports. And that is sometimes different than what an emergency room doctor or nurse wants to hear in their emergency room. So having that peer supporter be part of a recovery community organization allows that to happen more freely. And that peer is supported with the proper supervision and oversight for that, where if hospitals or other venues are just popping peers in, the role clarity gets really mucky. Even in treatment centers, where peers can be unbelievably invaluable, sometimes they're turned into little mini-counselors, and that's not their role, nor do they want it to be.
Michelle Lennon 07:10
Yeah, and I do think the roles become different. We have seen our boundaries are different in community, right? We can give people rides to the hospital, we can give them rides to a mental health appointment, we can provide connection to various numbers of resources, and we have boundaries that I would say are a little bit looser than when a peer is operating in a clinical setting, because they have to abide by those clinical boundaries and the ethical guidelines of the organizations that they live and work in. It's one of the reasons why I found in my career blending family support and peer recovery support as practices work so well, because we do have those looser boundaries. I can buy lunch for somebody who is hungry, I can provide clothing to somebody who may need clothes to go to work or something like that as a peer in a recovery, in a community organization vs. in a clinical setting. That's a big difference.
Cheryle Pacapelli 07:57
Yes.
Michelle Lennon 07:57
The recovery-oriented system of care, that's been around for a while with SAMHSA. I was thinking how it's just taking a long time for us to get it.
Cheryle Pacapelli 08:17
Exactly. That recovery-oriented system of care was developed in the 1990s. Actually, the Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health and Human Services in Connecticut, Thomas Kirk, is the first one that ever talked about that. It took a long time, even when he was the Director and believed in that, to get that to come around. It started with just a language change; instead of a "case manager," they were "recovery managers." Then as recovery got interweaved into the entire continuum, people started to understand what their roles were throughout the continuum and were much more supportive of the role of the recovery community center because it was not trying to replace anything else in the continuum. It was just to enhance someone's recovery and give them the little extra boosts that they needed. That might not have been going back to treatment again after a recurrence. Maybe they just needed to talk to someone and a recovery center is someplace they can walk into any day and get help. They don't have to wait for an appointment. They don't have to wait for an intake. They can just walk in the door and say, "Man, I need to talk to you guys today."
Michelle Lennon 09:49
In thinking about the language change that we've seen probably over the past 15 years or so, I can remember Tom Coderre in the documentary "The Anonymous People" talking about all the awful language that used to be out there all the time. Sometimes we still hear it to describe people that are either in recovery or still active with substance use or alcohol use out in community, and how we have so stigmatized addiction in our society that it created such shame and blame around it in our culture, that it's often hard for people to ask for help.
Cheryle Pacapelli 10:29
Right, and understanding, just like many other diseases, people don't always get the entire recovery at one time, right? It takes a little time, just like a diabetic takes time to learn a new diet and what happens, or someone with heart disease actually starts walking every day because they know that that's good for them, right? But oftentimes, we treat addiction like: If you don't get it this one time, you're a failure. And you're not, it's just part of a process of getting yourself whole and well.
Michelle Lennon 11:12
Yeah, I can remember hearing Bill White talk about that, how we provide five-year checkups for people who have had cancer or have been in remission, and we don't talk about that the same way with the disease model of addiction. He gets fired up and talks about how we give people graduation certificates after 30 days, for Pete's sake, and how in this recovery-oriented system of care, there's still the acute treatment, but we want to make sure people are supported in community where they live, in their families in the context of community, and we haven't done that. Again, referring back to that "The Anonymous People" video, it was so powerful to me, this image of taking a sick tree and pulling it out of the sick soil and then putting it into healthy soil for 30 days, and it comes back and it's flourishing. But then you put it back in the same sick soil with no further supports there, and everything just falls apart again. It's such a common sense thing to me, yet we have taken a long time to recognize that as people recover, to sustain that recovery, it's almost essential for some people to stay connected to some type of support in community.
Cheryle Pacapelli 12:27
Right. I love that analogy, too, in "The Anonymous People," and that comes from Don Coyhis from the Wellbriety movement, which was an American Indian-based movement, where he was out in Colorado when he wrote that book, and that tree was the focus of that book, of how you have to heal the soil in the community so that people can then succeed. Again, he was one of the people way back in the '90s that was part of those first seven organizations that started this entire movement of recovery supports.
Michelle Lennon 13:12
Some of that history seems to be getting lost, I think, now.
Cheryle Pacapelli 13:15
It does. But we do have now from SAMHSA, the Office of Recovery, where some of the people that were part of that movement are still working in the Office of Recovery. So hopefully someone there is documenting some of that early work that was done by the people who founded this movement.
Michelle Lennon 13:38
Yeah. I think for me, I encourage people to watch "The Anonymous People" because that was such a profound experience for me to see that movie. I still watch it and I almost get teared up at the end every time I watch it. Another video that I had really been impacted by was "Racism of the Well-Intended." I think of Art Woodard and Jim Wuelfing, another couple of gentlemen that have been very instrumental in rolling out peer recovery support services in our state, having a huge influence on my life in recognizing the integral parts of us that come to the table when we talk about addiction health, and looking back about the intimacy that's involved in peer support, too. Art Woodard and Jim Wuelfing talk about "intimacy" being "into me you see," and how very often when we go to clinical services, it's scary to share intimately about recovery. That's another big important piece, that peers almost eliminate that fear coming to the table.
Cheryle Pacapelli 14:52
Yeah, because you're not ready to do that while you're in treatment, although they encourage you to. You haven't built any trust yet, right? And I think that's another important thing that peers do, is they build trust with people. They're always there when they come to see them. They lend an empathetic ear, they understand. They have walked the same walk, and now are working in the field. And many people who suffer from substance use disorder ultimately want to give back to help somebody else who is suffering, too. I think that's important. Jim and Art—I'm so glad you mentioned them. Both of them have been my mentors over the years, and Jim still is. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, we lost Art. The legacy that he left to so many people will thrive for many years to come.
Michelle Lennon 15:56
Yeah, speaking of Jim's influence and Art's influence, I'm just thinking: The rollout of New Hampshire, Jim and you were there. In fact, you and Jim were my trainers when I first became a trainer for the Recovery Coach Academy that CCAR—the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery—puts out. Then you also were at the table when we worked with SOS Recovery Community Center out on the seacoast of New Hampshire to update our recovery training for peer support workers called The Art and Science of Peer-Assisted Recovery in New Hampshire, looking at those new developments that have happened in recovery. Now we do have a recovery-oriented system of care that we're plugging peers into all over the place in New Hampshire, right? Just thinking back: What was that was like for you to be part of the rollout of recovery centers in New Hampshire?
Cheryle Pacapelli 16:54
At the time, I had no idea it would get to this level. At the time, there were no recovery community centers here, and that was just appalling and amazing to me.
Michelle Lennon 17:11
Essentially, we were known as the drug-infested den. We were called that by a former President at one point.
Cheryle Pacapelli 17:18
Number two state in the country per capita for opioid-related deaths. So it was almost like a perfect storm that this all came together during that time. And to see today the people that we trained 10 years ago, what they have done and become is, like, sometimes I just can't even believe it. And I'm really proud to have been a part of that, to have trained you, and been a mentor and supportive for you over these last 10 years, to see you grow from in the basement of a church with no office, to an office that I didn't even want to go into in this thrift store...
Michelle Lennon 18:08
Yeah, we had plywood over sinks at one point for desks.
Cheryle Pacapelli 18:09
...to four of some of the most active recovery community centers, and then pioneering this family recovery support, integrating it into peer support and just how that's a perfect match to do that. It's really been amazing with the little bit of knowledge I was able to impart on you, how much you soaked that up, and then built this amazing network in the center of the state, and I personally really love you for doing that work.
Michelle Lennon 18:52
And I think it wasn't just me. I think of...
Cheryle Pacapelli 18:56
Everybody, right?
Michelle Lennon 18:57
...Jess Carter at Revive in the Nashua area, another thriving couple of centers, Daisy at Laconia Navigating Recovery working with John Burns to bring us all together to update the curriculum, training people. I think of people like Laina Reavis, who has just turned into this amazing leader in our state. In fact, if anybody ever visits our Archways location in Plymouth, New Hampshire, we have one of her poems up that people can check out, just one of the most moving poems that I had ever read by somebody in recovery. I want to say it was written in 2021, and I actually recently contacted her because it had left such an impression on me. I'm like: "Can I have it? Can I post it in our in our center?" And that's something else I have found—and I don't know if you've have found this, too—but I don't know if it's because of what people in recovery have been through, but some of the most generous and kind—I mean, don't get me wrong, people were jerks before they use, people can be jerks after they stop using, too, right? But some of the most profound impacts of generosity in my life have come from from the recovery community.
Narrator 20:12
Thank you for listening to Archways Threads. If there is a topic you'd like to see us cover, email us at podcast@archwaysnh.org or call us at 603-960-2128. Visit our website at archwaysnh.org to learn more about the Archways family of recovery and family resource centers. And thank you again to our sponsor, Health Market Connect, providing unbiased health insurance assistance for New Hampshire residents. Find more information at hmcnh.com.