- Peer Recovery Advocates are folks who have been in recovery themselves, and are interested in helping others find a path toward a different life.

(gentle music) New Choices Recovery Center is a Schenectady-based, substance use disorder treatment facility.

Our peer advocates literally and figuratively save lives.

- Peer advocate basically is someone with lived life experience.

What I do is basically it's like a resource broker, and someone who can help a person get where they wanna be, but most importantly be client-centered, and to meet them where they're at, understand where they're at, and just be their cheerleader.

- I do have individuals that drop by my office and they just need a minute, and we sit and we chop it up.

But a lot of times I schedule certain sessions with individuals that I've worked with prior, and now we're doing the maintenance work.

Talking about those things that they're encountering, whether it's at work or at home, challenges that they have so that they can continue this journey 'cause it's not something, it's not a one-trick pony.

It's not like you get clean and sober, and then all of a sudden, you know, everything is just peachy keen, it doesn't work like that.

- You can come to me and be honest without the chance of penalization.

This is the safe space right here, what we say stays here, it's between you and I.

- I'm not a probation officer, I'm not a parole officer, I'm not a clinician.

I'm here to be like, "Yo, if you use, it's okay."

But let's try to do something different.

What's gonna help you not wanna use?

- Because of my addiction, I was homeless right here in this area, right in a five block radius.

I've seen so many different situations, I've been through so much.

And so as a result, a lot of times when I sit down with persons, a lot of times I can identify with where they are because I've been there myself.

- We can identify, we've been through the struggle, we know what it's like.

You know, the common denominator is pain, feeling abandoned, low self-esteem, low self-worth, and hatred, right?

And resentments I carry towards myself, right?

So that was the key to me be getting free, you know, talking to someone about that.

- The peers are the ones who had helped me the most in my journey, and they can give you some honest advice because they have been through what you're going through, and they just can really understand you're on a different level.

They just make you feel so not judged and comfortable because there can be such a like, not great stigma around addicts.

- If I, you know, go back to the people I went to high school with, stuff like that, grew up with just about everybody has been kind of impacted in one way or another.

That being said, I still feel like a lot of it is kind of talked about behind closed doors, right?

Where people aren't as open about a family member who's struggled, or you know, somebody who's died.

Obviously a lot of the stigma's kind of gone the other way compared to when I was younger, but like it's still exists.

- When people come to us, they're not in the best place in life, you know?

You can't criticize them more than they do to themselves, they don't necessarily get like, "Hey man, it's okay what you did and what's going on, "like this can be fixed.

"You're still worth something.

"People still love you, you're worthy of love, "and you can do this, man."

Whatever word of encouragement I can speak to someone that wants to do better, that wants to get well is, sometimes the only one they might hear that day.

(birds chirping) - And I'm blessed to have you, I'm grateful to have you in my life.

- I appreciate that.

I love you much.

- I love you too.

- All right?

All right.

- Yeah.

Wife doing good?

- We plant seeds and I love watching them root and grow, and sometimes we're fortunate enough to see them flower and bloom.

- I ran into a guy at a meeting that has two years clean that still has the job that I wrote the reference letter for, right?

So like, and whoa, to a normal person that would be like, "Oh, yeah, cool."

But to like me, that's why I do it.

- If I can help someone, right?

Maybe they get 24 hours clean, maybe they are clean and sober for a day.

You know what I mean?

And prior to that, they never knew what that felt like, you know, I want them to be able to be free.

That's why I do what I do, I want persons to get an opportunity to experience freedom.

(gentle music)