Resource center serving people in recovery across Orange County celebrating third anniversary
Robin Rush spent the past 10 years managing the Alana Club, a chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous in Anaheim, and has seen the 12-step program fill a desire for community many in recovery need to get sober. But there were many vital forms of support it doesn’t provide.
Some of the people who came to meetings at the Alana Club were struggling with homelessness and going hungry. Many often had trouble getting access to computers to file important paperwork, Rush said. And others were battling addiction to opioids as well as alcohol.
“What I saw that was missing was long-term recovery,” Rush said.
That’s why she founded Recovery Road, a resource center aiding about 500 families in cities throughout Orange County. The nonprofit headquartered in Anaheim celebrated its third anniversary Friday.
The center provides supplies like food or diapers, haircuts and training on various life skills. Additionally, one of the most important forms of support it offers is the distribution of Narcan. That’s the brand name variant of the opioid inhibitor naloxone, which immediately reverses the effects of a heroin or fentanyl overdose even if someone has stopped breathing, Rush said.
The father of Rush’s child died during an overdose while he was homeless and living in the Santa Ana riverbed, she said. He might have lived if he had naloxone, and getting it into the hands of anyone who might need it has become one of her life’s missions.
Rush takes boxes of the emergency medication with her wherever she goes. She hands them to security guards, employees at fast food restaurants, people living on the street and anyone she thinks might have any reasonable potential to encounter an overdose and save someone’s life.
She said it’s especially important for groups who aid people recovering from addiction to have Narcan. That’s because those trying to kick the habit are some of the least likely to survive an overdose.
“When you have recovery, your body is clean,” Rush said. “So we in recovery or just getting out of detox, that’s the most dangerous time for anybody if they relapse. They have not built up immunity and overdose with just the tiniest amount.”
That’s why she signed up with the California Department of Health Care Services’ Naloxone Distribution Program and made the Alana Club the first and only Alcoholics Anonymous group in Orange County to make the emergency medication available to members and visitors. She would like to see other chapters do the same but said many in the recovery organization stigmatize drug use and don’t want to give the impression of enabling it, Rush said.
“This is an AA club, we don’t give drugs here,” she said, mimicking colleagues resistant to handing out Narcan. “But everybody’s doing drugs. It’s just not the way it is.”
She added that “I myself have utilized Narcan with people over at the club six or seven times.”
She said she gave out about 4,000 doses of Narcan in January and February either herself or through Recovery Road and the Alana Club.
At Recovery Road, boxes of Narcan sit on the counter next to the front door, unattended and free for anyone who walks through the door. Rush plans to set up a TV near the entrance that will repeatedly loop a video teaching people how to use the overdose reversal drug. Anyone who needs it can just come in and take it without having to speak to anyone.
Meeting rooms and a barber shop line a brief corridor leading from there to a storage area with tall metal shelves and refrigerators. Here, volunteers and mostly unpaid staff spend all day bundling supplies for needy families across Orange County.
Rush would like to see Recovery Road grow to a point where she might be able to better reimburse her staff. However, Larian Dutton said helping out at the resource center allows her to stay active and give back to her community. And she has become invested in the journeys of many of the people who come to them for help.
One of them was Jeremy, a man who was apparently high and belligerent when she and Rush first met him. Aside from breaking their rules about coming in without appointment, he also resisted volunteers’ demands to leave the large knife strapped to his hip outside.
When Jeremy came back about a week later with his girlfriend, he was sober, polite and apologetic. On the following visit, he was high again.
Rush and Dutton saw him go through ups and downs in his struggle with addiction. He showed positive signs recently, and they were talking to him about getting into rehab, but then lost touch for about a month.
They weren’t sure what became of him. But a few days ago, Rush was driving home after conducting training at an in-patient facility when she was struck by the realization that a clean shaven, responsibly dressed man among the people with her that day was Jeremy.
“I had to pull over when she called and told me that,” Dutton said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was such a relief to know he got there.”
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