The treatment of behavioral health at Chestnut Health Systems™ is increasingly powered by those who’ve been there and have overcome similar obstacles their clients face. October 17, 2024, is Global Peer Support Celebration Day, a day to recognize and spread awareness of this valuable work. Peers can bring hope to clients by sharing their own story of how they confronted their challenges and came out on the other side.
People want to know that someone has been there and that it is truly possible to do something different,” said Recovery Coach Jessica Banner. “It’s about having that lived experience and saying, ‘I’ve been there and it’s going to be alright. I got you. We’re going to walk through this together.’”
Boots on the ground
Banner is boots on the ground in Madison County, Illinois. She has no caseloads or desk at Chestnut. The work car is her office. She meets the clients where they are in the community, and links them to resources.
No two days are alike, but there are routines. She visits libraries and sets up tables each week. She’ll visit encampments with backpacks full of the opioid reversal drug Narcan®, fentanyl testing strips, snacks, and bus tokens.
“I go out with the Collinsville Police Department, which is such a big deal to me because I’m a felon who’s been arrested by the Collinsville Police Department,” she said, referencing her past legal trouble.
It didn’t take long for her to make an impact. On her first visit to Edwardsville Library, she helped a client obtain a phone. That night, they texted: ‘Thanks Jess for giving me my hope back. I’m on my way to detox.’
“I get to see people’s light come back,” she said, adding that while she does not have caseloads, she keeps in touch with the people of the community in which she works. “One individual I’ve been working with for almost a year, they went from ‘You know, I’m always going to be homeless. I’ve been like this since I was 13. This is the life I deserve…’ to now we’re working on disability, and they have hopes and dreams. I think the most valuable part of my job is giving people their hope back.”
Banner brings hope back one client at a time. That success can be attributed to hard work, pounding the pavement, and sharing her story.
Banner’s story
Banner survived significant childhood trauma. It all started when she was kidnapped twice before she was three, the second of which she remembers.
“It was late at night, and I remember that this guy grabbed my mom out of the car, slammed her head across the concrete, and snatched me out of the car. We got into his car. It had a red interior. I still remember the smell of the car and this person saying, ‘I’m daddy and we’re going’.”
Her next memory is nine months later, when the FBI rescued her from a mountain hideaway off the grid outside of Syracuse, NY.
“When the FBI found me and I got back to my mom, she had married a very bad man. And for a decade or more, I went through a lot of sexual, emotional, and financial abuse. And so, I left home when I was 15.”
Banner had already started drinking and smoking marijuana around 9 or 10 and was addicted to cocaine when she moved into her own place at 15.
“I worked three jobs. I was trying to do high school and my addiction.” At age 24, she was introduced to Vicodin, not knowing anything about it.
Fast forward to a two-year period with a physically abusive partner. One night, Banner was showering in a house she was sheltering in for the night. Her partner kicked in the front door of the house and then the bathroom door. Banner was stabbed and left for dead in the bathtub.
“That really altered my addiction and just kind of life in general,” she said. The world started crashing in on her. She totaled her car and racked up several charges, including the one felony conviction.
It was enough for Banner to enter treatment. She was able to get into a facility in Chicago.
“Little did I know I came out of treatment with a worse of a habit than I went up with, which was pretty incredible because my addiction was very severe.” After treatment, she was no longer able to hold a job, more due to the domestic violence situation. Therefore, not able to afford Vicodin, she switched to heroin. She was unhoused for five years. For three of those years, she lived on the streets of Chicago, wearing clothing taken from the trash.
“I slept in train stations and bus stops. I slept underneath the Conservatory exit at the Green Line. I stayed in the bushes at the planetarium.” When she stopped communicating with her elderly mother, she put out a missing person report that got back to a friend she hadn’t seen in years.
“She found out I was missing and jumped a plane from California to Chicago. And that’s really where my hope kind of got restored. She reminded me that I deserve better than that.” Banner entered treatment in California and made it 84 difficult days.
But it was June 13, 2020, when Banner entered treatment for the last time.
A new life
Being homeless has humbled Banner. The legacy she is building is more than enough fulfillment. She observes that a lot about being a peer is modeling behavior consistent with the life one deserves, which has proven to be an adjustment.
“You go from one lifestyle to this new one,” she said. “I had to learn how to pay bills responsibly. I had to learn how to pay my car insurance -- how to take care of things as they’re coming.”
Since entering recovery and taking on a new purpose, Banner has had drugs and paraphernalia placed in her hands. She explores traces of an old life with a firm grasp on a different future.
“I am not recovered. I’ll never be recovered,” she said, crediting therapy with keeping her on her path. “I’m not too proud to reach out for an extra therapy session, because I know at any time, I’m always one wrong decision away from being back where I started.”
As she lays in bed at night, she thinks of the people who have no place to go, calling it one of the toughest parts of the job. Perhaps the most difficult, however, is that there is only so much you can do. Recovery is ultimately in the hands of the individual.
“A lot of days I leave feeling like even though I know that I’ve down what’s humanly possible, it’s hard because I know what it’s like to be on the other end. An addiction is such a cunning, baffling, powerful disease – you just wish they would take the resource and go to detox, but you know it’s more complicated than that.”
Banner stays motivated despite these challenges, knowing that modeling contentment to clients reminds them of what is possible.
“Just seeing the light come back in someone’s eyes. There’s something so special about someone saying ‘maybe I really am worth it. My life does matter’.”
If you would like help with substance use or addiction, please call Chestnut Health Systems at 888.924.3786, or visit chestnut.org/how-we-can-help/addiction-treatment/. Our staff will help you through every stage of treatment including the initial assessment, treatment recommendations, through creating plans for aftercare.
Banner and Lt. Mark Kuchle with the Collinsville Police Department