BEYOND ENDURING

ENDURING

Enduring represents the
sorrows, traumas, despair, and hopelessness
experienced by our participants prior to accessing the site and to some extent,
their experiences that continue outside the site.

Participants spoke to
enduring traumas, and
enduring in the face of trauma

I feel like I’m always in chains….
The addiction is like you’re in a
ball and chain every day of your life.

– Participant 22

It’s a lifetime that leads up to addiction. You know what I mean? I just had to cope with using drugs.

– Shone

People are rushed here because you know, cops could drive by at any moment. Like I said a mother and children could walk by any moment and you go oh shit, let’s go and they just leave everything and take off.

– Zack

It’s still scary when you recognize the person [overdosing]. I know everybody, not on a personal level everybody, but I recognize everybody’s faces… And when I see stuff like this it scares the hell out of me.

– KGB

And the potential to end up [as] road kill, you know what I mean, you’re just dead….I lost a lot of friends.

– Shone

I didn’t have that much concern for myself at that time because no one was around to tell me that I was worth having concern for myself at that time. So, I took a picture of this going down, right. This is my life. I’m going downhill. This is my life on drugs: downhill.

– Participant 22

Like I felt like my life was at a dead end. I wasn’t going to, they weren’t going to bust open the woods and make another road to continue on to a good road.

My life had stopped and that’s the way I felt before.…. Again I will say again, every time I walk through this door this place saves my life, whether I know it, realize it and need to know it or not, they do.

Participant 22