After caring for people recovering from addiction, would COVID-19 force him to leave?
Donnie Simmons spent two years caring for men recovering from substance use disorders in a rehab center. But as the COVID-19 pandemic stretched on, Simmons was faced with a difficult decision: He could remain at work caring for those in the recovery center, or he could care for his grandmother at home.
But it was becoming increasingly clear he could not do both.
“I was coming home to my grandmother, who is in hospice care at my home. I would come home, strip down and take my clothes straight to the washing machine. Shoes stayed outside,” Simmons said.
Simmons was told that if his grandmother, who’s 88, caught even so much as the common cold, the results could be dire. COVID-19 was much more of a risk.
At work, Simmons tried his best to eliminate the possible entry of the coronavirus into his workplace.
“I was on the phone with the CDC, USDA, Department of Ag every day when this first started. I was the guy that was in the kitchen. I remember it like it was yesterday. I made an Excel spreadsheet [for delivery workers to fill out] and it said name, company, time in, time out, cell phone number, company number temperature. For 16 weeks, I can say proudly, no one got COVID where I was working.”
Eventually, he faced a choice: Continue to work at the center, or risk having a hospice nurse take his grandmother to a facility.
Simmons chose his grandmother.
“She can’t breathe, she doesn’t get oxygen to her heart. I’m cooking, cleaning, helping her in every aspect,” Simmons said. “I was relieved I didn’t have to put my grandma at risk.”
But even though Simmons is no longer commuting into the workplace, the fear of COVID-19 still lingers.
“I am still scared for my grandma’s health. We are still very conscious of who comes to visit. It’s not exactly ideal for someone who has so many friends; she has a lot from church who want to visit her,” he said. “The thing that was painful was when COVID first started coming around, we couldn’t even allow family into the house.”
Simmons said that losing a job due to the circumstances of pandemic was scary.
“If I could not go into work because of COVID, how could I possibly start another job in fear?”
While Simmons can’t return to a normal workplace while caring for his grandmother during a pandemic, he’s using his time to do what he’s been working to do for years: To follow his vision of creating a space for people in recovery.
Simmons wants to give people a purpose
Simmons has a vision of a tiny house community, where people in recovery could go to begin to assimilate back into the community with guidance and purpose.
“I’m tired of losing friends, I’m tired of losing family members. I’m tired of parents calling me telling me that their sons and daughters overdosed again and they can’t get them in treatment. Some people can’t do it alone, some people can’t do it in AA, some people can’t do it in NA,” Simmons said. According to a survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that up to 90 percent of people who need rehab do not receive it. Relapse rates are estimated between 40-60 percent.
And aside from providing help to those that need it most, Simmons believes his plan will also help the community grow and prosper. It’s estimated that drug abuse and addiction costs American society more than $740 billion annually in lost workplace productivity, crime-related costs and healthcare expenses.
To Simmons, a sense of genuine helping starts with a sense of purpose.
“I don’t believe so much in recovery homes. If you’re putting 10 addicts in a house and one messes up, guess what? There’s a greater chance the other ones that go in will mess up also.”
People in recovery would build their own homes as part of the tiny home recovery community, Simmons said. He plans to call it Sinners to Saint.
“It’s about having a sense of purpose so that it’s not just, ‘OK, I’m in recovery here’s a bus pass, make sure you go to NA or AA.’ That doesn’t keep people sober,” Simmons said.
A bridge to lasting recovery
During his time working with the nonprofit, Simmons learned about high failure rates in the recovery community. . He attributes these high numbers to the fact that there’s nothing for the men after recovery.
“There’s no bridge, right, you’re just kind of sent back out,” Simmons said. “I think of how many recovering addicts have burned a bridge with their families or somebody. My grandmother and grandfather helped me think about people that don’t have a family that’s willing to help them. But they really want to change.”
And though the failure rates are high, he said he believes that if more people talk about recovery and donate time and energy to recover, it would help — especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is my down time to focus on building this community. This is the time to really put it out there that this is what I want to do and how I want to do it,” Simmons said. “I have a lot of plans. My plans are to keep our community sober. However I can do it, that’s what I’m going for.”
For more on Donnie Simmons:
Day 1: This Charlotte chef got sober and left the restaurant world. Then COVID-19 arrived.
Day 2: ‘We’re just as important as anybody’ — Charlotte recovery worker on the front lines
Information for this article was contributed by Maddie Ellis.
