“Ever have four wisdom teeth pulled at once? One script for hydrocodone. That’s my origin story,” she chuckles, pretending I got the joke.

Transportation Coordinator. It’s a fancy way to say taxi driver. Or Uber. Or Lyft. Whatever rideshare you choose to call it, I am privileged enough to be able to do it. Plus, I get to see and spend time with people who want to change their lives. I’d say that alone was pretty cool.

Windshield time with them means seeing and hearing about the stuff they carry that they don’t even share in their groups.

I’m also inquisitive, asking lots of questions. Probably too many for my own good. But I ask anyway. I figure, why not? We’ve got time to kill. Might as well talk.

I start most conversations with how did you come to Gibson? What did life feel and look like before substance use took hold of you? Everyone has a different answer.

For Amara, finding answers was hard. Especially when her pain started.

Real pain. It started with Amara’s wisdom teeth. Then her back injury set in. Now she needed something stronger. Fentanyl patches. Higher doses of hydrocodone. Then the miracle pill: OxyContin. The pain was gone. Not the cravings.

Amara moved from doctor to doctor, chasing providers, until no one in the area would see her anymore. She almost overdosed. At least twice, if not more. After her arrest the judge ordered rehab. Thankfully she heard about the research study and Suboxone.

“I figured it was worth it,” she told me. “If the research would help someone like me.”

Someone like me.

I’ve thought about that phrase a hundred times since.

Suboxone stopped her cravings. For the first time in seven years Amara took a medication as prescribed. That made it possible for her to stop running and start focusing on everything she’d been ignoring.

Harm reduction is what the Gibson Center for Behavioral Change is all about. It’s where you go after you’ve exhausted all other options. Here, you’re safe, believed, and trusted to make the best decisions for yourself, by yourself.

That’s where Amara landed. And for the first time in a long time somebody believed she could find her way back.

Strip away the clinical language and you’ll see a person. That’s what behavioral health actually looks like. It’s beyond a checkbox and compliance. It’s what happens when a person getting quiet enough inside hears themselves thinking again.

Amara completed the study. Twenty three months. She showed up for almost every visit, stuck to her Suboxone, and started telling everyone she knew with a substance problem about the research.

She walked in carrying seven years of wreckage. She walked out sending people she loved to the same door she almost never walked through.

Seven years. First time ever.

It wasn’t easy. Not at first.

But she did it anyway.

Joe Class III gives research participants rides to and from Gibson Center for Behavioral Change. He asks a lot of questions. Nobody seems to mind.

Know someone carrying something heavy? Send this to them.