Derek Myers was just a rebellious kid when he started sniffing glue. He was just a self-proclaimed invincible middle schooler when he began excusing himself from class to get high off rubber cement in the bathroom. He was fresh out of high school when he joined the Navy and learned how to drink. He was just a 21-year-old partier when he tried meth for the first time in 1993.
Roughly 21.5 million adults in the United States suffer from a substance use disorder, according to a survey done by the American Addiction Center in 2014. Derek is one of them.
Now 45 and almost six years clean, Derek is an undergraduate business student at the University of Oregon and an active participant in UO’s Collegiate Recovery Program, or CRC. The success of the CRC was among the reasons UO was awarded one of seven national Healthy Campus Awards for prioritizing student mental health by Active Minds, an organization dedicated to supporting student mental health, in May 2018.
And the success of the CRC for Derek is one of the reasons he says he is still clean today.
“Especially my first year, [the CRC] was just key for me. As soon as I walked into the CRC for the first time it was just like whoosh, all the doubt washed away and I can relax,” Derek says. “I still feel that way — it’s like I’ve found my place at UO.”
The Collegiate Recovery Center is located on the third floor of the EMU. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)
A need for peer support
The CRC, founded in 2012, offers services such as “weekly support seminars, assistance in starting recovery support meetings, group service projects, travel to regional and/or national recovery conferences, leadership opportunities & a space to study or socialize with free printing,” according to Dr. Toni Forbes, interim CRC director. It regularly serves student members who are at least three months clean of all substances.
A recent study about college recovery programs published in the US National Library of Medicine says that peer support in any addiction recovery process is critical, and this is especially true on college campuses.
“The high prevalence of drug and alcohol use on college and university campuses makes college attendance a severe threat to sobriety that must often be faced without one’s established support network if living away from home,” the report states. “This can lead to isolation when `fitting in’ is critical, and/or to yielding to peer pressure to use alcohol or drugs, both enhancing relapse risks.”
Derek says he’s found his people in the CRC.
“I love recovery. If I would have known that life could be this good, I would have done it a long time ago” Derek says. “We’re the type of people who are annoyingly happy, and the most grateful.”
This community is paramount for Derek, and the hardest part is not knowing who is going to stay clean and who is going to relapse.
“You can’t think your way out of addiction,” Derek explains, “you’ve gotta surrender and let other people help you.”
‘I wasn’t thinking about getting clean’
Derek’s road to the CRC, and to recovery, was long and winding – he logged his first two stays in rehab before he was 16.
“I was hellbent on breaking the rules,” he says.
Thinking back, he doesn’t think anyone could have stopped him. He thought it was fun.
But that changed quickly. After a quick stint in the Navy where his drinking took off, he started gambling, and then realized he couldn’t stop.
The vortex of his addiction, and the lies that came with it, ruined his family.
“The video poker addiction was one of the most painful… It was hell. It was hell,” Derek says slowly, sitting in the CRC office, looking at his hands, willing himself to think back to the early 2000’s when he lived in Portland.
“Every day I wanted to not do it,” he says. “And I would tell myself I wasn’t gonna do it. And I thought if I loved my family enough I wouldn’t do it. And then I would find myself doing it.”
He was haunted by guilt and shame — the nagging monsters of addiction — and often found himself asking, “What is wrong with me?”
His marriage of 10 years fell apart and for several years before and after he got clean, he was not in touch with his children. He says the pain he caused them and the damage he did to these relationships were the worst thing to come out of his addiction.
At the height of his gambling problem, Derek was in business with his brother Aaron — they were working construction — and they hired another man to work with them.
The man they hired turned out to be a meth addict, and Derek and Aaron started using meth regularly alongside him in late 2007. This, Derek says, is when everything really started to go downhill.
He leans back and laughs softly when he says: “I guess I thought of meth as a cure for gambling.”
Aaron, who is four years younger than Derek, told the Emerald that as a result of their addictions, they eventually found themselves living in Aaron’s foreclosed home without any utilities. He remembers them sharing the last can of lima beans.
“It was a pretty ugly life,” Aaron says. “The only way we got anything was we’d go out and steal. So we were living real criminal scumbag lives.”
Derek says the two were often strung-out for days at a time.
“I was runnin’ and gunnin’,” Derek says. “I wasn’t really thinking about getting clean.”
The turning point
Their crimes started to catch up with them. The vicious cycle of stealing and using drugs quickly got them tied up with law enforcement in the Portland area. Both brothers served several short jail sentences.
Derek’s addiction isolated him from almost everyone in his life, except his mother.
“Her home phone number was the only number I had memorized,” Derek says, remembering that every time he found himself in jail, he would call her just to tell her he loved her. “She was relieved every time she got a call from the jail because at least she knew I was safe.”
In 2012, Aaron was required by his probation officer to seek treatment for his addiction. Derek says he tagged along to a few meetings. He realized that the partying and drug use had stopped being fun a long time ago.
But Derek didn’t stop using right away. Quitting wasn’t easy for Aaron — who quickly relapsed — and it wasn’t going to be easy for Derek either.
And then Derek’s probation officer exercised a different disciplinary action..
He was jolted when he received a six month sentence. “I really, really didn’t want to go to prison,” Derek says, thinking back to the way his mindset changed in December of 2012.
He started reading about 12-step recovery programs while he was incarcerated and he started to have hope.
Aaron picked Derek up from jail when his six months were up, and says he took him straight to a 12-step meeting. Despite Aaron’s own recent relapse, he wanted to support his brother’s recovery.
Derek has been going to meetings at least twice a week and he says he will continue to, as long as he wants to stay clean.
Despite periods of homelessness, Derek didn’t go back to construction. It was a decision he made for the sake of his recovery. Instead, he enrolled in Central Oregon Community College and applied to live in a sober living facility.
“I didn’t want my old life back,” Derek says with resolve. “I wasn’t trying to get back to what I’d had. I wanted a new life better than than the one I’d had.”
And the Oxford House he lived in in Bend was his next step. Oxford House is an organization with sober living facilities around the U.S. which function as group homes for people starting recovery.
The supportive communities he’s found along his recovery journey have made all the difference for Derek.
Throughout Derek’s recovery, he’s heard the phrase, “there’s nothing more powerful than an addict helping another addict,” a million times. But it’s true, he says, and that is why the CRC has been such a powerful resource for him.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the CRC does not offer counseling services for students. Dr. Forbe’s title has also been updated to reflect her role as interim director.
