TURNING THE CORNER After his suicide attempt, Rhyne felt as purposeless as ever. Fatefully, he met a man he calls his angel who changed his perspective on recovery. Rhyne knew his friend for 18 months, the last 18 months of his life. “He changed my life,” Rhyne recalls. “All I do know is the promise I made to him when he died: to give back to people just like me.” Rhyne has been clean ever since, 13 years and counting. Six years into his sobriety, Rhyne became familiar with No Turning Back. He was clean, but his environment and lifestyle was still fraught with relapse potential. “The situation I was living in wasn't conducive to recovery whatsoever,” he says. “It was my quality of life I needed to get in order. I was virtually homeless. I was also jobless.” Rhyne considered NTB, and, upon meeting Executive Director Rob Carter and touring the facilities, decided to move in. Rhyne says Carter told him, “I don't need your money.” “I stayed 90 days without paying a dollar,” Rhyne says. All Carter asked of Rhyne was that he help the new people by using his experience to facilitate the recovery of new clients. It was the opportunity Rhyne had been looking for. He could use his experience and intellect, ful ll the promise he made to his mentor and bring purpose and direction to his life. “What I respect about Rob is that he really understands the program. In the program, they have a saying: ‘The therapeutic value of one addict helping another is unparalleled.’ He goes by that,” Rhyne says. “My life has purpose, something it never had. It has meaning, something it never had. I have a relationship with the creator, something I never had,” Rhyne says.
LIFE AT NTB Rhyne started in the recovery house where there is a lot of structure and the most amount of attention is paid to the clients. There, clients bunk two to a room, go to meetings bi-weekly and stay on average six months to a year. He moved on to the single occupancy transitional house, where there is a later curfew and clients are given more responsibility. “By this time,” Rhyne says, “clients are working and being responsible.” Next was his stay at the independent living house where there is more freedom, clients can keep overnight guests on the weekends and continue going to meetings. “At this point,” Rhyne says, “a lot of guys have a foundation.” Rhyne graduated to permanent housing, where he currently resides. He lives there with three other clients. “We have a saying in AA: ‘You’ll get to live beyond your wildest dreams.’ This house is beyond my wildest dreams,” Rhyne says. His whole family came over, he says, ecstatic with his development.
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“Life is beautiful,” Rhyne re ects.
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