A&E Selects Stephen Dickerson as Recovery Project State Delegate

Stephen Dickerson once felt like a "good-for-nothing" and recovery has enabled him to be a person who feels "good for absolutely everything.” 10 years clean, the West Virginia coalition member says he knows he’s here for a reason. One of those reasons may be to be this year’s A&E television’s Recovery Project Delegate for his state.
 

“I was saved in order to live my life as an example,” the 30-year-old happily married father of two said. “People can get through their obstacles to help them live their life.”

A good student who never felt like he fit in with his high school peers, Dickerson dropped out of school and out of life by doing drugs to make himself feel better. Since completing treatment for his addiction, the Delegate earned his GED and B.A. and earned a master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation counseling that he uses to help underserved youth and young adults with employment barriers obtain jobs and stay out of trouble.

The CADCA member also volunteers with the Creating Opportunities for Youth Coalition, considering himself a resource as well as a community mobilizer.

At the Recovery Walks! event being held Sept. 25 in Philadelphia, thousands of people in recovery – including Dickerson, Youth Delegate Abbie Hansen, and the 51 other Recovery Delegates selected to represent every state and the District of Columbia — along with their friends, family and advocates, will walk together around Penn’s Landing to celebrate recovery.

The journey—from Dickerson’s admission to himself and his family that he was an addict—to working with youth and being a father of a teenager himself—has been arduous, but Stephen remains committed to his recovery and the healing of others still finding their way.

“I teach my kids that we are all pre-disposed to addiction, but, if you choose to take that first drink, or you choose to take that first hit, all your other choices are made for you,” Dickerson said.

In his work, Dickerson tells incarcerated addicts that they probably didn’t want to be addicted to drugs and alcohol when they grew up. Dickerson smoked marijuana and was also an intravenous drug user making more than one trip to rehab before it clicked for him.

Dickerson, like A&E and CADCA, know there is real hope for recovery – we are surrounded, whether we know it or not, by people who have overcome addiction. They are our friends, our relatives, our co-workers, our employers, our neighbors. They are people who are, once again, productive members of our society like Dickerson.

“I prevent myself from using drugs every day,” Dickerson said, firmly believing that treatment and prevention are related. He will be a guest on CADCA TV’s Prevention and Treatment: Working Together program Sept. 30th. “The only difference is that prevention is keeping them from using it, and treatment is preventing them from doing it again.”

CADCA is one of the national supporters of the Philadelphia Recovery Walks! event. We encourage coalitions in and around the Philadelphia area to come participate in the walk. If your coalition plans to attend the event with Stephen Dickerson, Abbie and Holly Hansen and CADCA staff, please let us know by contacting Natalia Martinez Duncan at 703-706-0560, Ext. 256 or nmartinez@cadca.org.

For more information about the Recovery Walks! event and The Recovery Project, visit http://www.aetv.com/real-life-change/the-recovery-project/index.jsp.