DANIELLE DONALDSON: Welcome to Peer Into Recovery, a podcast with a focus on the profession of peer support. For more information about how to subscribe, please visit our website at www.vprsn.org. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I am your host, Danielle Donaldson. In this episode, I’m going to be speaking with Leroy Robinson. Leroy is supervisor of the 401 Peer Center in Radford, a facility operated by New River Valley Community Services that is designed to support individuals in recovery from substance use and mental health disorders. Originally from Philadelphia, he is in long-term recovery after 24 years of active addiction. He was one of the first two participants to graduate from the Pulaski County Adult Drug Court Treatment Program in 2016 and has most recently been employed by New River Valley Community Services as a Peer Recovery Specialist, assisting individuals enrolled in local drug court and jail diversion programs. Hi, Leroy. Thank you for joining me today. How are you doing?

LEROY ROBINSON: I am doing phenomenal.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Awesome.

LEROY ROBINSON: How are you?

DANIELLE DONALDSON: I’m doing pretty good, too. It’s a lovely fall day, isn’t it?

LEROY ROBINSON: Yes, absolutely.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: And you’re just down the road from me, so you’re basically a neighbor. Yeah.

LEROY ROBINSON: Hey, neighbor.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Yeah. Hi from Blacksburg. Yeah. So, Leroy, let’s get into it. Would you mind sharing with the audience maybe what led you to peer support, what inspired you to start this profession?

LEROY ROBINSON: So, after graduating from the drug treatment court in Pulaski, I had opportunity to meet some fantastic individuals. So, while in treatment, there was a lady there. She spoke to me about peer support and what it was, and believed that I would be an asset to the movement. So, I also was kind of encouraged by our now director, James Pritchett, who kept insisting that I inform him when I got the 18 months clean, and said I had some things in the works. So, as I was a housing counselor for Community Action, he took me out to lunch and told me that they was starting up an office of peer supports and wanted me to come work for them. I didn’t know fully what that meant, but when he said that I would be able to utilize my story to inspire hope in others, that was a no-brainer. Early on in treatment, they had asked me three of my greatest goals. And one was I wanted to grow closer in my spiritual higher power. Two, I wanted to be an influence and role model for my children. And the third one was that I always wanted to utilize my story to help others in recovery. And that’s how my journey began.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Wow, that sounds like a kind of a fate, I guess maybe or everything came together for you at the right time. And I love hearing that. I’ve talked to several different peer specialists and there’s definitely that common thread of people being kind of called to the profession in one way or another. So, yes, ma’am, did you have any particular challenges along the way?

LEROY ROBINSON: Well, plenty as a paraplegic. I never knew how to live as a paraplegic. I got shot in 2012 in a drug deal. And my addiction had really manifested itself because of the lack of mobility. And so in trying to cope, dealing with the depression, you know, the obvious culture shock and how to survive. Well, I didn’t know how to live as a human being prior to that. Now living as a human being in the wheelchair. So I had challenges with that. And then at the time I was married, so going through a really messy divorce, custody battles, family loss, lost my brother, my oldest brother. So, you know, they call it life on life challenges. So just, and being, and the odd thing is that living in this area, African Americans make up a small percentage. So when I used to attend the NA meetings, I noticed that I was the only one there most times. And with the disease of addiction, it’ll con me into identifying out. So no, they don’t understand what I’ve gone through. They don’t understand my struggles. There’s no one black in here. I don’t need to be here. So just, you know, just thoughts and self-defeating thoughts like that was also challenging. So, you know, yeah, it’s, you know, life on life. There was obstacles to overcome, you know, obviously employment, housing, because of my past. A lot of the housing communities pretty much denied me because I had drug charges. You know, drop mobility, getting around transportation, that’s an obvious barrier in this area. So yeah, you name it, there was an obstacle to overcome.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Well, since we are going to be talking about racial justice in this episode, would you mind maybe explaining how you worked through that issue of feeling, I guess, I’m paraphrasing and maybe I’m putting words in your mouth, but out of place in a rural, we live in Southwest Virginia, which is far more rural than the rest of the state. So I can understand not feeling like you’re part of the majority there. How did you persist in your recovery when you were faced with a situation like that?

LEROY ROBINSON: Well, a little bit of the history of where I come from in Philadelphia, I grew up in a predominantly Latino society. So in my opinion, I believe that I was able to be a chameleon. So it’s like adapt or die. And I went through a severe identity crisis. And so I lost myself. And then I went and once I was arrested and I served some penitentiary time, I did a lot of reading, trying to find who I was. I went through a lot of different mindsets and belief systems to really appreciate me as a person, my skin tone, that I’m a male, you know, these things and it went through a lot of stages of hatred and misplaced hatred, projection, insecurities, fear. And I think once I got to Christianity, which is my belief, once I got to that, my high power, I was really able to love on me because my high power loves me like he loves me, then, you know, who can stand against me, right? So navigating through the feeling of being out of place, what happened was there was some awesome people, right? So my support network coming into recovery, well, treatment first, before I even entered into recovery, I went into treatment. So when I got into treatment and you, I think you made you commented on it earlier. It was, I always believed that it was the right people in the right place at the right time for me. So everyone, I believe that there’s no coincidences, right? So when I meet people, I can either make an enemy or a friend. So I chose to make friends and I connected and I would talk and try to overcome the fear of being out of place. Then when I got into the rooms, I was assisted by a lot of folk in there who informed me how cunning and baffling that this disease is.

So the folk that were in there, they helped to guide me on the right path. So I came in, complained. Obviously, it’s everybody’s fault. It’s this person that didn’t want to take a look at myself. As I got in, people wasn’t, they was not afraid to approach me, to love on me. I realized that, you know what? I don’t have to be out of place because we all dealing with a similar battle. Obviously, there’s going to be some people that don’t believe the way I believe. I get that, but I looked at people. This is what really helped, is that in order for me to see people the way my higher power see people, I got to love people the way my higher power love people. So, I’m just looking on the internal individual, and it’s amazing because when I go down the progression of time, or how the dominoes fell, I mean, it was everyone, and I’m not even being irrational here. Those who were in my life, with the exception of my pastor, were white Americans, and they all had a genuine love and concern for me to make it out of that lifestyle. And it was back to back. Even talking about when I was in jail with a bond of $25,000, this lady who was a white woman, put her home up and bonded me up, and I never met her. We just ran into her. Somebody gave me her address and said that they enjoyed the way I interpreted the Bible and thought that she and I had a lot in common, and we wrote letters for six weeks. And I just shared my story, and she said she was pricked in the heart with compassion and believed that I was destined to do greater things than to sit in the jail cell. And knowing that she had to go through being rejected and ousted from her family, which they did, called her horrible and miserable names. And I understood that because my background was not rosy, and they was concerned at who she was bringing in her home. And she ended up saying that she needed, she believes she needed to do this. And she put her home up, got me out of jail. She nursed me back to health for six solid months. When I got out of the drug court and got home and then she passed away. My best friend. So you can’t put a price or you can’t put a label or anything on that. That was my higher power doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: That’s an amazing story.

LEROY ROBINSON: Of course, Gail Talbert always said that every time I get an opportunity to speak, I would mention her name to keep her legacy going because it started with her. If I was not out on bond, then I wouldn’t have been a candidate for drug court because they had no funds at the time. Either individuals that was out waiting for trial.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Well, that’s just mind-blowing. Wow, that’s an amazing story.

LEROY ROBINSON: Yes, ma’am.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Can I ask you, moving into peer support as a profession, what do you think peer specialists need to know about how racial disparities affect recovery?

LEROY ROBINSON: Well, what I’m seeing is this is a fear. It’s a fear and it’s also an excuse. I talked to a guy the other day and he said he was fired because he backed in the, he worked for Shelor, he backed into some vehicle. And I think they may have, obviously, there’s an accident, they got to do a drug screen. And he blamed it on his skin tone. And I thought about that. He’s in denial of his substance use disorder and said, and because of what’s going on, utilizing it as an excuse not to do a thing, or not to focus on what’s important, like prioritizing. And that’s what I see. It as, for some, as a way to project that anger, misplace hatred, a way to continue using, you know, maybe get in the case of what they call it, if it’s in just saying, well, you know, my country doesn’t accept me, so why should I accept myself? You know, Danielle, this is what’s crazy is that, you know, I don’t know any slaves and I don’t know any slave owners. And what occurred, occurred, and, you know, obviously is disheartening what occurred. But, you know, here we are, and we’re not where we are, where we were 50 years ago, 100 years ago. So progress takes time. And until we can kind of pinpoint how to really eradicate this thing, it’s just we got to keep on moving and do it peacefully, do it diplomatically. And I’m just understanding from my perspective is that, you know, I’m not the only one brainwashed here, right? There’s complexes and people who are in privilege, they also have been brainwashed to believe because of a skin tone that makes them better, right?

So there’s a sensitivity that exists here that I got to understand that we in this country, you know, we talk about survival. Well, however, they had to be taught in order to survive is the way the parents did what they had to do. But as we’re moving along, right, we’re so further along today than we were before. So, and as a PRS, I make every attempt not to open that can of worms, to really just make or help the end of it, come alongside them, allow them to vent if they want to talk about it. You know, don’t give them any opinions or any of my personal perspective on it. But then once they get it out of their system, you know, my goal is to try to lead them towards recovery. You know, that’s my goal. You know, I’m not a politician and, you know, I’m not with a lot of the things that separate us. You know, I just want to be a bridge for whatever reason. And it’s going to be difficult, you know, for me to partake in any of the negativity surrounding racial disparities because, like I just explained to people, you know, I was shot twice by a black man, I was shot once by a Puerto Rican, and I was framed by a white man. So you would think I just don’t like anybody. But I just understood, I understand. It’s a mindset. It’s about teaching each other how to love on each other. Because when you look at children and you ask them to describe that other child, it’s not going to describe that child by skin tone. They’ll make a community, hey, that guy with the blue hat, or he’s a boy with black sneakers. They’ll look at things like that, but not so as much to be learned from children. But I’m sorry, I went off on a rabbit trail.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: No, no, no. I thought that was all very good points. And I guess, one of the things I just got from what you were saying is, there is, I guess, the bond amongst peer specialists of, we all share that bond of lived experience. And, you know, perhaps if we focused more on that, and tapping into that connection, that helps you do the work that you do as a peer support specialist.

LEROY ROBINSON: Absolutely.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Is there…

LEROY ROBINSON: That program.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Is there…

LEROY ROBINSON: I’m sorry.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: I was just going to ask, is there anything about this current movement that’s influencing how you’re practicing peer support right now?

LEROY ROBINSON: Well, in a positive way, right? So, as I express to the agency I work for, that we should be a beacon. You know, let’s show our community what harmony looks like, right? Equality, we turn no one away that come through those doors, right? We have a great people in supervisory positions, you know, they hire, I mean, like we’re so ahead of the curve in our area with the peer support movement. I mean, you’re hiring ex-felons, right? With maybe barrier crimes even, right? So, we’re doing so much for that movement and giving people careers to be proud of. So, the influence is positive and in the role that I’m in, you know, where I’m able to get that individual that would show up and try to identify out. Well, I’m here. So, you can’t say there’s no black folk here. So, I’m sorry about, you know, you got to look for another excuse, you know, that’s not going to happen. So, you know, this is what’s beneficial and being in this position and in this role, in this area.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Yeah, very much so. Yeah. Is there anything? So, first of all, have you a lot of experience with advocacy as a peer specialist?

LEROY ROBINSON: I served on the drug court team in our locality, well, in all of the localities in our region. So, in Giles, Montgomery, Floyd, Pulaski, and here recently, the city of Radford. And this is what I do. This is what they hired me for, to be able to help individuals identify stigma. Okay, and let’s get rid of that. We can’t pick and choose who’s going to be successful in the program, who’s going to be successful in recovery. Most of us come in with these charges or this whole background, and then we have experience or direct affiliation with some of the law enforcement. And then they’ll immediately say, no, this guy’s not going to make it. We talked to Judge Fleener, who used to be the Commonwealth Attorney there in Pulaski. I met him, well, I seen him not too long ago, and he said, you know, Leroy, I have to apologize. He said, when your case came across my table for a possible candidate for Pulaski Drug Court, he said, I was the first one to say this guy’s not going to make it. He is not going to make it. Maybe I need to think about someone else. So, you know, just hearing that, and now I’m in that role, in that position, to speak, and as well as helping folk to understand, like, the mindset of African Americans in this fear or this inferiority complex, and why some of us put up this defense mechanism of aggression and misplaced hatred, you know, just helping them to understand that, because I, too, was a product, you know, of that, right? I projected that same insecurity at some point, and, you know, hated the world, and it was a conspiracy theory, and, you know, that stuff kept me sick. It kept me sick and stuck and in denial. So, just being able to speak on those things, you know, in my opinion, it’s really helpful and it gets, it helps those individuals to understand the mindset and the belief system.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: So, if there, do you have any advice, maybe, for peer recovery specialists who would like to be able to advocate for more racial equality? Do you have any resources or, like, any advice to share with them?

LEROY ROBINSON: Well, in my, one of my pet, well, when I say motto, my motto is, the worst vice is advice. But, you know, the suggestion, just off of what I’ve been able to do and saw that it was helpful, was just approach it without fear of the response. And if an individual needs some help with maybe tweaking their language or their approach, they can give me a call on the Warm Line, 540-443-2663. And I’m willing to talk someone through it. Fear, I’m talking about fear, it cripples folk and causes sometimes us to make horrific decisions. But if we can overcome that, once I was able to overcome the fear of being judged or being looked at wrong or being rejected or denied, and when I was able to overcome that, that’s when I saw real progress, real progress. People found out that people was willing to listen. And if they didn’t want to listen, it’s okay, you know, on to the next one.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Yeah, I suffer from social anxiety myself. And so fear of speaking up is always a real challenge for me.

LEROY ROBINSON: So what they say, they say, they say public, what they say public. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Asa’a Field episode, it said that the top, what, you know, top two of the top five fears of America was public speaking was number one. Death was number two. And he said, well, the guy, the eulogy, he said, well, looks like the guy in the casket, he’s much better off than the one given the eulogy.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Yeah, I can relate to that. Yeah, yeah. So, do you have any final thoughts that you would like to share? Or any resources that you might like to share with the audience?

LEROY ROBINSON: 401 West Main Street, our 401 Peer Center. But I would, my thoughts on it all is, like I said earlier, if we can see people the way God sees people, then we can love them the way God loves them. Look on the internal person as opposed to the external.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: Absolutely. I love that. I love that thought. Well, thank you, Leroy, for taking the time to speak with me. I truly appreciate it.

LEROY ROBINSON: Absolutely.

DANIELLE DONALDSON: And thanks for listening to the Peer Into Recovery Podcast, brought to you by the Virginia Peer Recovery Specialist Network and Mental Health America of Virginia. If you like our show and would like to subscribe to the podcast, please visit our website at www.vprsn.org, and please leave us a review on iTunes. Take a good care of yourselves, and I hope to speak with you again.