Framed faces plaster the hallways like badges of honor. Some are bald. Others frizzed. Some are smiling — even missing teeth. Others have flinty stares. There are men in business suits. There are women with tattoos. They came from the gutters, middle-class suburbs and sandy beach enclaves.
All of them found sobriety at St. Matthew’s House.
The Christian ministry, tucked along the airport commerce park in east Naples, has graduated hundreds of addicts through its recovery program. More than 90 percent remain drug-free.
“The loneliest, most desperate time of somebody’s life is the first few days in drug recovery,” said the Rev. Vann Ellison, St. Matthew’s president and CEO, a recovering addict who has spent more than three decades working in drug treatment.
“Our population has lost everything,” he said. “Our job is to be their family of last resort — get them sober, find faith, create a brotherhood and show them how to function as an adult.”
St. Matthew’s started in the 1980s as a soup kitchen and 18-bed shelter for the homeless. The idea arose out of a small Bible study group — inspired by a local newspaper series on homelessness in the Naples area.
The ministry expanded over the years to include a drug treatment center next door, a 44,000-square-foot hotel and conference center, thrift stores and an array of other businesses that support the mission and are manned by program residents.
Those ancillary revenue streams allow St. Matthew’s to accept addicts without insurance for free. By the time residents graduate, each is offered a job and a regular paycheck. The center also funds college scholarships.
With a zero tolerance policy for relapse, the program has drawn praise from judges across the country and has helped addicts from as far away as Ohio and Nebraska.
“They come out of jail with every intention of doing right, and they want the help, but if they just go back out on the street, they lose the little traction they made in jail,” said Collier County Judge Janeice Martin, who heads the area’s drug court. “St. Matthew’s gives them enough support to help that person take the first steps toward sober living.”
‘Behind eight out of every nine crimes’
Just before 8 a.m. every day, recovering addicts board the ministry’s 11 trucks and head out to as many as 150 homes and businesses across Southwest Florida to pick up donations.
The items are brought back to a 27,000-square-foot Pontiac GMC dealership, converted by St. Matthew’s into a thrift store, sorting center and café serving Starbucks coffee. The former car dealership also houses the ministry’s offices.
Staffed with recovering addicts, the retail center is one of five thrift stores run by St. Matthew’s, along with two catering businesses, a car wash and detailing center, an inn and a restaurant.
About 70 percent of the organization’s $15 million annual budget is funded from its thrift stores and other businesses. The remaining 30 percent comes from private donations. The nonprofit does not rely on any state or federal government funds.
On any given night, there are about 350 people under the organization’s care and 226 employees on the payroll.
That success has caught the attention of courtrooms 1,100 miles away.
Officials in Southeast Ohio’s rural Jackson County have turned to the program to ease the grip of opioids on their community — and free up space in the crowded 40-bed jail.
If an offender qualifies, the Ohio court will pay for the ticket down, and tap a special projects fund to cover up to $1,300 per defendant for treatment. St. Matthew’s House absorbs any costs that the courts cannot pay.
“Drugs are behind eight out of every nine crimes here — and you can’t send everyone to jail. Or even if you could, is it the right thing?” said Jackson County Municipal Court Judge Mark Musick. “It’s so toxic here, the folks can’t seem to get better. We’ve sent several people down, and they’ve been so good. The methods they use are unbelievable.”
“I don’t think we’ve found anything better for anyone.”
‘It’s about accountability’
Justin’s Place is a 2,100-square-foot converted fire house for addicts first entering treatment at St. Matthew’s.
For the initial month, groups of as many as 16 men live in the home, named after a donor’s son who died of alcoholism. The addicts all sleep in a single room lined with jailhouse bunk beds. A peer mentor, who’s been sober eight or nine months, watches over them as a supervisor.
The intimacy builds camaraderie and teaches the addicts to overcome adversity without reaching for drugs. Some residents compared the groups to the bond of a football team or military platoon.
“We spend all of our time together,” said Jason Holloway, an addict living at Justin’s Place in August. “Everything we do, we do as a group. We live in this house together. We go to (treatment) classes together. It’s about accountability.”
The model is therapeutic-based, so unlike a medical treatment facility, where a psychiatrist leads the recovery and may prescribe medications, there are no doctors or nurses on staff.
The first month is a blackout period. There are no cellphones, visits or family communication. The addicts are assigned chores, like cleaning and serving meals at the soup kitchen.
About 40 percent of St. Matthew’s residents will drop out before graduating. Most will leave in that grueling first month.
As residents move on to various stages of the program, they earn more freedom. By the eighth month, there’s an interview process and addicts are placed into one of the organization’s businesses. By the time they are living at the hotel, they share a room with just one other person.
Brett Ramsden, a recovering Manatee County opioid addict who graduated from Justin’s Place in March 2015, worked the trucks and at the thrift store. Now sober for more than three years, he says the jobs helped him gain responsibility and acclimatize to sobriety.
“I would regularly avoid work and a job at all costs, especially manual labor,” Ramsden said of his days on OxyContin. “But (at St. Matthew’s), I’m working my butt off in the back of the hot truck, and I love it.”
‘We’re here to help them’
Demand for help at centers like St. Matthew’s has spiked amid Florida’s decades-long battle with opioids.
St. Matthew’s has 10 times the financial resources it did in 2004 — along with hundreds more beds.
But as of August, there was a waiting list of about 32 people for addiction recovery, and the ministry was in the process of screening another 80 applicants.
It could take up to three months for someone on that list to get in. Sometimes, they are waiting in another short-term treatment facility. Other times, jail.
One in 10 residents is ordered to St. Matthew’s House from a sheriff’s office or the Florida Department of Corrections as part of a criminal sentence. Most are walk-ins referred through family.
But those who enter the program through the criminal justice system have the highest success rates, said Ellison, the program’s CEO.
“For the guy who comes in from jail, this is great,” Ellison said. “They really appreciate it. They know we’re here to help them. They see we are on their side.”
That’s because they also understand the risks of leaving.
“If he’s on probation, he has the choice to walk out the doors,” Ellison said. “But we’ll inform the probation officer, and he may be going to prison instead.”
Ellison, who previously worked in the jail as a chaplain for the Collier County Sheriff’s Office, said treatment has proven to be a far more effective alternative to lockup.
“Almost everyone in jail or prison is going home someday,” he said. “Are they going home able to function or are they going home looking for more drugs? One of the first things you’re going to do when you’re out is get drunk or high. So if that’s what led them to incarceration, it’s obviously not working.”
