As I was leaving the bank today an older man walked up and put out his hand and introduced himself as a TLC client. While he looked familiar, I didn't recall his name. But that's not unusual because we have some 850 clients spread across the state of Arizona and it's difficult to know more than a small percentage of them unless I interact with them on a regular basis.
He told me he'd been at TLC almost 10 years, coming to us after he was released from prison. He was now living in one of our three-quarter houses and said that he'd never been happier. He said he'd left briefly for a short period, then came back because he felt that our program was the safest place for him to be.
When we first started the program none of us envisioned that we'd have clients who stayed with us for years. Our plan was to help people get their lives back together so they could move back into the community. But what we discovered is that while the younger clients do tend to leave after they get things together after 90 days or six months, some of the middle-aged and older clients stick around – sometimes for years. And what we discovered is that many of them have no families, or have lost track of or alienated the families that they did have. They feel safe with us, make friendships with the other clients and we become, in essence, a surrogate family for them.
One of the good things we discovered about having clients who have been with us 10 and 15 years is that they can be an example to the other clients. Other clients see how the program works for them and it gives them more confidence in their own ability to stay sober for the long-term.
