Elkhart man shares his road to recovery, future plans for rehabilitation housing
ELKHART, Ind. -- For Elkhart resident, Douglas Rice, his 57 years of life have been a whirlwind. A whirlwind filled with temptation, addiction, and darkness, that many recovering addicts can empathize with. "It's been about 33 years ago when I started doing meth and it just hijacked me," Rice said. Rice says he started using meth recreationally in his early 20's, and then it quickly turned to a need. "The rock bottom was, you know, just watching my life fall apart," Rice said. "I still had a job. My job didn't know. I go to work. I get there an hour early. I do drugs in the parking lot. The drinking came back in because I would be so high that I would needed to come down a little bit. Nobody knew I was drinking. Nobody." Rice recalls a phone call he made just a couple of years ago that changed the trajectory of his life. One that would put him on a flight to a rehab facility in California. "By the time I got there, I was going on my fifth day up," Rice said. "Psychosis was already setting in. I was tired. I slept for three days at the rehab facility, sweating meth out to the point where I had to do my linens every other day." While Rice was in treatment, he started looking at recovery pages online and spotted a gap. One where people who have the same issues could be connected, and sharing the same stories. "So I started making videos and posting basically about addiction, how it makes you feel, just things that I, I myself have went through, and it was amazing that all of a sudden people were like, "Hey, I go through that. I went through that," and it started out real slow, and all of a sudden I wake up, and now I got 100 texts," Rice said. This is how recovery warriors was created by Rice. A platform and space where recovering addicts can receive moral support from others going through the same thing. Rice says he has plans to create 'Recovery Warriors Housing' in Elkhart County, but they are currently in the preliminary stages.