Faith-Based Recovery Group Takes on Addiction in Barry County
September 27, 2023
Story by Ezra DeVore, Special to Barry County Advertiser
A local recovery nonprofit is trying to purchase an apartment building to create a community of housed and healing addicts.
The new group, Straight Edge, based in Shell Knob, currently houses 22 men and is fundraising to further its goals of reducing addiction in our city and county. Jeremy Walker formed it to house and heal the addicts of Barry and surrounding counties.
“We want to assist in picking up the pieces of their lives. We want to walk beside people, change lives for the better,” he says.
“There are a lot of towns that have a sober living house or two. Just like our current location in Shell Knob. Even though Straight Edge has an amazing success rate, we are not yet building a ‘community.’ So, I am currently working with Niki at Freedom Bank to secure a loan for $500,000 for the property of what is now called Robin’s Nest.”
Walker states that the bank requires 20% down, and the recovery program has raised $32,000 of the $60,000.
Walker’s experience in addiction began in his hometown of Tustin, Calif., in Orange County - just south of Los Angeles though remaining LA’s metropolitan region. He explains his mother went to prison early in his life, and he lived with his father. This living situation eventually caused Walker to leave, and in doing so, he lost contact with his father.
Walker’s early twenties were spent unhoused in the streets of Hollywood, an area known for its drug-related reputation. As more of those he knew passed away due to their shared lifestyles, Walker decided to leave the city at 24 to find his father and escape his situation, which he feared may cost him his life.
All Walker knew at that time of his father’s location was that he lived in a town called Cassville in Missouri, where he knew he had distant family. Before leaving, he secured a job in Springfield at a tattoo shop, and after taking the Amtrak to Kansas City, his employers picked him up, something Walker states his gratitude for, adding that they allowed him to stay at the shop at night until he was able to find a residency of his own.
Walker says that Barry and similarly impoverished counties struggle deeply with addiction within its borders, and he says his mission is to reduce both the addiction and the crime that many must engage in to continue their own.
Walker states that to heal, an individual must feel as though they are part of a family or some larger system of support. The likelihood of a person succumbing to addiction is drastically reduced when one is not isolated, as seclusion can easily spark the conditions for dependency to take hold.
The support a community extends to its members can eliminate the need in one’s mind for other ways to comfort oneself. People seek different answers to their hurting, often one elects a path perceived as familiar.
If one’s father drank heavily, for example, but never died due to alcohol poisoning, the toll decades of hard drinking took now seems overshadowed by one’s perceived ability to survive it and endure it, rewarded safely with comfort and peace. Further, the child of this father may take up the same habit, biologically inclined to it, but also comfortable with its image, smell, taste, and effects, as the alcohol, though poisoning them, gives the child a sense of community with their father in the shared vice, and bottles can easily lead someone in that place to more harmful substances.
Walker states that through trauma or similar events, a person may “break down their barriers more, and try that drug or try that drink,” adding that “no one wanted to become an addict, no one plans that.”
In environments where a person is continually made to feel invisible, alone, detached from others or the world around them, the sorrow thus incurred can easily trigger a slow ascent into self-numbing activities.
“It’s cunning and deceitful, it grows into addiction - and now you have an addict in the neighborhood.”
Walker adds that once an addict takes presence in a neighborhood, others seek to leave to escape the crime or drug residue now found on sidewalks or streets. Not only pushing these individuals further into their self-destructive seclusion but inviting others to occupy the spaces those moving no longer occupy. Over decades, Walker says, this creates drug-reliant and addict communities that grow and strengthen one another’s self-destructive path to peace.
“We have an ever-growing problem with addiction in our beautiful and amazing town, and as I see it, most towns and cities have the same growing problem. We had a small community of addicts, but now that community keeps growing outward onto the next road, then to the next block, reaching neighborhoods to the point where people just stop feeling safe, so they move.”
To donate, interested parties may visit the program’s website, where you can donate directly, straightedgeinc.org.
Persons may also contact Jeremy Walker at 417-846-7569 or jeremy@straightedgeinc.org.
The new group, Straight Edge, based in Shell Knob, currently houses 22 men and is fundraising to further its goals of reducing addiction in our city and county. Jeremy Walker formed it to house and heal the addicts of Barry and surrounding counties.
“We want to assist in picking up the pieces of their lives. We want to walk beside people, change lives for the better,” he says.
“There are a lot of towns that have a sober living house or two. Just like our current location in Shell Knob. Even though Straight Edge has an amazing success rate, we are not yet building a ‘community.’ So, I am currently working with Niki at Freedom Bank to secure a loan for $500,000 for the property of what is now called Robin’s Nest.”
Walker states that the bank requires 20% down, and the recovery program has raised $32,000 of the $60,000.
Walker’s experience in addiction began in his hometown of Tustin, Calif., in Orange County - just south of Los Angeles though remaining LA’s metropolitan region. He explains his mother went to prison early in his life, and he lived with his father. This living situation eventually caused Walker to leave, and in doing so, he lost contact with his father.
Walker’s early twenties were spent unhoused in the streets of Hollywood, an area known for its drug-related reputation. As more of those he knew passed away due to their shared lifestyles, Walker decided to leave the city at 24 to find his father and escape his situation, which he feared may cost him his life.
All Walker knew at that time of his father’s location was that he lived in a town called Cassville in Missouri, where he knew he had distant family. Before leaving, he secured a job in Springfield at a tattoo shop, and after taking the Amtrak to Kansas City, his employers picked him up, something Walker states his gratitude for, adding that they allowed him to stay at the shop at night until he was able to find a residency of his own.
Walker says that Barry and similarly impoverished counties struggle deeply with addiction within its borders, and he says his mission is to reduce both the addiction and the crime that many must engage in to continue their own.
Walker states that to heal, an individual must feel as though they are part of a family or some larger system of support. The likelihood of a person succumbing to addiction is drastically reduced when one is not isolated, as seclusion can easily spark the conditions for dependency to take hold.
The support a community extends to its members can eliminate the need in one’s mind for other ways to comfort oneself. People seek different answers to their hurting, often one elects a path perceived as familiar.
If one’s father drank heavily, for example, but never died due to alcohol poisoning, the toll decades of hard drinking took now seems overshadowed by one’s perceived ability to survive it and endure it, rewarded safely with comfort and peace. Further, the child of this father may take up the same habit, biologically inclined to it, but also comfortable with its image, smell, taste, and effects, as the alcohol, though poisoning them, gives the child a sense of community with their father in the shared vice, and bottles can easily lead someone in that place to more harmful substances.
Walker states that through trauma or similar events, a person may “break down their barriers more, and try that drug or try that drink,” adding that “no one wanted to become an addict, no one plans that.”
In environments where a person is continually made to feel invisible, alone, detached from others or the world around them, the sorrow thus incurred can easily trigger a slow ascent into self-numbing activities.
“It’s cunning and deceitful, it grows into addiction - and now you have an addict in the neighborhood.”
Walker adds that once an addict takes presence in a neighborhood, others seek to leave to escape the crime or drug residue now found on sidewalks or streets. Not only pushing these individuals further into their self-destructive seclusion but inviting others to occupy the spaces those moving no longer occupy. Over decades, Walker says, this creates drug-reliant and addict communities that grow and strengthen one another’s self-destructive path to peace.
“We have an ever-growing problem with addiction in our beautiful and amazing town, and as I see it, most towns and cities have the same growing problem. We had a small community of addicts, but now that community keeps growing outward onto the next road, then to the next block, reaching neighborhoods to the point where people just stop feeling safe, so they move.”
To donate, interested parties may visit the program’s website, where you can donate directly, straightedgeinc.org.
Persons may also contact Jeremy Walker at 417-846-7569 or jeremy@straightedgeinc.org.