GASTONIA, N.C. — A Gaston County man is now helping others after he said eight years ago he woke up in jail and needed help with alcohol addiction.
Achieve Behavioral Health Services North Carolina opened its doors Monday morning in Gastonia to help people with addiction.
The first client walked through the doors five minutes after it opened and all 40 spots are expected to fill up soon.
“I lived in a hotel up the street eight years ago, sitting in Gaston County Jail, and this resource is exactly what I was searching for. It just didn’t exist,” said Josh Bone, the director of Business Development for Achieve Behavioral Health Services North Carolina.
Bone said that soon after, he found a treatment program for his alcohol addiction in Charlotte and he’s been sober ever since.
His job now is to help others like him.
“Achieve will fill that hole. We will. We will fill that gap,” he said.
Achieve Behavior Health Services North Carolina offers a 60-day treatment program for men.
It’s the second facility in the state accepting Medicaid, which also takes people with a criminal record.
“With us serving this population, we’re creating something that has never been available for them,” Bone said.
The facility’s executive director, Ed Price, said part of the program includes working out at the gym, incorporating faith, and safe housing.
“We’ve got group counselors, individual counselors who are working with them to get through some of the trauma that got them there,” Price said.
Vans will transport clients to the facility from new, fully furnished townhomes stocked with food where clients will live during their treatment.
“It allows them to really let their lives be managed for a minute, so they truly get a chance to heal and step into something different,” Price said. “Their housing is sort of first-class in a nice neighborhood. Doesn’t remind them of the surroundings they’ve been accustomed to in the past.”
Bone said the program is a godsend, which will hopefully help people create lives they love.
“It’s going to be that intervention for so many people that are falling through the cracks … They don’t have private insurance. They don’t have money. They don’t have family. They don’t have resources, but then now, they have an option with Achieve.”
Gastonia’s facility was modeled after the Achieve in Maryland which opened two years ago.
Bone said past clients have already come back to work for them.
Achieve hopes to do the same in Gastonia with the goal of adding more facilities in North Carolina.
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