February 2024 3rd Street Beat

3rd Street Beat

The 3rd Street Beat Mission Statement

The Third Street Beat is a newsletter written by and created for people with substance use disorder. Our mission is to validate that experience so people know that they are not alone, and to emphasize the many unique roads that we take to recovery. This is an opportunity to share our experiences to creatively support each other. We are non-political, non-denominational, multi-racial, and gender neutral. Our mission is one of recovery and harm reduction, and all experiences are welcome. All the viewpoints herein are personal in nature and related specifically to our contributors’ recovery.

The 3rd Street Beat Editorial Team

The 3rd Street Beat is produced byThe Recovery Center community with assistance from the occupational therapy team.

3rd Street Beat back issues

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Black History Month pg. 3-4

Darryl’s Chronicles pg. 5

Just for the Day pg. 6

I dig my solitude but… pg. 7-9

Poems pg. 10

The Simple Part pg. 11

Writings by Paul Figueroa pg. 12

Get Apartment Ready pg. 13

When you close your eyes and think of peace, what do you see?

The Journey from Newark NJ to Brooklyn NYand Harlem NY

By DarrylArmour

I first came to Brooklyn NewYork. In 1996 I was staying at Helping Hands Ministry in Brownville, Brooklyn. It was a Christian ministry for drug-addicts and alcoholics and homeless people in NewYork and New Jersey and other parts o f the United States and the world.The head of the ministry name was Pastor Randolph Ferdimand his nickname was Pastor Randy and his wife name was Gerdine Ferdimand her nickname was Sistery Gerry.They run the ministry we had men and women living there.The people from Helping Hands Ministry found me in Newark, New Jersey at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kerney, New Jersey going down by downtown Newark, New Jersey. I was hungry I was eating out of garbage cans looking for food. I know it was nasty and unsanitary because spit, urine, defecation in the garbage cans. People but in rotten food in the garbage can. I could get sick and I might die for food poison they don’t pump my stomach out. In the hospital in time that will be dangerous for me. I will be in pain from stomach.Thank God it didn’t happen. So thank God for them people at Helping Hands Ministry for saving my life. I met so many people there. Plus I learning more about the Bible and God through Jesus his son for dying for our sins that’s why do I every night. I pray for the homeless people. Because I was homeless so I never forget I came from in life.You go up and down so thank you Helping Hands Ministry shelters. Living in the streets taught me a lot so God bless the city, the country, and world.

Thank you,

DarrylArmour

Just for the Day

Just for today I thank my LORD and Savior for waking me up.

Just for today I thank him for blessing me with food and shelter.

Just for today I will keep my mind on the positive and not the negative.

Just for today I will not forget the struggle that was in my past.

Just for today I will not pick up a drug and drink.

Just for today I will tell myself I love you for who you are. Just for today I will keep my EYE on the prize and not the demise.

Just for today I will accept today for what my LORD AND SAVIOR plans for it to be.

Just for TODAY!

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I dig my solitude, but…

By John Michael Koroly

I had a houseguest for two weeks over Christmas and New Year’s. That shouldn’t be so significant in and of itself. However, it quickly came to mean a lot to me and I hope to make it interesting here. (It does get a little heavy towards the end.) For now, I can just say that Man cannot live by privacy alone.

Quick backstory. First, there’s the matter of my previous living situations. I’ve always had bad luck with roommates; getting stiffed for rent and the like.

On top of that, there’s my experience with the Doe Fund. They provide scatter site housing for people recovering from substance addictions. Warning to all who might try them: They are also hideously run with little accountability. I was placed with a series of punks and miscreants. Twice I had to have a roommate arrested. Frequently, I’d be placed with someone like this 21 year-old ally rat who was one of several food thieves.

I should stress that I’ve no self-important delusions about myself and my recovery. Yes, I come from quite a different background than most other people in effort. I am, however, fighting the same fight and am entitled to no more than them, but no less, either.

Last time I lived alone was ‘90-’91 in Washington Heights. It was great, yet I missed company when I’d get home from work in Midtown.

When I got my present digs through Project Renewal’s In Homes programme, it was all to myself in a big one-bedroom in Brooklyn (Crown Heights). I threw myself into making it a real “home.” I decorated with wall art and other things to the point where wherever I looked, I was reminded of something I love, or have warm memories of, or is just really aesthetically pleasing. Not having a toxic personality around was a great help to my abstinence. (My sole addiction is to liquor.) I was walking around very much the King of my Castle.

For various reasons, I rarely have the pleasure of visitors. (Some friends are either physically infirmed and can’t travel far, or live in another state.) Yes, I did start to feel like an unwilling hermit and started to long for company and converse.

Around mid-December, a longtime friend (four decades since college and counting) named Renee ‘phoned me to ask if I could help a good friend of hers. He was up from Georgia scoping out some business opportunities, but had his place to stay here suddenly yanked out from under him. One of the people he was to lodge with came down with COVID at the eleventh hour and couldn’t take him.

It took all of about 25 seconds for me to assent to having him stay with me. This was partly out of loyalty to a friend who’d helped me out on several occasions, and partly just wanting some company over the holidays.

The guy’s nickname is “Banjo,” so that’s what I’ll call him in this story.

On his arrival, he looked something like a bag man (as opposed to a bag lady). He carried LOTS of materials he needed in black plastic garbage bags. I’m still not clear about it, but it had something to do with setting up a news channel on the Internet; also something about managing domain names. He would go out each day and work on that from around 10AM till he got back roughly at 7:30 each evening.

I quickly took to him. It felt so good having someone to chat with over watching the NFL games or old movies or cable news. It was especially good discussing politics. I follow it in granular detail, probably to an extent that’s off-putting to most people. Not to Banjo. He’s a long-time activist on progressive causes; for longer than I’ve been as a matter of fact. (I’m 61 and he’s 71.) I’ve always had a voracious appetite for politics and it just felt so good to have my opinions questioned and be made to think them through further. (That’s on top of just having some else there to enjoy a football game or an old movie from the 50s or 60s. He always bought his own food; even treating me to a chicken pot pie from the Colonel across Utica Avenue from me. Always mindful of keeping to his own space and respecting boundaries. I offered him a spare mattress I had, but he said the sofa was doing just fine.

It all made me think about the virtues of privacy and solitude vs.those of company. It definitely got me to be more “Other-oriented.” That is, it couldn’t help but make me more aware of the concerns of someone other than myself. I actually had someone to share in my recovery.

Then, it got somewhat more serious. He’d said he needed to stay only till the first of the year. I’d thought he had another place to go. He didn’t. He’d been living on the street in Georgia and was about to again here in NYC.

I felt for him, but made it perfectly clear that my lease forbade any long-term roommates not named in the contract. I felt I had to mark that boundary no matter how much I sympathized with his situation.

I did, though, make efforts to get him into the shelter system. These met with resistance from him. I can understand his reluctance. I tried to direct him to the Intake Centre on 1st Ave. and East 30th St. He went there, but felt unsafe and didn’t pursue it. I then turned to a list of drop-in centers that I shared with him. At least that would get him out of these freezing Code Blue nights that were getting more frequent. I kept ‘phoning him over the next two weeks as follow-up, but after a couple of contacts with him, he stopped returning my calls.

Well, I did everything I could. It’s up to him now. All I can do now is draw something positive from it all. Yes, it was a big net positive to have another soul present in my daily life. In an ideal world, though, I believe I’d rather have a good, compatible next-door neighbor than a roommate. My solitude gives me the interior space to grow spiritually and forces me to rely on myself for my recovery.

What should this mean to you? I suppose it’s that we in a recovery mode should value, equally, both our autonomy and self-reliance as well as the indispensable value of the physical presence of others in enjoying that recovery.

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I always feel like I am an outsider. Growing up as an only child no brothers or sisters I was spoiled rotten as a kid. Growing up that’s why I am so free-hearted and kind and nice. And I know people take kindness for weakness and take advantage of me. People take me as soft and weak. I am no punk or coward I don’t like to fight.

By Darryl Armour

Living in Harlem is the belly of the beast to say the least! The drug gangs, guns, and murders is bad day by day. I tell you crime don’t pay. Everything in the world is so tight the key is get your life right.

By Darryl Armour

I’m beginning to learn the simple part of recovery, my part in keeping it simple is key to that… So I’m becoming aware of my part… the practice of it is another thing… and what I’m working on. I wanna be clean sooooooo desperately

Greg Williams

Warzone

By Paul Figueroa

I was a soldier once

Sent to war, and coming From war a warzone called the Bronx.

Part of me was left there and never came home. My wife Saw the change. I would have nightmares and wake up in a cold sweat.

Although the war is over for me I still fight it _____ every day.

Am still here

Sometimes I feel like a man without a country. Lost confused with no money.

I blame the demons that haunt me they constantly taunt me. The demons I speak of are in the bottle who tempt me everyday.

I know tih them my escape from reality is the way to go. I fear but I get up again. My fight is constant and never ends. I’ve died a thousand deaths, but come back again to keep fighting.

I’ve lost so many loved ones and friends, but they remain in my heart no matter where I go. I keep going so that one day I can be reunited with my wife in heaven and tell me how proud she is of my that I never gave up.

By Paul Figueroa

Get Apartment Ready “The Series”

Invest in your product…

You are your product.

Always, always, always be presentable. “If it don’t apply let it fly”

Wash your hands

Comb/Brush your hair

Brush your teeth

Put on deodorant/it helps.

Wash that ass.

The streets are watching,

When people see you, what would they recommend you for the one and only reason I say this because, I did invest in my product and the people I thought wasn’t watching recommended me for an apartment over my peers who have been in the shelter system years before me.

Andre Muckle

P.S. To be continued

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