Mailon Ellison
New Jerusalem Drug Recovery House
Philadelphia, PA
Addiction is caused by poverty. It extends from poverty.
Me being an Afro-American male, youngest of 16 children, mother has been deceased since I was 12, father was gone when I was 7, I was moved here and there trying to find stabilization. Here in Philadelphia it has been really rough.
I have a 29 year addiction. What I've always seen, I've always tried to emulate. Watching the fellows with their pockets full of money, with the wine bottles in their hands and the drinking and the former dope shooters, those were role models, that's what we had to grow up underneath. You had very few that had employment and today's youth are doing the same thing that I did 30 years ago. They're standing on corners, as they say, "clocking" trying to get theirs.
“my children can't understand that daddy has sleep apnea and he has heart disease and he has a respiratory problem. I can't tell them that when they need a meal on the table.”
Who would choose to work for McDonald's when they give you $4.75 to $5.00 an hour when you can make maybe $2,000 to $3,000 a day standing on the corner?
In my life, I've been homeless for quite some time. I have 2 children I have been fighting for and the system doesn't favor black men.
I wasn't always an addict; I was a man who took care of my family. I had a son who was murdered at the age of 17 in 1997. God blessed me with 2 beautiful daughters, and through the processes of me having a mental breakdown after finding a mother on the bathroom floor dead, after being molested as a child, after losing a son, it kind of strips you of a lot of things.
So the system, when they found out I was bipolar and suffered a mild case of schizoaffective they discredited me as being a good parent. I was told by a judge that I had 30 days to get a house for me and my children. December 31st I moved out of project homes and I moved into a house and had it fully furnished from top to bottom by January 10th and they still found me unfavorable as being a parent. I've suffered under stress and I had a heart attack in 1999 and I had another heart attack in 2001 and I had a stroke on June 6th, 2005. I have an insurance company that won't even pay for high blood pressure medication.
Today I walk around fainting on a daily basis. I am also a diabetic. I'm on an oxygen machine because I have sleep apnea versus narcolepsy. I take 15 different medications on a daily basis and I am always hearing of threats to cut my benefits to keep me from getting what I need.
The only thing I hear from social security is denial. I first applied in 1989 and I have been fighting ever since and I have gotten denial letter after denial letter and my children can't understand that daddy has sleep apnea and he has heart disease and he has a respiratory problem. I can't tell them that when they need a meal on the table.
So I took on a job I knew I wasn't capable of taking. I worked at the Ridge Avenue Shelter cooking for 500 people on a daily basis. I had a stroke in their kitchen and I was unable to return back to work. They told me I had forfeited my claim by taking on employment.
But was I supposed to allow my children to go hungry? Was I supposed to allow myself and them to become homeless? Which eventually happened anyway.
I used to drive and I would fall asleep behind the steering wheel and it took me to almost kill myself before I was given a CPAT machine. This machine costs $1,000 and Health Partner refused to pay for it. I am still hungry and I'm still homeless and I don't have but 3 outfits to put on.
I relapsed after five months of being in recovery. I was stressed, my sister was fighting for her life, my father dying of prostate cancer and I don't know where my children are. I haven't heard anything of them or about them since Easter.
Today I have 30 days clean.
My disease is just not addiction it's also mental. I don't need just a rehabilitation center; I need to be treated for a dual diagnosis, which our faithful government doesn't find to favorable. If you'll take from the seniors, what makes me think you'll care about me?
I am not looking for a handout; I worked for 26 years at the Campbell Soup Company. I've been in this recovery process for 14 years. Any program you go into you have to pay. What's set up for me when I leave here? What kind of savings do I have an opportunity to accumulate?
Because we are not state funded, we get grants just by a whim. The sisters that I sit around with will be back on the streets as prostitutes and the men that I see back on the streets will be doing the same thing that they've always done; either rob, kill, or be in a new prison system.
I deserve life. I lost my wife November 11th last year, my children are all I have and I love them dearly. The government won't give me a chance. Why must I continue to knock at a door that they refuse to open?
If New Jerusalem closed tomorrow where do we go, what do we do? In order to go into housing some of us need $600, some of us need $300. How do you do that when you live on $93 a month? It's just impossible. My member's fee at New Jerusalem is $80, I live on $9.
I find it so ironic now that they cheapened the price of cocaine. When it was once $100 maybe $200, it's now $5 a bag and now you no longer have to leave your own neighborhood. What effort are they putting in to put a stop to destroying America's families today? And how important is it really? It never became important until it hit the suburbs. As long as it was here in this "jungle" that we live in it was so satisfying, but now that it's in the areas where it should not be now its becoming an eyesore.
I'm tired of existing; I desire to live like everyone else.