Ray Banks knows how it feels to be drug addicted.
“You don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘I think I’ll ruin my life,'” said Banks, a 17-year heroin and cocaine user who now has been drug free for three decades.
Banks, the executive director of Harvey-based Restoration Ministries, once was a client of the program and can related to many of the people it still serves.
“Underneath is a hurt,” he said. “It could be mental illness, it could be loneliness. ‘If I use, I feel a lot better,’ and then the rest is history.”
Some people, he said, simply start using heroin and cocaine “for recreational fun and then, after that, you’re hooked on it, doing it on a regular basis and can’t stop.”
Helping addicts stop is the goal of Restoration Ministries, a 18-month faith-based program founded 33 years ago in a church basement by the late John F. Sullivan, a South Holland dentist.
The organization, which now operates out of a former hotel at 253 E. 159th Street in Harvey, focuses on “connecting addicts to God, people and a sense of purpose,” said Banks.
“The opposite of addiction is connection,” he said. “(An addict) has a disconnect with people.”
Banks said the program also presents alternatives to previous habits. “You’re gonna learn a lot, but you’re gonna unlearn a lot as well. We try to answer the question, ‘If you take away the drugs, what’s my purpose in life?'”
Todd Schultz, president and CEO of Restoration Ministries, said program participants have to be drug-free to participate. “We catch the women and men right after they’ve detoxed,” he said.
Schultz said participants study the Bible every morning, attend church services on Sunday and establish a regular life by obtaining a driver’s license and a bank account. The organization also “gets them as good as we can in the legal system,” he said.
Job training is available through a partnership with the Chicago-based Cara organization and at Restoration Ministries’ two thrift store operations — one a 200,000-square-foot former lumber/home center in South Holland and one a 50,000-square-foot operation in Harvey, Schultz said.
Restoration Ministries is “entirely private funded,” Schultz said, estimating the thrift stores generate 50 percent of their budget — nearly $2 million. The other half comes from private donations, “a good chunk of that from board members; men and women who want to give back,” he said. Unlike some non-profits, “we chase the need. Our programs don’t grow out of where the money is, they grow out of where’s the need.”
Schultz, who grew up in Homewood, said he also wants program participants to understand there is more to life than “the street,” taking them to see performances at the Steppenwolf, Shakespeare and other theaters in Chicago, getting them access aboard watercraft and even taking trips to Michigan’s upper peninsula.
“I want rehab to be fun,” he said. “If I hook you, you’re going to stick around. There’s more to life than slinging drugs and worrying what’s behind you.”
His role at Restoration Ministries gives Schultz a much more direct connection to clients than his prior experience in corporate finance and non-profit organization management, he said. Going from a business/finance environment, with its emphasis on tangible goals and objectives, to the intangible realm of human behavior “is such a paradigm shift for me.”
Asked about RMI’s success rate, Schultz estimated “maybe two out of 10 program graduates hit the normal life,” no longer reliant on drugs and steadily employed.” I’m told 15 percent is a good measure,” he said, adding the program also would like to see graduates remain in a church community and reunite with family, though often family relationships have been broken beyond repair.
Restoration Ministries also operates a food bank on Saturdays that serves 150 families, as well as a year round after school program for nearby residents that feeds the student participants and helps them with homework.
In addition, Restoration Ministries operates a boxing/music-arts center in downtown Harvey in a former police parking garage.
“We’re trying to divert them,” he said.
Both Banks and Schultz say it was their respective searches for a change that landed them at Restoration Ministries.
Schultz, who marks his one-year anniversary in March, said his former job at PepsiCo “used to be so predictable. Now I’m in this crazy life. It’s unpredictable!” he said with a grin.
Banks, who arrived as a resident in June 1989, said he “realized after being here seven years, this was a calling.”
“I want to help other people like me and help kids so they wouldn’t end up like me. I want to help the addicts and also the kids, before they get on drugs,” he said.
Dennis Sullivan is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
