People stand outside The Sanctuary on Main Street in Lewiston on Thursday, September 26, 2024. (Photo by Michael G. Seamans/ Maine Morning Star)
On a rainy Thursday afternoon, Lewiston’s Church of Safe Injection opened its doors to a new kind of center: a place for people who use harm reduction services to rest, eat and foster their ties with the community.
For the organization that provides syringe exchange, distributes naloxone and other harm reduction tools, and advocates for rights and safety of people in active drug use, this is next step towards its goal of better serving program participants, said Zoe Brokos, the executive director of Church of Safe Injection.
The organization predominantly serves the city’s unhoused community, so the opening of the center, called The Sanctuary, is an opportunity to provide a safe space for people who use Church of Safe Injection’s services to go where they won’t be policed.
The Sanctuary isn’t meant to be an overdose prevention center, where people in active addiction have a safe space to use drugs, Brokos said. It also isn’t meant to push recovery on participants. It’s a first-of-its kind attempt to provide a space for peer-led harm reduction efforts, with the supplies and support participants need to be safe.
“It’ll be an open space where people can come in. We want to be a safe and welcoming space,” she said.
“And we will not require anything of them; no requirements for meetings or recovery-oriented anything.”
Zoe Brokos, executive director of The Sanctuary, speaks to reporters during an open house in Lewiston on Thursday, September 26, 2024. (Photo by Michael G. Seamans/ Maine Morning Star)
For Lewiston native Robert Hatherley, working for the Church of Safe Injection for the past year changed the trajectory of his life. Serving as a peer navigator, he will be one of the four full-time staff members at the new community center, offering help and advice when solicited and sharing his own experience with addiction and recovery.
“This demographic of people have become really isolated and really shunned. How is someone even supposed to think about recovery if they don’t have a safe place to be?” he said, explaining the center’s value.
“It’s going to give people that new perspective to say, ‘Maybe I don’t have to hide in my apartment or hide in the bathroom or hide the tent somewhere, I can actually be a part of something and be around people that understand me and don’t judge me.’”
Making sure people in different stages of drug use or recovery know that they can talk to others who understand what they’ve been through and can listen and support them without judgment is the primary reason Hatherley is excited to be part of the community center, he said.
Rosie Boyce, community engagement and outreach coordinator at The Sanctuary, talks with reporters in the office on Main Street in Lewiston on Thursday, September 26, 2024. (Photo by Michael G. Seamans/ Maine Morning Star)
The nonprofit received a grant from the Maine Office of Behavioral Health, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, to open the center, Brokos said. Despite tense relationships with the city, the organization is working on increasing support from community organizations in Lewiston and beyond. The initial plan is to offer naloxone and overdose prevention kits, two meals a day, as well as a washer and dryer and computers that participants can access, Brokos said. But eventually, she said the space will accommodate cooking classes to teach people how to use what groceries they have, art therapy and other community events.
“We hope that participants will take the lead in keeping the space safe,” said Rosie Boyce, community engagement and outreach coordinator for the Church of Safe Injection.
“We will have a staff of people with lived and or living experience — our peer navigators — in there, but the intention is for them to coexist, not preside over.”
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