04/01/2026
When Matthew came to Journey House, he was exhausted by years of addiction, instability, and loss. His life had become, in his words, a “nightmare” of “jails, institutions, and homelessness” up and down the East Coast. He had tried many times to change. Nothing lasted.
Then came a devastating season of grief. Between 2020 and 2021, Matthew lost his girlfriend, one of his best friends, his father, and his grandmother. Looking back and reflecting on the possibility of recovery, he says simply, “I didn’t know how to want recovery. I had no idea what it looked like.”
What changed was not sudden confidence. It was connection.
At Journey House, Matthew found people who believed in him before he could believe in himself. “I just let other people want it for me and it worked out,” he says. That spirit of peer-to-peer support is at the heart of Journey House Foundation, which exists to help individuals heal, grow, and thrive in recovery.
Matthew learned to trust the guidance around him. One lesson still guides him today: “Your pace gets you everything that you’ve always gotten. Somebody else’s pace gives you something you always wanted.”
Today, Matthew’s life looks completely different. “I live a life where I get to make choices that aren’t based on a substance every day,” he says. He owns his own home, runs his own business, and has family back in his life. The transformation is so profound that, as Matthew puts it, “People who know me now cannot imagine that I was ever a drug addict.”
Now Matthew gives back by showing up for others who are struggling, especially “the underdogs like me.”
