I thought I was moving into a role where healing happened.
The unit was called the Crisis Unit, and that sounded right to me—crisis was something I understood. I had worked Mobile Crisis.
I knew how to meet people where they were.
What I didn’t know—what no one told me—was that this wasn’t truly a crisis stabilization unit. It was a detox program, and it operated far more like a correctional facility than a treatment center.
The shift was disorienting. The clients weren’t treated like patients—they were watched, monitored, corrected. Even the language was policed: “addicts,” “noncompliant,” “disruptive.” That’s how staff referred to people in withdrawal, struggling, afraid.
The longer I worked there, the clearer it became: this wasn’t recovery. This was control.
Everyone around me seemed to come from the world of recovery—people who had once shot heroin, who had gone through 12-step programs, who saw themselves in the clients. In theory, that should have fostered compassion.
But instead, it had calcified into something harder. There was excitement in catching people when they were breaking rules, in enforcing consequences. People on the staff thought about how the behavior of one person might interfere with another person’s recovery. Was there no parallel in the mental health field? Of course there was. Yet, one’s symptoms of mental illness were not met with surprise and anger.
I couldn’t reconcile it.
Even within the 12-step model, addiction is seen as a disease. So why were we punishing people for symptoms of the disease we were supposed to treat?
When clients asked about long-term options. I tried to find them places to go, but so many of the referrals led to programs rooted in religious doctrine. 12-step, higher power, surrender.
I was an atheist, shaped not by ideology but by loss. But this wasn’t about me. Some of the clients didn’t want a Christian minister. They didn’t want Bible study. They wanted to recover, not convert.
When I said as much, it didn’t go over well.
The shift lead, Alex, was on a power trip. Controlling. Aggressive. He made snide comments in front of clients, belittled staff, barked orders. When he got sick and I filled in, I thought I’d earn some respect. Instead, I got hostility.
One staff member muttered, “I know it is crazy that I can’t sign this just because I don’t have a degree.”
The respect and admiration for my accomplishments only made her defensive and angry.
What they meant was: you’re not one of us. You haven’t suffered like we have.
But I had. Just in ways they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see.
What made it worse was what happened on the unit where we all worked. I was excluded. No one even tried to get to know me. They showed their shared friendships right in front of me with my obvious exclusion hard to not notice. I had embraced my years of learning social skills, observing social behaviors, body language. This allowed me to observe.
To see that I was excluded from their shared friendships.
I wanted so badly to belong. I tried. I smiled, I joined conversations, I asked about their lives. However, I always felt like I was intruding. I wasn’t part of the club.
Complicating matters further was my need to be knowledgeable about community resources. People who had been in recovery would know these things. Clients would ask me about different options for their discharge plans, but I lacked the necessary knowledge. I needed to know what my colleagues knew.
And when I finally spoke up—when I told them that I use they/them pronouns, that I wanted that identity respected—and when I voiced concerns about how Alex was treating staff and clients—I was fired the very next day.
“Boundary issues with staff,” they said.
No documentation. No prior warning. No opportunity to explain.
I filed an EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) complaint. My friend Sarah encouraged me to fight it. And I tried. I filed the report and the EEOC contacted them but they told me that there was not a precedent of other people experiencing the same discrimination as I had - based on disability, religion, gender or age.
I wanted to believe that if I just did everything right, someone would see me. Someone would say, You belong here. We need you.
But instead, I walked out with nothing.
I had been leading a support group on Meetup—Social Anxiety, Shyness, Loneliness and Social Skills—trying to offer something I never had growing up: a safe space to practice being human.
But attendance dropped. People stopped coming. And I started asking myself:
Was it me?
Did I think I had more to give than I really did?
Even the woman I had dated—Codi Renee—knew my story, but I never felt safe with her. I stayed longer than I should have because I thought, maybe this is all I get.
She had hurt me by always making me feel anxious instead of the comfort that love brings. And when it ended, I didn’t feel heartbreak. I felt shame. For staying. For hoping. For still believing in something like love.
So where did that leave me?
Between systems that silenced me and communities that didn’t know what to do with someone like me.
Too peaceful to fight back. Too principled to stay silent. Too broken to fit in.
But still—still—I wasn’t ready to give up.
Because even in this mess, in this loss, there was one thing I had that no one could take:
My voice.