“It’s a beautiful life,” Craig Pickos said of his recovery journey. Pickos (NCPRSS, RYT) is Polk for Recovery’s founder and executive director. The nonprofit is a Recovery Community Organization (RCO), a “grassroots movement led by and for those in recovery from substance use, mental health, or other obstacles to wellness.” September is National Recovery Month. In a lead-up to the observance of this month, which is held to “educate Americans that substance use treatment and mental health services can enable those with a mental and/or substance use disorder to live a healthy and rewarding life,” according to NAADAC, we wanted to learn more about Polk for Recovery and how we can celebrate those in recovery.
Craig Pickos was born in Wisconsin and moved to Florida when he was 14. He was part of a family of water skiers and even ranked tenth in the world at one time. He started using around age 13, and by 17, addiction had crushed his water-skiing career. “I didn’t know that I had the disease of addiction. I didn’t know that when I wanted to stop using, I couldn’t. I didn’t know that I was using it to cope and keep what life I thought I had together,” he said.
Pickos started his recovery journey at age 37 in 1997 at what is now the Mary Lyons Detox Center. He identifies as a person in long-term recovery. In 2012, he had a lapse. “It was caused because of complacency. I had moved and hadn’t replaced the network of support that I had in Florida. When life showed up, I didn’t make the best choices,” Pickos said. The consequences of that lapse elucidated to him that a person with this condition requires ongoing support for as long as they want to live a happy, healthy life. Pickos recommitted to his recovery and, about a year or two into it, heard about a program training people to provide recovery support services that set a path toward professional credentials. He attended the 40-hour training required to become a Certified Recovery Support Specialist (CRSS) and began volunteering at the local detox facility where he lived in Columbia, South Carolina. Through this, he gained an opportunity to use his lived experience to help others in a professionally credentialed way.
Another nonprofit in the area heard about Pickos’s work at the detox center and called to offer him a job when they started a new program. He left the bicycle industry he’d been in for over 30 years and took on his first position as a peer specialist as part of a clinical team at a youth drop-in center in downtown Columbia.
While there, he was invited to participate in the development of an RCO. Through that process, he was introduced to what an RCO is, how they benefit the community, how to apply for nonprofit status, how to build a board, etc. He carried those building blocks with him when he relocated to be near his parents back in Florida.
Starting a Local RCO
Shortly after moving back to the Sunshine State, Pickos upgraded to a national certification through NAADAC. He’s been through four training programs, including one that certifies him to facilitate training programs for others.
“I looked around Polk County and was curious to know what kind of work like that was being done here. And there wasn’t any. In fact, there wasn’t really any in the entire state,” he said. “This portion of the recovery movement had been taking place in other states for a long, long time.”
His first order of business was to find employment, so he reached out to providers offering acute care. “Addition is chronic. It will have an acute episode, but it’s something that requires continual support and maintenance,” he noted. Peer specialist jobs existed in the area, but they didn’t pay a living wage at the time.
Pickos considered returning to school for a bachelor’s degree in behavioral health. Unsure that that was the path to take, he wondered what he could create with his existing knowledge, experience, and credentials. After attending a few trainings in the area to connect with people in the field and build his network, he met Ginny LaRue.
LaRue was part of a project through the state RCO, Floridians for Recovery. They had secured a grant to support community recovery champions in building a grassroots movement that would establish a network of organizations throughout the state. Pickos asked LaRue, “How can I get our county to be part of your project so you can come in and support us? We have people that want this.”
He began to locate and acquaint himself with local peer specialists, getting them excited about his idea to build an RCO in Polk County. Pickos and his team were the last ones selected to receive the remaining money from the Florida Recovery Project. The project supplied support for a little over a year. During that time, they had a community listening session and a virtual recovery symposium with the assistance of the national RCO, Faces and Voices of Recovery. “We kept putting one foot in front of the other,” Pickos said.
His team of six volunteers operated with funding through a $20K donation from Central Florida Health Care until receiving a community wellness initiative grant in January 2022. The grant gave them enough money to begin hiring, first Pickos and then Andrea Anderson, Director of Community Outreach, followed shortly by Tina Brown, Director of Peer Support Services. Polk for Recovery currently has a staff of seven paid individuals and one volunteer and has become recognized as a provider while continuing to grow. “I’ve got an absolutely amazing team of individuals,” said Pickos. He also noted the roughly 25 agencies and organizations they partner with throughout the community.
Much of Polk for Recovery’s work involves community outreach. Pickos, along with his operations and finance managers, supervises a team of four certified recovery peer specialists who work in the community, engaging with individuals seeking referrals, support services, and resources. They also interact with many area hospitals, recovery residencies, the county’s Problem-Solving Court, and organizations supporting the unhoused.
“As we continue to develop, we’ll provide more direct, nonclinical services,” Pickos said. This would mean having a brick-andmortar location with an intake process. They would use recovery capital tools to assess a person’s strengths and areas where they could use additional support and build a recovery action plan with a more structured schedule of engagements with a peer specialist.
One of the most recent pilot projects at Polk for Recovery was to connect and establish a schedule of trainings to increase the peer specialist workforce in the Suncoast region.
National Recovery Month
National Recovery Month started in 1989. Pickos believes it was initiated to reduce the stigma around recovery. “So often, people don’t see the other side of what addiction looks like. They only see the most negative aspects. They see homelessness, they see crime, they see how it destroys families. […] The simple fact of the matter is that people do recover,” he said.
During National Recovery Month, Pickos said, it’s essential for people like himself and his staff to go out into the community as the faces and voices of recovery and take the central focus away from the disease. He estimates that 1.5 million people are in recovery in Florida. He said, “If we have a unified voice, we’ll be a force to be reckoned with because we pay taxes, we vote, and we do recover.”
“Another big point of Recovery Month is to get out there and celebrate and speak openly so people have the opportunity to meet a person and see a face instead of relying on a label,” Pickos said.
The Polk for Recovery executive director called the recovery community a family, and in some respects, more profound than that. Pickos spoke of unconditional acceptance and support. “Most of us who consider ourselves in recovery, of course, didn’t enjoy what we had to go through to get there, but once we’re there, you won’t find a more grateful group of people.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, contact Polk for Recovery for support and resources.
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