Mary Jantz went to rehab for the first time when she was 19.
But it wasn’t until she entered a court-ordered, intensive outpatient program 20 years later that she was able to admit her drinking was a problem.
“I didn’t walk in thinking I’m an alcoholic,” she said. “[I thought] I’m just allergic to my feelings.”
At her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, she listened as other members shared their experiences. The first member to speak would later become her best friend and roommate.
“I began to hear parts of my story in their words,” she said. “[My roommate] talked about being terminally unique. The way he talked about it was, ‘If you had been through the s**t that I’ve been through, if you had done the things that I had done, you would drink too.’”
The meeting was her first step toward sobriety.
At 41, she has now been sober for three years. Her 23-year battle with alcoholism has prompted her to help others as president of the NE Students in Recovery Club.
“We’re really just a support group at the end of the day,” Jantz said. “Not all of us are in recovery from drugs or alcohol.”
Jantz said the club is a great way to provide students with the support that she received outside of the structure of AA.
“I’m very active in AA and have been from the start, and I wanted to bring that community to school,” she said.
Club adviser Michelle Burris said the club is a no-judgment zone with the underpinning of support that applies to anyone no matter what they are struggling with.
“People have different addictions or struggles, different traumas that they’re recovering from,” she said. “They can share if they want to. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to.”
The meetings take place every first and third Tuesday of each month. Most meetings consist of a topic that will open a group discussion.
“Sometimes I’ll do a recovery check-in. ‘Where are you in your recovery?’ And then I always end the topic with ‘How can we support you?’” Jantz said.
The topic of their last meeting on Oct. 21 was self-care.
“‘What are you doing that fills your cup?’” she asked in the meeting. “Especially whenever you’re in a helping profession, we do a lot to pour into others, and we have to be able to refill our cup.”
The club is open to all, and their meetings are confidential.
“We’ve had people in recovery from eating disorders, people dealing with grief. We have people who are just curious and end up joining us for a meeting,” Jantz said. “We’re just there to lift each other up.”
Club member Angela Clark said she joined the club because she is recovering from the disease of addiction that has gripped her for about 15 years.
“I found out that I wasn’t just suffering from a drug problem. I had a moral deficiency,” she said. “It was a spiritual thing.”
Clark said the club focuses on similarities rather than differences.
“We share each other’s stories, and that helps us be an accomplice in one another,” she said. “We can rely on each other to make it right. We have each other’s back.”
Clark said the club members have each other’s best interests at heart because they have all gone through the insidious disease of addiction.
“Just to hear each other, tell each other stories, that gives us strength and hope,” she said. “We thrive on each other’s message.”
Jantz and Clark are in the Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor program at TCC, and they both work for the Clearfork Academy, an adolescent treatment facility for boys.
“I wasn’t much older than these boys [when I went to rehab,]” Jantz said. “If I can plant just a mustard seed of a thought that sobriety can be wonderful and beautiful, and that we don’t have to use drugs and alcohol or video games or porn or gambling to run from our feelings, [they can see] that feeling our feelings is a beautiful thing.”
She said she hopes her words of encouragement stick with the boys she works with.
“We don’t have to run from [feelings,]” she said. “If I can be that little voice in their ear that when they do get ready to stay sober, by the grace of God I hope they do, they’ll remember that there was this lady at their first treatment facility who said this.”
