• Jim Wallace is Client Advocate for the Mental Health Association in South Carolina.• Previously Jim developed a Mentor Program which is ongoing and brings advanced degree consumers back into a work situation.
• Jim also volunteers weekly at Bryan Psychiatric Hospital on the short-term lodge that deals with substance abuse.
• Prior to that, Jim, for years, presented weekly to an affective disorder group teaching recovery strategies until that program was eliminated.
• In coalition with substance abuse treatment and self-help professionals, Jim started the first consumer-run “Double Trouble Group” in South Carolina.
• Jim was the first visible consumer back in the mid 80's when the Department of Mental Health decided to seriously include consumers on the task forces, committees and, most importantly, decisions-making.
• Jim was the co-founder of S. C. SHARE, a state-wide, consumer-run group for persons with mental illness.
• Jim was assistant care manager in Psychiatric Services for the Homeless, a program using consumers in the clinical process, and named the # 1 National Institute of Mental Health grant in 1989.
• Jim was named the first consumer advocate for Protection and Advocacy of Individuals with Mental Illness, the Department of Mental Health, Mental Health Association in South Carolina, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in S.C., and S.C. SHARE. --Jim has served as client advocate for every mental health advocate group in the state!
I was forty-four when I at last became sober, and was age fifty when I decided to become compliant with good mental health practices. It was late in my life when I became a consistently positive person who contributed to the well being of society. “Bottom”, “negative”, “cynical”, “failure”...... these are a few of the words used to describe me twenty-five years ago. Today I have esteem, confidence, opportunities, choices, and a quality of life that includes contentment.
September 1984 saw my seventh admission to South Carolina State Hospital, my fourth since becoming sober. As a matter of fact, I celebrated my sixth year of sobriety from alcohol during that during that one month stay. I had hoped that the Twelve Steps would restore me to sanity in my mental illness, but they had only promised to relieve me from alcoholism. So I decided to approach my mental illness separately. Denial had allowed me to think that alcoholism had been my problem, and sobriety was the answer for everything. Now I realized that I must exert every efforts to comply with psychiatric help, their treatment plans and medication, and be as consistent as in my addiction recovery. Maintenance of recovery from the two diagnoses must be done separately but in conjunction with each other. Each day I must remind myself that I am recovering from alcoholism and mental illness.
I still experience peaks and valleys, but they are more manageable. Negative experiences teach expertise; help and hope replaces helplessness and hopelessness; weaknesses have become strengths; my story illustrates the depths that addictions and mental illness can take us; but recovery is still possible if we are open to it and then truly want it.
Since I made a decision to comply with good mental health practices back in 1984, I have had no psychiatric hospitalizations. This should be a strong argument for compliance. For almost twenty-five years I have tried to carry a message of encouragement, experience, expertise, hope, love, and strength to persons with substance problems and/or mental illness.
From a past that includes living homeless in the woods , living in missions, and in community care homes, I have now moved to inner peace. I began to take on the character traits that attracted my attention and admiration of others but never expected to enjoy in my own life: thinking less of self and more of others. I promised God if he would give me enough humility then I would dedicate the rest of my life and make the conscious decision to carry the message of recovery to people struggling with substance abuse and/or mental illness.