Felicia Briggs started working as a clinical outreach coordinator at Adult & Teen Challenge Ohio Valley in May 2023. She’s friends with Alicia Santilli, ATCOV’s chief operating officer, and Alicia approached her to come work at ATCOV. Both women formerly worked at the now-closed Neil Kennedy Recovery Center.
Felicia is enjoying the work. “What I like about it is I’m in recovery myself, going on 22 years,” Felicia said. “I like to talk about Jesus and what he brought me from. That attracted me more than anything.”
Felicia was homeless before her recovery. She was shooting heroin and smoking crack.
“It’s trying to reach people who are lost,” she said of her job at ATCOV. “That’s what it means to me, spreading the word about Teen Challenge.”
Her work takes her to different locations throughout the area including the common pleas and municipal drug courts across the community. “I like getting out, going to different facilities,” she said. “I stop people, like if I’m driving down the street and I see someone who looks desperate or looks like they’re on drugs, I stop. I talk to them about Teen Challenge,” she said. She asks them if they need to come to rehab or if they need help. They usually say yes. Felicia believes her experiences help her connect with ATCOV clients. “I tell them I’ve been there,” she said. They don’t always believe her right away. But she can relate to them and where they are. “They ask, ‘How did you do that?’” she said. “And I can tell them how I did that.”
Felicia believes Jesus plays a crucial role in people’s recovery. “What I’ve noticed about people that are in recovery who don’t have a higher power, they tend to struggle more with life,” she said. “It’s hard for them to cope with things.” If a loved one passes, for example, it’s hard for them to turn it over because they don’t have anything to turn it over to, Felicia said. They often relapse.
“I think with me having a 12-step program in one hand…and the Holy Bible in the other hand, I have no hand to use,” she said. “That’s the way I look at it.”
