ST. LOUIS (First Alert 4) — Christy Ivory was scared when she found out she was pregnant at 26 years old. She had a crack cocaine addiction she didn’t know how to overcome. She was trying to lead a normal life. She was still working, but the prevalence of the drug at that time made it difficult to stop.
She struggled with the idea of having a substance use disorder. She was raised in a two-parent household and had a good childhood. She was raised on gospel music. Her parents both held steady jobs for more than 30 years.
“I think it was more so, what I’ve learned over time, just wanting to fit in and a lack of self-esteem,” Ivory said. “I did what I thought was necessary to make friends and fit in and be a part of. I had no idea some of the decisions I was making were going to impact me for the major part of my life.”
Her 20s passed her by. Her 30s came and went. The grip of addiction kept pushing her down.
“The circumstances around it is being totally controlled by a substance that you have no idea how not to use it,” she said. “So the hopelessness sets in.”
Addiction, which Ivory referred to as a disease, was progressive for her. After her substance use became problematic, it lasted for 25 years.
Patrick Benson had bouts of sobriety throughout the years. He was sober for five years in his 20s and got sober again for a time in his 30s. His substances of choice were alcohol and stimulants, which he used on and off for the better part of his life.
Benson served in the U.S. Marine Corps for two years as an infantry mortarman. He went on to become a firefighter paramedic in the St. Louis area from 1999 through 2004. He worked in some rough areas and knew where he could find drugs.
He ran a traumatic call in 2002 that left him with PTSD. It wasn’t the only trauma contributing to his substance use, but it was certainly a factor.
“I was full of shame,” he said. “I just thought I was the worst person. I hurt my children. I hurt the people I love more than anything else in this world with my substance use disorder.”
Benson got sober in 2019 and has been since then. A bad car crash that happened two years before then while he was driving intoxicated was a big turning point for him. He was badly injured and eventually had a partial leg amputation. The back of his prosthetic leg bears the acronym USMC in yellow letters with the logo directly above.
People have seen the logo and thanked Benson for serving his country, assuming he lost it on deployment. He makes sure to let them know his injury wasn’t from a war overseas.
“If I talk to them long enough, I say, ‘Well, I did lose it in a war,’” he said. “I lost it in the war on drugs.”
What he and Ivory have in common besides their pasts with substance use is their paths after sobriety. They’re trying to help other people avoid going through the same struggles. A local organization that provides college scholarships offered an avenue for change.
The Next Step program was founded in 2004. A restaurant server in recovery told her story to a couple who were regular customers. They gave her a few hundred dollars to help her go back to school. It would be the first of hundreds of scholarships over the next 20 years.
Ivory was a first-time Next Step scholarship recipient in 2016. She is now a licensed medical social worker at Mercy Healthcare, a job she landed this year. She got six scholarships from The Next Step and has three degrees.
She helps people who are in the same position she was once in.
“The education that I have and the experience that I have, I think is one of the biggest assets I have to be able to help people,” she said.
Darcy Glidewell, executive director of The Next Step, said most people in recovery don’t think going back to school is an option financially.
“When they hear about us, they think that’s too good to be true,” Glidewell said.
The Next Step funds all its scholarships through private donations. It covers St. Louis and 19 surrounding counties and recently expanded to Kansas City.
“It makes St. Louis a better place, and it enriches every single person’s life,” she said. “Education is empowering, but when you add education to a journey that’s already begun in recovery, we don’t see a lot of students that relapse.”
Benson got his first Next Step scholarship last year. He’s on pace to graduate in the spring of 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in social work. He plans on going into a master’s program after that.
He became a convicted felon in 2013 after violating an order of protection for the second time. He’s gotten two DWI’s. He wants to use his past as a strength instead of letting it hold him back.
“I was trying to weigh what I was gonna major in and trying to figure out what job would a felony be a resume builder,” he said. “And I was like oh, I’ll be a social worker. It doesn’t hold me back. It actually gives me lived experience. I can help a lot of people just by my lived experience.”
Scholarship applicants have to be sober for at least a year and be active in a 12-step recovery program. The Next Step offers recipients up to $5,000 for undergraduate, vocational, and technical schooling and up to $3,000 for graduate and PhD programs.
Part of Glidewell’s passion to help people in recovery stems from her own past. She went to treatment in 2005 for alcoholism and an eating disorder.
“Everybody can get clean and sober if they have the right help,” she said. “There are so many community organizations that are doing incredible work.”
Benson recalled saving an elderly woman from a Ferguson house fire in 1999. She was lying on the floor in cardiac arrest when he and another firefighter pulled her out of the house. They gave her CPR, got her heartbeat back and saved her life.
Benson got a hero’s award for his actions that day, a contrast to his actions in 2013 that resulted in a felony on his record. In society’s eyes, Benson said, he’ll be judged more based on the worst thing he’s done rather than the best.
“I’m not judged for the rest of my life as a hero for what I did in 1999, but I am judged for the rest of my life as a felon for what I did in 2013,” he said.
Benson is an advocate for changes to Missouri’s criminal justice laws. He’s testified to the state in favor of bills that would create a streamlined expungement process for certain convictions, which currently can cost up to thousands of dollars.
Ivory’s 40th birthday marked the first day she was sober in 25 years. She now serves on the board of the Next Step program and considers it to be part of her family.
Ivory’s daughter is now 26 years old, the same age Ivory was when she got pregnant. Her daughter also works in the field of social work.
“Here we are today, she wants to be just like her mom,” she said, holding back tears. “How cool is that?”
The Next Step awarded 110 people scholarships this year, its highest number ever. The organization can fund more than that but need more people to apply, Glidewell said.
The application window for 2025 scholarships is from December 1 through April 1. More information on the program is available on The Next Step website.
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