Inside the Oxford House
WAYNESBURG — Tom Musgrove, a recovering alcoholic, was the first resident to call Greene County’s “Oxford House” home.
That was nine months ago, when the county’s first drug rehabilitation recovery house opened on Cumberland Street in Waynesburg Borough.
“This is the best model on the face of the earth to live clean. There is a spirit in this place but to explain the spirit is almost impossible,” he said Tuesday while sitting around a table with fellow resident Michael Jacobs, who has struggled with the demons of heroin addiction, and Bob Terry, president of Steps Inside, a nonprofit drug and alcohol drop-in center in Waynesburg.
Three years ago, Terry, through Steps Inside, created a community recovery committee to further a mission of recovery in the county. He and other members of Steps Inside, along with guidance from Karen Bennett, executive director of Greene County Human Services, began to explore what it would take to establish a residential facility for men recovering from drug and alcohol addiction.
But two things needed to happen: Acquisition of rental property and the adoption of a model to follow. The first was accomplished when a local landlord contacted either Bennett or Terry who said he had a piece of property on South Cumberland Street. Start-up costs for the house were helped considerably through a $10,000 donation from the county and an additional $5,000 grant from another source.
Now it was time to find a model on how to run such an enterprise and Terry and his fellow members discovered Oxford House, a term that refers to any house operating under the “Oxford House Model,” a community-based approached to addiction treatment, which provides an independent, supporting and sober living environment.
“I don’t know where I would be today without this house,” said Jacobs, 37, who began using heroin on his 19th birthday. He has spent time in the state prison system on drug delivery charges, but when he was released to a state Department of Corrections halfway house, he relapsed on heroin.
“It’s easier to find drugs in a DOC rehab/halfway house than it is on the streets,” Jacobs said. “I was on a bad road,” he said.
Whether it was serendipity or some divine intervention, Jacobs, a West Greene area resident, read about the Oxford House in a newspaper story.
Musgrove and Jacobs are two of the six residents currently calling Oxford House home. Each resident has a private bedroom and they share kitchens on the first and second floors. There is a common lounge complete with comfortable sofas and a large flat-screen television.
The sweat equity by a host of volunteers paid off big dividends to make this a warm and welcoming environment for its residents.
“But this isn’t a flop house,” Musgrove said. “It’s a residential living facility with hard and fast rules the residents must follow,” he said.
Each resident must pay $400 a month for rent, utilities, paper products, coffee, food, etc.
If a resident is working, he is required to attend three, 12-step meetings a week, and if unemployed, five, 12-step meetings a week, and these meeting sites can either be at Steps Inside, AA or NA, whichever the resident chooses.
Terry explained those who come to live at the house still may be receiving rehabilitation and detoxification treatment. They do not have to be entirely drug free, Terry said.
However, the rules to live at the house are quite clear. There is no use of drugs or alcohol and no disruption while living there. Second, the house must be run democratically, with each resident paying equal expense of operating the house.
Additionally, there is a screening process and if the applicant passes the application and interview process established under Oxford House guidelines, they are accepted.
“There is no restriction on length of stay as long as they follow the rules,” Terry said.
Perhaps most important, if one resident breaks the rules, the others can vote to have him removed from the house. While a resident does not have to be “clean” for a specified time when he arrives, using drugs and alcohol at the house is prohibited and a user is expelled.
Terry said they are considering adding a seventh resident to the house, noting there are three potential residents on a waiting list. “However, we will not take child molesters, arsonists or those convicted of a violent crime,” Terry said.
“The word is getting out and we are growing,” Terry said. “I think we make a good case that more houses in Greene County are needed. We just have to come up with a funding source,” he said.
Jacobs was asked if living at Oxford House might be insulating him from the real world, where drugs are so accessible. “Living here is the real world,” he said. “What I am doing is preparing to get back into the healthy world.”
Musgrove paused for a moment when he heard Jacobs’ comment. Then he said, “Who would have thought that inmates running the asylum would work?”