The subject of the feature in the paper this week is a guy named Holy Diver who I met riding his bike up Alberta a few months ago. I’ve been working on the story for a while and it’s strange to see it in print now because the situation has changed a lot since I began reporting. When I was hanging out with Diver in November, he was living at a Christian commune in North Portland run by a progressive pastor named Steve who wanted to provide some of his parishioners a place to sleep besides the street. More than that, Steve’s house was trying to be a supportive, clean, liberal community to help homeless people get off drugs and alcohol. Creating a strong community of clean friends is key to helping guys like Diver. Here’s a quote that didn’t make it into the final article:
Cleaning up and turning Christian hasn’t been easy. It meant leaving behind a tight-knit community of like-minded vagrants, who still live in camps in Gresham where cops are less likely to move them along. “Out there, I’m like a celebrity, kind of,” Diver laments, “There’s that sense of love and camaraderie I never had growing up until I became part of this homeless community.”
So during the time I spent with him, Diver was genuinely excited about his clean-living lifestyle, his new found faith in God and the luxurious availability of showers and an indoor bathroom at the house. He was linked up to email, helped care for friends with the items he found in dumpsters and and even took up commenting on our site. When I stopped by the house in late November to take some more photos, Pastor Steve answered the door and said Diver hadn’t been back since he last went out riding around town with me. That meant Diver was back into the addiction cycle, back out in Gresham and back to the homeless life. I was afraid he’d dropped off the face of the known world but, lo and behold, Matt and I ran into Diver while attending Pastor Steve’s shower ministry in Gresham a few weeks later. He’s physically fine, but, yes, back into the life he was once enthusiastic about leaving behind.
To me, reporting this story really hit home that real life addiction stories are not the uplifting stuff of Lifetime specials. Getting out of a lifestyle built around addiction is complicated, rarely goes according to plan and remains hard for peoples’ entire lives — even if they have God on their side. I’m pulling for Diver and people like him to have the kind of life they want but, honestly, reporting this story has made me I question if thats sometimes just impossible.
I just wanted to share something- while this might be hard to talk about, I wanted to ensure that it’s not impossible. I’m 25 years old and I’m a year away from graduating at PSU- when I was younger, I had an addiction to drugs that lasted a few years and was homeless for a while as well- couch-surfing and whatnot if not sleeping out of my own car while I was trying to get a job that would scrounge up enough money to be able to afford rent in the L.A. area.
I was lucky enough that I had some family support, although I had to move all the way across the country to Miami to be there to get it. I had heart palpitations and was having all sorts of health issues, including trying to quit smoking to be completely clean. While I’m certainly not perfect now, I’ve definitely turned my life around and I know that I can stay clean, healthy, and happy- but the will definitely has to lie with the individual and they absolutely, positively have to leave whatever life they had behind in order to move on to a better one.
It’s a shame, but it doesn’t look like Diver has gotten the support he’s needed to be able to do that, since he apparently felt a connection to those people in Gresham in that lifestyle again. It hurts to not have family support, and to not have good friends who are willing to help you through those dark times and won’t bring you down. I hope he can pull it together and make it, and as for you Sarah- believe me, it’s possible!
Sarah, first of all, I really want to thank you for your article, and for your update of Diver here. It must be hard to correct a good story, even if you didn’t write anything wrong. Ankles and I give you an honorary “breakfast pie” piece for your excellent effort.
But also to respond to El Cubano above. Diver has all the support he wants, if he wants it. Either from his mother, or from our community, which is a strong family, complete with arguments. We all want him to succeed in being clean and in living a positive life.
But there is another community that pulls at him. A community that encourages him to endulge, not really understanding that it means his death and it cripples him spiritually. And he’s lived in that community for as long as you, El, have been alive. It’s hard to surrender a whole life and begin a new one. We who have done it keep going back to the old life until we are really ready to surrender it.
The road to freedom is different for different people. The reasons for addiction are complex and the solutions can be even more complicated. Chronic homelessness is even more complex still. There just isn’t a single answer– sometimes not even for one person.
But I am confident of this. Diver has left before and returned. When it is time, he will return.
Steve Kimes
Pastor of Anawim