LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Chimas Houston is a peer support specialist with Seeds of New Leaf, who connects people with mental health and recovery resources from the Rolling Recovery van.

Spectrum News 1 shared his story last August, around the start of the program, and rode along with him Friday to see how things are going, ten months later.

“We try to hit like all the hospitals, St. Mary’s Elizabeth, UofL,” he said. “We hit a couple other gas stations, so all together about four or five different locations.”

Houston hands out business cards and explains that the program will help with transportation, IDs and other barriers to treatment.

He shares his own story.

Chimas Houston is a peer support specialist with Seeds of New Leaf in Louisville. (Spectrum News 1/Erin Kelly)

“In the two years that I’ve been clean and sober, I had to be willing to do the program,” he told a woman who said she was interested in passing along the information to someone else.

Houston was offering fentanyl test strips to Karen Williams outside a gas station Friday when he learned that she lost her son Mark Nathaniel Brewer Jr. to a fentanyl overdose nearly two years ago.

“As of right now, we do have a drug epidemic,” said Williams. “I believe that the politicians and the ministers and other community leaders need to all get together and try to figure out how we can get this under control.”

The 2022 Overdose Fatality Report released this week shows 2,135 Kentuckians died from a drug overdose last year, a five percent decrease from the year before.

But among Black Kentuckians, the number has increased 8% since 2021 and about 47% since 2020.

“I personally feel that we need to get more information out there in the Black communities,” said Houston. “Although I’m out there in the trenches every day, you know, we still need more help. We need more people to focus on it.”

It’s been nearly a year since the Rolling Recovery program launched and Houston has lost count of the people who have accepted help, he said.

“Once I’d seen that it was working with me, I only felt right that it just felt good to do it and help other people,” said Houston. “If it can work with me, then I know that it can work with other people.”

The van has also increased its hours in service to 24 hours a day, six days a week.

To reach the Rolling Recovery van, call 502-528-4604.