William Perry, welcome to Heart of the Matter. You go by Perry. So, I will be calling you Perry. Tell me about this organization, This Must Be the Place, and how you got the idea to start it.
Well, our organization is based in recovery through the arts. And my own personal recovery journey, arts and, specifically, music was extremely important and integral to it.
How so?
Well, I think a lot of my childhood growing up, and traumas, and things that I had to go through that maybe were unfair, or unfortunate, caused me to push a lot of emotions down to places where I wouldn’t have to feel them, maybe I couldn’t even identify them, because of that, because it had become such a habit.
And then when I began my journey of recovery, I knew I was feeling these new things, but I didn’t quite know how to put words to them, and a lot of times, there’s people in songs that are really emotional, and it’s like, “Oh my God. That’s the feeling that I’ve been trying …” It might be one lyric in a song, and that’s that feeling that I’ve been trying to identify, that really speaks to exactly what I felt either right now, what I’m feeling right now, or what I felt during this certain period of heartache in my life.
And this also means that there’s someone else out there that felt it, because they were able to write about it.
Yeah.
And it was through that that I was able to start my own emotional exploration that I think is extremely important in maintaining a solid foundation of recovery.
And so, when I, fast-forward, to a point where I was able to begin to give back to the community, and take my knowledge, strength, and hope and be able to go out and help, the one place that I knew that I was familiar with, and was of extreme comfort to me was within the world of arts and music.
So, I don’t want to pry too much, but can you talk a little bit about the trauma that you suffered, and why, as so many people do, they pick up a substance, whether it’s a drug, or alcohol to numb the pain, or to somehow give you the courage to get through life?
Yeah. I can. I grew up in a poor family. I guess we call them low-income families now. We were fricking poor. And I had an extremely abusive, alcoholic father, who did some really unfortunate things to myself, to my mother, and my brother, to the point that I almost … Often times, I think I acted out, so, that I would be the one that would be on the receiving end, because it was better to receive pain than to watch it be inflicted upon another.
Yeah.
And that taught me also, though, that I was deserving of those things. And as I grew, I needed to cover up that pain. I found different coping mechanisms. And then I found drugs, and those became the easiest path to covering … Not just covering those up, but finding because of the fractured element of my family, I didn’t feel like I belonged within that group, and, thankfully, eventually, my mom left my father and took me with her. That doesn’t mean that things got any easier-
Yeah.
… spent a long time living place-to-place, and I slept on a lot of couches. And, yeah. I never really felt like I belonged, but when you find a circle of people …
When you have drugs, and you’re a teenager, it’s easy to find a circle of people who will accept you. And so, you get that duality of both feeling like you belong in a group that maybe they don’t really like you for you, but they like you for what you got. And also being able to forget what’s going on at home.
And, for me, yeah, that was my way of coping. That was my way of escaping. And that was my way of finding some belonging in the world where-
Did your mom know that you were doing these drugs?
So, my mom was busy working through a lot of her own stuff. I would say by the time I was 16 years old, yes, she very much knew, and she had entered me in treatment … I did treatment for the first time at age 14.
Oh my gosh. That’s so young.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was young, and it was not … I don’t really think that that treatment was helpful.
Clearly not. Yeah.
By the time I was 16, I think that I had used up all of my strikes within my family. And that’s when I left home.
At 16, you were on your own?
Yes. At 16, I left home, and I lived from place to place, friend to friend. And I don’t think I lived in the same place for an entire year up until … I would say up until just recently, up until the age 35. Well, besides prison. I lived in the same place while I was in prison.
But, yeah. I left home at 16, and I found camaraderie, and people that … A lot of them were much older than me, but I still had this need to belong, and, unfortunately, the friend group that I chose, they didn’t really care about my age. They just cared about me doing the same things that they did to belong, and it was actually then that I was introduced to heroin.
It was a 24-year-old giving a 16-year-old heroin. In fact, shooting me up with heroin for the very first time. And that started off an adventure with opioids that lasted up until I turned 30.
At what point, you were arrested for what exactly?
I mean, I’ve been arrested dozens of times.
And then went to prison for 10 years.
Okay. Yeah. So, in 2007, I was arrested on a drug trafficking charge.
Buying drugs?
Yeah. Yeah. I did 18 months, and was released. But I was released in the way that they do in Ohio, which is they give you $50 and drop you off at the bus stop. And there’s no plan, no plan in place, and I went back to all that I knew, which was the streets.
And by 2011, I had racked up a plethora of charges, but, essentially, I was caught with a car that was not mine, two laptops, and a small amount of heroin. And I was sent away for 10 years.
Wow.
Yeah.
It’s worth noting you were in Ohio, which Ohio was, in many ways, the epicenter of the opioid crisis.
That’s correct. I think we … And I am a child of the opioid epidemic. We didn’t know what it was until people started putting a name on it around 2008, 2009 was the first time people were saying, “We have something going on with heroin here,” but the very first pill mill was in Portsmouth, Ohio for the percocets and the oxycodones. That’s what started the template for all the pill mills across the country.
But I always say, like, Huntington, West Virginia got quite a bit of coverage for the amount of overdoses, and West Virginia has been devastated as well, but Huntington is just under 100 miles from Columbus where I grew up, and I always say, “Where do you think it was coming from?”
Yeah.
It was right here. It was in every neighborhood. It was what we knew. It was just a part of life was the pills, and the heroin. And, unfortunately, a lot of the friends and associates that I had from that time period are no longer with us. And I think that’s what drives me quite a bit today is the fact that …
I was just thinking about it. I just graduated college.
You’re on your way to law school.
Yeah, and I’m on my way to law school. I have my family, and I have my wife, who supports me to the fullest, but, unfortunately, it was bittersweet, because I wish that there were … Some of those friends could be here to see these moments, and what became of this person who nobody ever thought would straighten his life out.
How much do you think being in prison for 10 years helped set you on the track you’re on now?
Let me start that off by saying prison is not a place where recovery is easily accessible.
Really?
No. Drugs are easily accessible.
In prison?
Recovery has a waiting list. Yeah. In prison. In fact, one of the most eye-opening things, and this is long after I got sober, and right before my release, was when COVID happened. I was still incarcerated then. In fact, the prison that I was at had 44 people die-
Oh, wow.
Yeah. We had 1600 positive cases in April of 2020. And we went on complete lockdown. There was very minimal staff that was coming in, and, obviously, no visits, no anything.
In fact, the National Guard at one point had to take control of our prison, because of just the extreme circumstances. However, there was no shortage of drug supply-
Even under lockdown?
Even on lockdown. In fact, some would argue there was more than there had ever been, because-
How were the drugs getting in?
Well, the COs bring it in, and no one wanted to touch anyone. So-
COs meaning commanding officers?
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, the prison staff brings it in, and they make money off of it, and they use the inmates to sell it for them. I’ve been asked before how long after I got into the prison in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, how long did it take until I was able to get my hands on an illicit substance, and I actually had just gotten to my institution, and had not yet made it to my bed, and saw someone who recognized me, and said, “Hey, Perry. When you put your stuff down, come see me, I have something for you.”
No. That fast?
That fast. So, I had been there maybe a couple of hours.
Before somebody sold you drugs?
Yes. Yeah. Actually, the first one was free. First one’s always free. That’s how they get you. And I was in a place of misery. I was starting a fresh 10-year sentence. What motivation did I have not to get high?
Also, when I did start seeking out recovery services, there’s actually really long waiting lists to get into those classes even to go to something as simple as NA, which I love, and which is probably one of the most important parts of my own personal recovery, I spent about three months on a waiting list before I could go to my very first NA meeting.
Really?
Yeah. And you needed to also maintain a certain amount of time not being in trouble, or anything like that, which you would think someone seeking NA, like, odds are they probably are getting-
I find that shocking. In the outside world, you spend all this time trying to coax people to come to an AA or NA meeting as the first step toward even just recognizing you have an issue, and in prison, there’s a three-month waiting list?
Yes. Easily three-month waiting list, because there’s limited space, and you have one meeting a week, and you have a prison of 3,000 people who want to go to this meeting.
Wow.
Not all of them, obviously, want to go to this meeting, but, yeah. There’s limited space in the tiny room that they allot to it on a Tuesday night. And, yeah. So, I waited my turn, and, thankfully, thankfully, my number came up eventually, and I was able to start going to those meetings. But I think that contrast there of how quickly I was able to get my hands on drugs versus how long it took me to get my hands on something that would give me some recovery, or guidance from anyone really speaks to what happens inside of a prison.
Yeah.
Now that’s not to say that it wasn’t … Once I got my foot in the door, I took full advantage of everything that I possibly could, and that doesn’t mean I got sober all in one day. I didn’t get addicted all in one day. It’s a process.
In thinking about that, that’s what’s led me to doing harm reduction for a living is knowing that “Hey. These things happen in tiny increments, and we just try to reduce harm little by little,” and that’s actually how I got clean was by little by little, taking these classes, and, hey, sometimes I would slip up, but then there would be someone to tell me, “Okay. Well, we’re glad you were able to admit that to us and talk about it and talk about the reasons why you did.”
And, eventually, by the end of 2017 I was pretty well on my way to recovery. New Year’s Eve 2017, I smoked a joint with a buddy in the shower trying-
Okay. I think the water would be a problem but go on.
Oh, you need to cover up the smell. So, you don’t get caught. So, yes. The water is a problem, and that actually led to … The smell factor actually led to quite a bit of paranoia and completely ruined my New Year’s. And also I had had about a month of sobriety previous to that, and the recognition that I had just lost that just to feel paranoid all night, I woke up on New Year’s Day 2018, and I made a promise to myself that if I was ever going to have a crappy night ever again, it was going to be on my own volition, and not because of some drug. And I haven’t used since then.
And that’s the way even through those hardships of COVID and prison and all of the … Coming home is so hard. It’s so hard to get adjusted to the world. But no matter what, I made that decision that I wasn’t going to use anymore.
And I began to see life through a different lens, and see life for the beauty that it has, and these magical moments that you get to have. And, yeah. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I also don’t believe that I would be the person who is sitting here talking to you right now, if I had not gone through these things.
I am this person, because of those things, not in spite of those things.
How did you meet your wife? I’m curious.
So, she actually was a documentary producer for quite some time. My wife is amazing. She was working actually on a story on the … She was doing some preliminary investigation on the potential of a story on that COVID outbreak at the Ohio prisons, because-
And how nobody would come to work, and the National Guard had to come in and make sure you guys had food. But go on. Yeah.
Well, even going into … I believe going into 2021, it was actually the most concentrated and largest outbreak of COVID in America.
Your prison?
Both mine, and there was Marion Correctional in Ohio simultaneously had outbreaks. I believe Marion had slightly more cases than ours, but they were number one and number two on the most concentrated outbreaks in America going-
Wow.
… all the way into 2021, but it was this blip on the news that people quickly moved on from, because-
Yeah.
… it’s just some prisoners dying. And she was doing an investigation on, “Hey. Is there a potential for doing a short documentary on this?” Or making sure that this isn’t a story that just goes away forever.
Who was she working for at the time?
So, she was actually freelancing at the time.
Okay.
She was freelancing. She had actually just left her position … She worked at Great Big Story with CNN where she won an Emmy, but she had left CNN to go freelance where she did a whole bunch of documentaries as a freelancer.
But, yeah. That led her to during COVID, obviously, a lot of production stopped. And so, she was just rooting around for stories and ideas and had come across Ohio. She had never been to Ohio.
Since I actually was one of … I was hospitalized while I was incarcerated. I’m asthmatic. COVID really affected me really badly. I was in the hospital for five days, and this was just a couple months before I was getting out. It was, “After all this time, am I going to make it home?” kind of deal.
But my release to the halfway house coincided with the time that she was coming out to do her investigation on that story, and, although, my part in it … She was connected to me, because it was well-known that I was one of the first cases in my prison, and an extreme case-
COVID case?
Yeah. COVID case. And so, she was connected to me through that, but it wasn’t really part of the way she was trying to tell the story. But I did become a de facto tour guide for Ohio, because I love this place, and was able to explain how the prison system works here, and different things of that nature.
And we became very, very good friends. And then we became more than friends. And next thing you know, I was fully released from the halfway house, she took me … She was actually covering Joe Biden’s inauguration. So, the day after I was released from the custody of the State of Ohio, she actually took me to Washington DC with her-
Wow.
… and I got to see the inauguration. And then we went to New York City and packed up her apartment, and she moved into her own apartment here in Columbus, Ohio. And I guess she was willing to take a big chance on me. And I’m ever grateful for that. A year and a half later, we were married and started our nonprofit that does its little part to try and help the world.
This nonprofit, getting back to my original question about music, and how powerful it can be, especially, for I think a lot of people who are addicted to some sort of substance, can sometimes have difficulty … Of course, everybody in their life is like, “Why? Why? Why? Why are you doing this? Why are you taking these drugs? Why are you drinking too much? Why won’t you stop?”
And that can actually be a really hard question to answer. Sometimes the person in the grip of addiction doesn’t even know him, or herself why. And the fact that the answer so often can come from something you read, or something you hear like a song, and when you realize, “Oh, that’s what I’m feeling,” and, as you said, “And I’m not the only one who feels this,” because there’s nothing more isolating, or lonely than addiction.
And the whole process of coming out of addiction is connection to other people. That’s why NA worked. That’s why AA works, because you’re in a room with a bunch of other people who did exactly the same thing, and felt, in many cases, exactly the same way.
Circumstances may be completely different, what got you there may be wildly different, but you still got to the point where you felt the exact same way, “I can’t live without numbing part,” and, of course, what, tragically, ends up happening is you numb all. You can’t just numb part.
I can walk into an NA meeting in any city in this country, probably any country, because they occur across the world, but I can walk into an NA meeting in any city, and I can tell a group of strangers exactly how sick I am, and the thoughts that I am having today, and they will understand it completely. Although, they have never seen me before in their lives-
Yeah.
… and that is one of the most beautiful things in the entire world to be able to let that off your shoulders.
Right.
And a burden shared is a burden lifted. And that’s what those exist for.
Yeah.
And I think that’s what we try to offer to people, and music provides a safe space. People’s guards about this topic are down a little bit, because if you just bring up matters of addiction, and trying to get into the specifics of it in a more sterilized environment, people’s defense mechanisms are up.
Whether it’s the person who is struggling with a substance use problem, or the family member, or someone, or friend who is connected to that person, they don’t even realize that they have defense mechanisms, because of what they’ve been through, or maybe enabling factors, or whatever. There’s a lot of different things that play into that.
And what we’ve been able to develop is this method of outreach that allows individuals to just come up and have a conversation with somebody.
Well, let’s set this up, because this-
Yeah.
… method of outreach of yours, you have … What are they? Booths, or a table, or something.
Yeah. We have-
And you and your wife, and you actually dispense harm reduction kits, naloxone.
Yeah.
And you wouldn’t think … This is, obviously, a person going up to your booth. This is a person who is planning on doing drugs at the music festival, or at the concert, or they’re with somebody-
Yes.
… who is going to be doing drugs, and they want to make sure they’re safe, because fentanyl is in everything right now. It’s in everything. No drug, no pill is safe, because fentanyl could be in it.
Yes.
And you have these booths where you give naloxone in case there’s an overdose. So, it’s not like you’ve got a shingle out there saying, “Clean and sober is the way to go,” or, “Don’t do drugs.” Your shingle, in effect, says, “If you’re going to do drugs, be safe,” but that opens the door, you say, to other conversations?
Yeah. We like to call ourselves the gateway drug to recovery.
That’s perfect.
So, yeah. These conversations happen in a whole lot of different ways. None of them are the same, and I’ve had tens of thousands of them over the past four years.
But what it boils down to is you have to … The method of the ’80s and ’90s, the white-knuckle, Just Say No method, please, please acknowledge by now that that just doesn’t-
Didn’t work.
No. It’s not based in reality and fact. People are very complicated. So, you cannot boil it down into this one statement, and say, “This is going to work.”
But what you can do is you can keep your loved ones safe in the meantime, as they work through their stuff. And that’s what we do is all about.
Right.
It’s about keeping yourself safe, if it is yourself who is choosing to partake in a substance, or a large majority of the people who come up just know that they’re going to be around someone, and that might even be strangers that they’re going to be around, but they know that those people deserve to be kept safe as well.
Yeah.
But for the ones who have people that are closer to them, they do have specific questions for the people who do use. They have a specific set of questions, “How can I use safely? How can I lower my usage? What are these …”
And this is where we employ harm reduction strategies. Like, you don’t have to do it all at once. You can set goals for yourself. You can go in low and slow. It’s okay.
Letting someone else know that you’re going to use is also okay instead of hiding and using alone in shame, that’s how people die.
Yeah. You’ve been to all sorts of concerts, all sorts of music festivals, Burning Man, for example. Many, many bands have entered into partnerships, the Talking Heads, love them, Interpol, the Black Angels, and since March of 2022, you’ve distributed 85,000 naloxone kits.
Yes.
Do you have any idea how many lives you might have saved?
So, actually, that number is now up, because we’ve started this year. We are up over 100,000 kits that we’ve distributed.
Wow.
And we have confirmed over 1,500 opioid overdose reversals.
That’s incredible. That’s incredible. You’ve saved 1500 people’s lives. Or helped save them.
Yeah. We were just the conduit. We just put the stuff in people’s hands. And I look around, and that’s part of why we do this very active and mobile, and hard thing.
When I look around, and, yes, there’s all kinds of awareness campaigns about fentanyl, there’s, “One pill can kill” slogans on billboards, and things of that nature.
The time of plausible deniability for fentanyl has long passed. Everyone knows about it. However, the problem with this specific drug is if you don’t have the tool, the medicine that can counteract it-
Right.
… none of that stuff has any point.
Yeah.
And so, you have to be able to give it to people, and we also believe firmly that you have to be able to give it to people for free, because it should not cost you money to save someone else’s life.
And so, by making it low barrier, accessible, and free, and removing any judgment, we’ve been able to get the stuff into these hands, and a lot of people thought, “Hey. You’re going to get pushback. You’re going to Huntsville, Alabama, and handing out Narcan?” They’re knocking down our door is what they were doing.
Lexington, Kentucky, they love us there, because we are coming with exactly what people want to take back into their neighborhood, because they know what’s going on a couple doors down. They know what’s going on at the gas station down the street, and they hope maybe they’re there to help someone. Maybe they know what’s going on within their family. And it’s in those places that we have had this just welcoming of folks. It doesn’t matter.
William Perry, the organization is This Must Be the Place. You have an incredible story. And it’s been a real honor to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
And thank you for all the lives you’re saving.