Mark calls Prevention Point Philadelphia (PPP) “my safe haven.”
After years of substance use and uncertainty, Mark is finally addressing long-standing legal issues and, crucially, has just moved into permanent housing. He is recommending PPP’s services to everyone he meets on the streets.
“Prevention Point was there when I needed them,” says Mark, 62, a long-time Philadelphia resident. “They help a lot of people… I believe the programs they’ve installed and their polices and the way they operate has saved many lives.”
Although Mark comes from a close-knit family, he began experimenting with addictive substances, including angel dust, at age 10. He started using cocaine as a teenager. His neighbors in South and West Philadelphia were doing the same thing and “it was no big deal... it was accepted and seemed to be all right although it wasn’t all right,” Mark says.
In his 20s, he was in and out of jail, charged with petty crimes, and spent more than a decade behind bars. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which his mother also had. Because of her diagnosis, she’d had to stop working and her legs had been amputated. She died in 1998; tragically, Mark was in prison and unable to attend her funeral.
“I never really cried,” he says. “That probably has a little bit to do with my addiction.”
Released from prison, Mark smoked crack and would go “through hell and high water” to find it. He began living on the streets in 2019 after he and his wife separated. Mark moved from shelter to shelter until he found stable shelter at Prevention Point.
“My life has done a full three-sixty. Prevention Point was there when I needed them to be there... Maybe if (PPP) hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t be on this side of the road,” he says. “I might have been in jail right now.”
For the first time in years, Mark can imagine a future, perhaps as a recovery specialist working with others who suffer from substance use disorder, people "stuck in their struggles.” He wants to reconnect with his children—as well as his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“I’ve been through some things. But that wasn’t who I am. Those are things that I was going through,” Mark says. “I would like to be in my grandchildren’s life.”