Crossroads Sober Living has come a long way.
“We started off with 10 people, and a little sandwich plate from Walmart, oatmeal cream pies and off-brand Cokes,” founder Dusty Snider told Columbus Rotary Club members Tuesday at Lion Hills Center. “We had music on the radio on a little speaker. Now we have four-course meals with a dessert bar, and about 150 people show up.”
Crossroads, founded in 2020, is a transition house and sober living facility located in East Columbus in the old Wiygul Dental building on McCrary Road. It serves about 20 clients at a time in its current incarnation.
Thanks to acquisition of the old Friendship Church building off of Nashville Ferry Road, Crossroads is preparing to expand its program and offer a discipleship recovery program as well, explained director Ryan Rickert, a former Lowndes County jail administrator and sheriff’s deputy. The church building, once renovated, will allow the program to house about 32 people.
“We can do services in the sanctuary,” he said. “It has eight Sunday school rooms we’re going to convert into housing areas.”
The recovery program will become more intensive once the new space comes on-line, Rickert said.
“In the new facility, when they come in they won’t be out in public. They won’t have to worry about a job,” Rickert said. “They will earn visitation from their family. They’ll have no phone and no day-to-day contact with anybody who would like to ask them to leave.”
More space means participants can stay in the program longer, Snider said.
“Right now (they’re in for) six to nine months,” Snider said. “I think it takes at least a year to get your entire mind back. … We’re going to set it up so you have at least a year of accountability.”
The program will also teach life skills, Rickert said.
“Sober living isn’t just getting sober,” Rickert said. “It’s learning how to balance a checkbook … the importance of a savings account … how to go to the power company and pay a deposit and how to pay your electric bill.”
Rickert said many who have struggled with addiction have other blind spots that need to be addressed.
“If you have someone who begins their addiction at 16 years old, and they are an addict until they are 45, there are parts of their life where they are still 16 years old,” Rickert said. “They don’t know how to react to things emotionally, and they haven’t learned the life skills that are necessary to be a good employee, spouse or parent.”
Crossroads wants to help those recently freed from addiction learn that they have value, Rickert said.
“Our goal is not to be just a treatment center. It’s to be a discipleship program and teach them their value in Christ,” Rickert said. “Being sober is only half the battle. We want sobriety to be a by-product of their faith, and we want them to take it back to their parents and to the community.”
The programs are funded by donations and fundraisers, as well as fees paid by the participants, Snider said.
“They pay $500 a month to be there,” Snider said. “We go to different churches and share our testimonies and get love offerings, or set up at Walmart and tell our story. We may sell Boston butts or set up a food trailer and sell plates and stuff like that. We rely on the community for donations, as well. Without donations and us doing fundraisers, we wouldn’t make it.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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