'This is where I'm supposed to be': Mathew looks to use his past for good

Oct. 31—Blaine Mathew is the chairperson of the Homeless Coalition of the Ohio Valley and a community liaison for Addiction Recovery Care (ARC), which provides him with a way to help those in similar paths he's been through.

Initially, Mathew, 28, had his sights set on studying sports medicine or physical therapy at Transylvania University.

It wasn't until his final semester of high school when he tried marijuana.

"...I was at church, I was at school, I was at home — and that was really my life," he said, "(and then), I started hanging out with some people and started smoking pot; and it was just a one-time thing and I thought, 'You know what? This is kind of cool. I've got people around me, (and) I'm enjoying this fellowship ....'

"That just led me to meet other people with other issues, and also — in a way — inspired me to try different things. ...You smoke weed with the weed smokers, eventually there's going to be a pill popper that smokes weed, and then you end up trying a Xanax bar, or you take a Klonopin ....

"It just spirals just like that so quickly, and that's exactly what happened to me."

Still, Mathew graduated with high grades and worked part-time to have funds on hand for school. He also received "a healthy amount of money" from his family, but it didn't last.

"...In all true transparency — if it wasn't blown before I went to school, it was blown immediately after I got there (on) alcohol and marijuana ...," he said. "I blew thousands of dollars ... quickly."

Mathew's usage increased "exponentially," and he stopped going to a majority of classes after midterms.

"I just gave up; and I spent every day (and) all day chillin', smoking pot and waiting for everyone to get done with class and go party again," he said.

His family was unaware what was going on until they received a letter saying he was put on academic probation and could not return to campus in the spring.

His family staged an intervention, and his stepmother found drug paraphernalia in his room that he took for his friends back at school.

"I had two backpacks full of smoking utensils in my closet," he said. "I come home from this family intervention to just everything sitting on the kitchen table."

While meeting with a drug counselor didn't make an impact, Mathew enrolled at Owensboro Community & Technical College to get back on track. He passed all of his classes and stayed clean before he started smoking again and taking benzodiazepines after his spring semester.

In November 2013, he began selling marijuana and "anything I could get my hands on" but "nothing too hard" while also holding down a part-time job.

He teamed up with another dealer. While the pair were pulled over one night and let go without issue, it was the following night that Mathew got pulled over alone for a failed taillight.

He kept denying having marijuana for four hours before a drug dog came to the scene.

"At the time, it felt like divine intervention because as they were arresting me (and taking) me to jail because it was a DUI (and) possession of drugs, someone just got shot in the street on the west side of town," Mathew said. "They looked at me and were like, 'Either you can admit to smoking pot and we'll take you home or we're going to take you to ... get drug tested."

Mathew was taken home but didn't stay as he decided to move out after an argument with his father. He dropped out of school and stayed with friends while still selling. He began trying acid, cocaine and mushrooms.

He found a place to sublet and started selling out of the house with another friend — where he said was when he became addicted to selling drugs.

"...We were buying pounds at a time. We were buying like thousands of benzo pills at a time. We were buying 30 to 40 hits of acid ..., ounces of mushrooms," Mathew said.

After a dispute with his friend, Mathew moved into his mother's house with intentions of starting fresh and completed his volunteer hours. He ended up becoming a part-time employee of the place he volunteered, but that was short-lived.

He became involved with a woman and tried to help her family by selling once again. It was also when he was introduced to methamphetamine. About eight months later, they lost the house.

At 22, Mathew was homeless.

"That's what the drugs do — it replaces everything," he said. "It doesn't matter if you have food, water, shelter; it adds itself right in front of all three of those things."

He stayed with other dealers and found places to sleep at night — whether it was a bench or a park. He was also getting banned from stores due to "pushing out shopping carts worth of items ...."

"I started building up these little petty charges ... until I ended up stealing some pills," he said, "and when I did that, that was a felony charge."

After being charged with failure to appear due to fear of being arrested for an unpaid parking ticket, a warrant was put out for his arrest in July 2016. He was caught in February 2017 inside a yard barn.

Mathew was at the Daviess County Detention Center for 98 days, where he met some people serving life sentences in installments — which he said was a turning point.

"...They were going to spend the rest of their life in and out of jail ...," he said, "and that just hit me when I realized what they meant and I thought, 'I'm not doing this again. I'm not coming back here. There's no way.' "

Mathew enrolled in a 28-day rehab and spent 18 months in drug court while staying at St. Benedict's. By the time he got into a transitional home, he was accepted by AmeriCorps and placed at United Way of the Ohio Valley.

"Things were just coming together," he said. "Harry Pedigo gave me a chance, David Ross gave me a chance ... and I thought these people believed in me, and I started to believe in myself."

With family and peer support, Mathew ran the transitional home and spent two years with AmeriCorps and UWOV and used the former's education award to finish out his associate's degree at OCTC.

He was hired full-time at UWOV as the manager of digital communications and innovation in 2020 until this past July.

"...They all saw that I had potential and just wanted to pour into me and share some of their knowledge with me; and I took full advantage of it," he said.

Mathew has become involved in the area, including the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce and was one of the 31 members of the Leadership Owensboro graduating class of 2022.

And now, he's ready to share his story to help others.

"People know who I am now," he said. "I'm so involved with so many things, and I have such a heart for the community. I just want to give back."

With his current positions, Mathew feels "this is where I'm supposed to be."

"I wake up every day, and I don't second guess whether this is the line of work I'm supposed to be in," he said. "...I'm sending texts at 7 a.m. or 10 p.m. to make a difference. It's not really work. It's saving someone's life from addiction and the same thing I was going through.

"...I'm using five years of hell in my own life as a perspective and a motivation to save somebody else's. ...I didn't waste my life out there on the street .... I'm using that now to help other people."