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It was 2015 when Delia Burgos suffered a mental health breakdown due to traumas from her past. “I was doing a lot of drinking, but I didn’t identify as an alcoholic at the time,” said Burgos.

And it only got worse, but as she grappled with her addiction, Burgos eventually saw a path to recovery as someone who could help others going through the same struggles.

A year later in 2016 she started going to classes to become a recovery specialist and ultimately an addiction counselor. As a recovering alcoholic, she knew that peer support could help others.

Peer support is important because it shows individuals that they need other people with lived experience beside them in their journey to recovery, Burgos said. “And we’re filling that gap between the patient and the counselor because with a peer, we can get more relational with the client.”

With alcoholism’s toll worsening during the pandemic and the holiday season looming, recovering alcoholics like Burgos are part of a network of services — from AA meetings to clinical centers —reaching out to their peers in recovery to help them maintain sobriety.

According to survey studies, about 25% to 30% of Americans increased their alcohol consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic, and alcohol-related deaths hit new highs.

According to Dr. Aaron White, a senior scientific adviser at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and Dr. Patricia Powell, the deputy director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Maryland, the increases in consumption were tied to increases in anxiety, stress and depression. White and Powell are co-authors of a research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this year that details the rise of alcohol-related deaths during the pandemic.

From addiction to recovery

Her beliefs and faith were essential to Burgos’s recovery. Now in her 50s, in 2016, she also became a domestic violence and sexual assault advocate, visiting hospitals to help people with traumas similar to the ones she had gone through earlier in her life.

“And then it just led from one step to another. From that, it led to becoming a recovery specialist to help people that were dealing with addictions find their recovery,” she said.

Her work at Maryville Addiction Treatment Center exemplifies that. The center treats various levels of substance abuse and co-occurring mental health issues, according to Brandis Childs, the director of mental health and community programs. The levels of care include inpatient detox, short-term and long-term residential treatment and intensive outpatient services, Childs said.

Additional sources of help

Numerous other organizations and programs throughout the state also use peer support to assist people struggling with alcohol addiction.

South Jersey Intergroup comprises representatives from AA’s “homegroups,” members who offer support, encouragement and accountability to one another, especially after someone relapses.

The Intergroup maintains a central office to act as a clearing house for Alcoholics Anonymous in South Jersey and coordinates and supports AA programs.

“I often look at it as like, AA helped me get out of my own way in most of the things in my life,” one member of South Jersey Intergroup said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News, speaking anonymously. “And since I was physically addicted to alcohol, that was pretty much all the time.”

“I had a million problems,” he continued. “Removing this massive creator of confusion and pain and misery … if you choose to do it (through AA), it allows you to then work on the deeper problems that you have with a new clarity that would otherwise be obscured by drugs and alcohol.”

Challenges in health care

One of the challenges in the health care system is that addiction and mental health conditions might be treated differently, according to Dr. Danielle Dick, the director of the Rutgers Addiction Research Center. “Are you presenting for depression? Or are you presenting for an alcohol-use disorder? Or an opioid-use disorder? Or even a gambling problem? But so many of these things are all interrelated,” she said.

The combination of alcohol and opioid use continues to plague both New Jersey and the country at large. The number of opioid overdoses nationally increased by 37.6% in 2020, compared with 2019, a jump from 49,860 to 68,630, according to White and Powell. Alcohol contributed to about 17% of such deaths in 2019 and 17.4% in 2020. As a result, the number of overdose deaths involving a combination of alcohol and opioids increased substantially from 8,503 in 2019 to 11,969 in 2020, a change of roughly 40.8%.

Despite the data pointing to an increase in substance-use disorders, advocates continue to help people on a daily basis who have been impacted by the disease. Burgos said the peer support builds trusting relationships.

“They have access to our phone numbers, so they can call us when needed,” she said. “But just building that connection with them allows them to feel like there’s hope.”