From pills to purpose: A story for Mental Health Awareness Month

by Tina Cole Mullins

(Editor’s Note: Faces of Addiction is a continuing series about people who experience drug addiction and the difficulty of recovery. By telling their stories, they hope to help others who are struggling and encourage them to seek treatment and healing.)

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, arriving with the quiet promise of spring—a season that reminds us how healing often begins beneath the surface, long before anything is visible. It’s a fitting backdrop for examining the roots of addiction, which are so often intertwined with unaddressed mental health struggles. Last month, we introduced readers to Katrina Forbes, whose journey from heartbreak to leadership reflects this deeper connection.

As the national spotlight turns toward mental health, Katrina’s story returns as a testament to what healing can make possible: the rebuilding of identity, the restoration of community, and the steady work of becoming someone capable of guiding others toward recovery.

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) reports an estimated 2.9% of residents live with both a substance use disorder and a serious mental illness, rising to 5.6% among young adults ages 18–25. These co-occurring conditions, known as dual diagnosis, highlight how closely mental health and addiction overlap across the state.

Michigan is home to more than 1.7 million adults living with a mental health condition, and many communities lack adequate access to care. That gap is why peer-run spaces like ARE, Inc. (which stands for Activities, Recovery, Empowerment) and the Jackson/Hillsdale Drop-In Centers have become essential. These centers offer what traditional systems often cannot: a safe, stigma-free environment where people can find connection, support, and a place to exist without judgment—a place to just simply be.

Katrina knows this landscape well. Though she and her husband, Eddie, live and work within the Jackson and Hillsdale recovery communities, their ties to the broader region run deep. Eddie is a Stockbridge native, and Katrina’s mother’s family also has roots in the area. Katrina’s story resonates with our readers not only because this is the community she serves, but because it is part of the community that shaped her.

Long before addiction took hold, Katrina already was fighting battles she didn’t yet have names for—bipolar disorder, PTSD, and a depression that felt like it swallowed whole pieces of her life.

“I was self-medicating long before I ever touched heroin,” she shared. “I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing. I started young, too young.”

What began as a prescription for Norco quickly spiraled into something far more dangerous.

“I ran out, and a friend offered me heroin, saying it was the same high,” she recalls. Seven years on, the script blurred into snorting, then IV use. The progression was fast, brutal, and unforgiving.

And the consequences were devastating.

“I lost both of my kids,” she says. “I used to believe, ‘If I’m not a mother, I’m nothing.'”

When her parental rights were terminated, it felt like the final blow—the kind of loss that carves a permanent hollow in a person and creates its own mental health wounds.

What Katrina didn’t realize then was that the very past she believed had destroyed her would eventually become the foundation of her purpose.

Today, as a certified peer support specialist and director at the drop-in center, Katrina stands at the intersection of Michigan’s mental health crisis and its recovery movement. Her work reflects a statewide reality: In communities where professional mental health resources are scarce, peer-run spaces have become indispensable.

The Jackson and Hillsdale Drop-In Centers, operated through ARE, Inc., provide peer-delivered support, recovery groups, targeted case management, and a welcoming space for individuals navigating dual diagnosis.

For many, these centers are the first doorway into stability. Katrina understands this intersection personally. Her journey through bipolar disorder, PTSD, depression, and addiction now informs the compassion and clarity she brings to others walking the same path.

Her story is grounded in the community she now serves, rooted in the community that shaped her, and is a reminder that recovery is not just personal. It is communal. It is generational. And as this Mental Health Awareness Month concludes, it widens the path forward.

In the near future, we’ll continue this series by welcoming new faces of addiction and returning to faces of mental wellness—individuals rebuilding stability, practicing emotional sobriety, and showing what healing looks like in real time. Their stories, like Katrina’s, will carry this conversation into the months ahead, reminding us that recovery and wellness are threads of the same fabric woven through our communities.

Resources:

Jackson/Hillsdale Drop-In Centers (ARE, Inc.).  Phone: 517-551-4698. Email: info@areinc.org  

Journalist Tina Cole-Mullins covers a wide range of topics and issues for Stockbridge Community News, including her Faces of Addiction and mental wellness contributions. A lifelong Dansville resident, she volunteers as a community outreach facilitator, helping ensure individuals and families can access the resources they need.All photos provided by Katrina Forbes.