National Awareness: Paying forward the joy of sobriety

September is National Alcohol & Drug Addiction Recovery Month, and the College of Social Work would like to take this time to recognize one of its faculty members whose expertise lies in substance misuse prevention, treatment and recovery.

The A.T. “Greg” And Charlotte Gregoire Fund In Addiction And Recovery Scholarship

As an undergraduate at Marymount College of Kansas in the late 1970s, Tom Gregoire got the help he needed for alcohol and drug addiction thanks to one of his professors being open about his own recovery journey. The professor’s willingness to break the stigma—a rarity at the time—inspired Gregoire to ask for help.

Still, it took him three tries to gather the courage to approach the professor. “After scheduling with him and losing my nerve the first two tries, I went to him and said, ‘I need help.’ That was all I had to say. He took me under his wing and helped me get treatment and restart my life. Now, I’m that professor.”

As dean emeritus of the College of Social Work, and throughout his career in academia and as a substance abuse clinician and administrator, Gregoire has paid forward the joy of sobriety by “recovering out loud” and connecting others to the help they need.

One of the ways he does that is through the A.T. “Greg” and Charlotte Gregoire Fund in Addiction and Recovery Scholarship. Gregoire created the scholarship in memory of his parents, who supported him through his addiction and beyond— despite, by his own admission, having “put them through hell.” Funded through generous gifts from Gregoire as well as his friends, family, and colleagues and partners in the College of Social Work, the scholarship helped its inaugural recipient attain her MSW this past spring.

Christina Ray (BSSW ’22, MSW ’23), whom Gregoire calls a “phenomenal first recipient,” has endured her own struggles with addiction. Growing up on Columbus’ west side with neighborhood friends who struggled with literacy, Ray felt like she “stuck out like a sore thumb” as a scholarship student at the elite Columbus School for Girls. Later, while a student at Ohio State, she drank alcohol and smoked marijuana with those neighborhood friends and eventually became addicted to opiates, heroin and crack.

Ray dropped out of college and spent her young adulthood in and out of jail and rehab. Her addiction came to define her personality. “I hit various rock bottoms and almost prided myself on living a life that others only saw in movies—stealing big-screen TVs outside restaurants, committing all kinds of crimes to get drugs,” she says.

Eventually, Ray received a three-year prison sentence for driving the getaway car in a series of gas station robberies. In her third year of the sentence, she experienced a profound awakening as she came to know herself as a sober person.

“I was working out every day, ran a 5K, was reading self-help books, leading groups and meditating. I was the best version of myself I’d ever been,” she recalls.

“That was in spite of prison—not because of it. It was the amazing community of women who were incarcerated with me that helped me be able to do that. It’s where I found my passion and purpose, and I thought, ‘I need to get out and be a voice for these women.’”

Not long after her release, Ray re-enrolled at Ohio State in the College of Social Work. This past academic year she took full advantage of the opportunities the Gregoire Scholarship afforded her, including traveling to Washington, DC, to advocate on behalf of incarcerated people.

The best part? “Getting to know Tom and how amazing he is,” says Ray, who has been clean for three years and works for ARCH Reentry in prison advocacy reform.

Gregoire gets chills when he thinks about the enormous impact Ray will have on others. “I told her, ‘You’re part of a lineage now. My helpers helped me, and you’ll help so many people. That’s how this works.’”