Crystal Toomer sees patients as a chemical dependency counselor.
Sometimes to reach the highest point, you have to start at the bottom. That was where Crystal Toomer of Salisbury found herself one night, an addict with an infant to whose cries she could not respond.
“He had severe asthma and had been in the hospital for it a few times,” she said. “He was crying, but I was too drunk and high to be able to get up and go to him.” Underneath the wool that the substances had wrapped her in, Toomer knew her child was in danger. “I felt my heart just crack,” she said. But as Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”
Toomer promised that if God let her child survive for the night, she would get sober. When day broke, her son was all right, and so was Toomer. She made a call to the Center for Clean Start that day in the spring of 2013. She has been sober ever since, and now, armed with an associate degree from Wor-Wic’s chemical dependency counseling program, she’s helping others find their path to sobriety.
It wasn’t an easy journey for Toomer. It started when she was molested as a child. At the age of 13, she found that drinking could help her escape the nightmares her trauma caused. Her substance abuse escalated from there; by 15, she was doing cocaine and dropped out of school. But her life really spiraled out of control when her parents died when she was 21, leaving her with two siblings to care for and two children of her own. “My addiction got worse,” she said. “I lost my kids — their father took them — and my siblings. It was a terrible time.” But several years later, the cry from her infant son was the wakeup call she needed.
The first step was finishing the education she had missed. “There was a Shore Up program that helped me study for my GED.” Passing the test was a moment of triumph upon which she quickly built. “The graduation ceremony was at Wor-Wic, and that opened a new door for me,” she said. Being on campus made her realize, “If I can do this, what else can I do?”
She applied right away and started in September 2016. The chemical dependency counseling track was the clear choice for her: “I wanted to be able to help others the way they had helped me,” she said. It wasn’t always easy. Toomer said she asked herself: “What am I doing at 32 going back to school?”
But she had the grit and passion to continue — as well as a support system. “I had so many people encouraging me. It was a village.” The Wor-Wic TRIO program for first-generation and low-income students was an important resource. “TRIO was a godsend,” she said. “They helped me with so much. They weren’t just there for school. When I lost my grandmother, everyone was so supportive. It wouldn’t have been possible without them.”
Today, Toomer is looking to attain a bachelor’s in counseling, and she says her ultimate dream would be to open a house for women and children in need, like the one that got her back on her feet. But she has already achieved her dream of helping others — she’s a counselor at Hudson Health Services in Salisbury. Every day she gets up early, prays and prepares her children for their school day. By 8 a.m. she’s at the office, ready to help people in search of sobriety.
“To me this is more of a ministry,” she said. “When people come through the door, they don’t just have a drug or alcohol problem. They are homeless, they are battered women, they are people who don’t have self-esteem, they don’t have basics like a driver’s license.”
Toomer helps them holistically and encourages those in need of education to give it a try. “I tell them there are going to be people in their corner,” she said. Like so many aspects of her job, she speaks from personal experience.
“If I can do it, anything is possible,” she said.