JACKSON, MI – Doug Brinker walked into LifeWays Community Mental Health 20 years ago without hope.

Hours before, he had survived his first suicide attempt by alcohol poisoning.

“When you go to the emergency room at 3 a.m. so drunk that you don’t know life exists and they shove a bunch of charcoal down your stomach, you sober up real quick,” said Brinker, then 37.

“I think my blood-alcohol level was six times the legal limit that night.”

A former U.S. Navy helmsman with three years active service, Brinker, now 57, was honorably discharged in 1984 and unable to reconnect with society when he returned home.

“For four or five years, I was in a very dark place in life with broken relationships and a change of job every six months,” he said. “Basically, I spent 15 years just running around in circles on a merry-go-round.”

That merry-go-round led to a second suicide attempt in February 2001, this time with a knife, he said.

Only a handful of people knew about either attempt until three years ago. Among them were people at LifeWays, where Brinker now uses his experience to connect with patients as a peer support specialist at Crisis R&R.

Crisis R&R is undergoing a renovation to make it a 24-hour facility. This means hiring more peer support specialists like Brinker.

Each time a patient comes in during a mental health crisis, they meet with a peer support specialist within 15 minutes. CEO Maribeth Leonard said the specialists are a nationwide trend with evidence to support their success.

“It is more powerful for someone experiencing the same situation to have an interaction with someone who has walked the walk you’re going through,” she said.

The peer support specialists, like Brinker, have struggled with their own mental health crisis and are in recovery.

“When it’s feasible to share, I ask permission,” Brinker said. “I don’t give them any of the details, I just generalize my recovery story of my attempts. I try to make myself as relatable as possible, but I don’t allow myself to over-step that position. When a guest comes into the room, it’s all about them and their crisis, not mine.”

The goal is to send each person coming to Crisis R&R home with a safety plan on how to proceed using support systems and coping skills. The peer support specialists make follow-up phone calls 24, 48 and 72 hours after each visit.

Discussing what a guest is going through can be difficult for Brinker, especially if it pertains to suicide.

“I have my setback days,” he said. “I don’t have a specific go-to coping skill for that. I try to just know that I’m grateful that God gave me a different purpose in life and that I’m able to have the strength to overcome that weak part.”

Brinker’s day can be extremely busy, with multiple patients with varying needs. Or the day can be devoted to training, office support and follow-up calls.

Several guests specifically ask for Brinker when they come in, he said. Having sought help himself during the dark parts of his life, Brinker is happy to be the person some are willing to trust.

Outside his shift at LifeWays, Brinker is involved in Toastmasters International and Junior Achievement and serves as post commander and Department of Michigan PTSD director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

He believes recovery is an ongoing, everlasting process. But he uses community involvement to work through it.

“I stay busy,” he said. “That is my therapy. If I stay busy, I don’t have time to reflect back on that dark part of my life.”

Brinker also recently finished writing a 50-page book detailing his life leading up to his suicide attempts. It has 22 chapters to represent the approximate number of veterans who die by suicide daily, he said.

The book includes details on his being adopted, put into a children’s home, nearly drowning, surviving being hit by a car twice, moving often, his time in the Navy, surviving Iraq and starting college for the first time at 42 years old.

“I’m a survivor – a victor,” Brinker said. “We know, unfortunately, that my voice needs to be heard because that is my purpose, to be that awareness factor for other people that hope is real, and it does exist if you are open to allowing it to exist.”

Brinker is hoping his book will be released late this summer. Half of the proceeds will go to the Jackson County Suicide Coalition.

“I’m not writing the book and selling it for fundraising for myself and my financial needs,” Brinker said. “I’m doing it to continue that hope bridge where we can outreach to more people that are struggling.”

In about 10 weeks, Brinker will graduate with his master's degree in communication from Eastern Michigan University. His goal is to work full time as an advocate for suicide awareness and prevention and PTSD.

Brinker maintains a tagline he “stole” from a friend as his mission in life: “Hope is helping one person every day.”

In doing so, he has managed to help his younger self, too.

“I probably would suggest to that younger self that you have to be vulnerable to reach out for help when you’re to that point,” Brinker said. “Help is out there, it’s all around us.”