Former fighter and addict changes life, helps others in UC Health’s peer recovery program

By Helena Battipaglia

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    CINCINNATI (WLWT) — The opioid epidemic has been a devastating public health crisis for years.

It has only gotten worse following the stress and isolation of the pandemic, but one local man is providing what many doctors are calling “the missing piece” to get those struggling on the right track.

Daniel Ritchie said he knows what it means to live at rock bottom, which is why he’s able to connect with those who feel hopeless or afraid of getting help.

In 2008, Ritchie was on top of the world winning mixed martial arts fights across the United States. But a broken arm socket required rehabilitation and pain medication.

“It didn’t only take away any physical pain I had it took away my emotional pain as well,” Ritchie said.

Percocet prescribed for his pain evolved into a full-blown heroin addiction.

“I had become so delusional and so lost in self and in that feeling that I forgot how important my dreams and my ambitions were and how hard I had worked for them,” Ritchie said. “I started living in my car, I started living in a storage unit, I would sleep on couches, I would sleep behind gas stations.”

Then he made a phone call for help. One voice at a treatment center changed his life, again.

“I don’t know what it was about that day but something she did planted some hope inside of me, she told me it was going to be okay when for so long everyone told me I was going to die,” Ritchie said.

Now five years clean, Ritchie is fighting to be that same lifeline for others.

Attending local events and rallies to connect those in need with recovery options, he’s planting the seed of hope.

“It doesn’t matter where I am. I don’t care who I’m with, it doesn’t matter what’s going on, I could be out to dinner with my family when I see somebody struggling, that means that I’m supposed to talk to that person,” Ritchie said.

He knows the fight is far from over.

A recent study found Greater Cincinnati is the nation’s No. 1 opioid overdose hot spot. But Ritchie’s one-man attack has been successful enough to get a powerful partner in his corner.

“We talk a lot in medicine about meeting the patients where they are, but many of us in medicine don’t at all understand where the patients are,” University of Cincinnati Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine Dr. Caroline Freiermuth said.

UC Health’s Emergency Department brought Ritchie into its peer recovery program.

“To go back to the hospital that I was once a patient at pretty frequently kind of intrigued me. Like ‘huh, I wonder how this could work,'” Ritchie said.

The department is the first in our area to integrate peers and volunteers into the medical model. People like Ritchie are trained in how to follow up.

In the program’s three years, peers have reached more than 2,000 patients. Nearly half have been referred to substance abuse treatment.

“And so bringing those peers into our emergency department, having them there and having the patient really understand, OK, this person does get it. They’ve been here and they’ve come out on the other side,” Freiermuth said.

Ritchie said he knows how important that is.

“Compassion is key, compassion is harm reduction that’s the missing piece,” Ritchie said.

It was that compassion that saved Austin Horwitz’s life this year.

“I was still in a heavy state of denial, so I was still in the mindset of this is something I could fix myself I don’t need somebody else,” Horwitz said.

He said Ritchie changed that mindset, he’s now nine months clean from alcohol and drug addiction.

“There was something more comforting about the fact that it was just another guy. If this other stronger person can make themselves 100 percent vulnerable to make that choice of giving up and finally accepting help, then I can do it as well,” Horwitz said.

It’s the stories, the interactions, the connections that keep Ritchie going. Stepping into this very different ring, and winning the fight, one-on-one.

“None of it was in vain, everything that I went through, I had to go through to get here. To be the man that I am today,” Ritchie said.

Ritchie received an Angel award of Greater Cincinnati Overdose Awareness Day this year. It is given to those who go above and beyond in their personal or professional life to help the recovery community.

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