Road to recovery: Nashville man’s journey to fight addiction, get off streets

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - When trauma leads to addiction, homelessness can follow.

Christopher Jones was one of the “invisible ones” sleeping under bridges around Nashville, but he now considers himself the face of recovery.

“There isn’t a street, a major thoroughfare or a corner in Nashville that I can’t have a bad memory about wandering,” Jones said.

Jones is a graduate of the University of Tennessee Knoxville with a double major in Journalism and Cultural Studies.

“I’ll never forget I had been wearing the same pair of underwear for two weeks,” he said.

Jones remembered that aspect of his life as he walked in the area he struggled to survive. For two years during COVID, he lived in his car and under bridges.

The streets of Nashville were his home. He says it was a tent community of six, mainly people he felt he could trust.

Two traumatic events thrust Jones and his little girl, Zoe, for a time, into this life.

“I guess I finalized my divorce on a Friday or Saturday and buried my dad on a Saturday or a Sunday,” Jones said.

He turned to drugs, cocaine and meth, to hide the pain, while they slept in his car.

“Watching her have to go to the gas station to wash up and go to school. It’s not gonna happen again.” Jones said.

After a little while, family took Zoe in, but Christopher remained on the streets, working odd jobs to get by and battling his demons until he met a woman from his past.

“I remember her saying, ‘Aren’t you Pastor Curtis Jones‘ son?’
It was the first time in my two years out here that someone recognized me." Jones said.

That woman fed, clothed and took Christopher to rehab.
He stayed for three and a half months at Place of Hope.

“That’s when I reconnected with the God, of my understanding, and started my road to recovery.” He remembered.

He’s been on that road to recovery since October of 2021, and he no longer works for daily wages. Now doing something he’s always dreamed of - working with airplanes as a Commercial Aircraft Quality Engineer.

“Every part. Every material. Every hose. Every bolt we trace who makes it. They have their own quality standards. We inspect that before it even comes into our facility,” Jones told WSMV4 as he walked us through his job.

His relationship with his daughter is also thriving.

“My daughter called me from the University of Tennessee Chattanooga on a full ride scholarship two days ago saying she lost her key.” Jones said. “I am able to pay $140 out of my pocket in order to cover the costs. Things like this are a blessing to me.”

Another unseen blessing for Jones? Helping others.

“Every interstate overpass has a trail near it. There’s a community down there, and I’ll never be able to not notice. I was the invisible person, so I have been on both sides,” Jones said. “I have lived on West End Ave., and I have slept on cardboard on West End Ave. in this lifetime. That unique experience for me, while I wasn’t grateful for it then, I am certainly grateful for the person it has made me now.”

These days, outside of work, Jones has a mission to help people better understand addiction and the struggle behind it. He speaks to groups and schools teaching them about the disease of addiction and how it’s not a choice for those who suffer from it.

Copyright 2024 WSMV. All rights reserved.