Sunday, December 8, 2024
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman announced the county’s partnership with Rebound on the Road, a substance abuse rehabilitation program started by former professional basketball player Jayson Williams.
“I think probably everybody has had an experience where a loved one or a friend had a substance abuse issue,” Blakeman said. “Self esteem is always a part of it, isolation is a part of it, not having enough to do is a part of it.”
Williams’ eight-week program will support individuals recovering from substance abuse and those recently released from prison by guiding them through a rehabilitation plan that includes training to drive tractor-trailers. Upon completion, participants will earn their commercial driver’s licenses and secure jobs.
“You come in, you get drug tested, you meet with over 40 different carriers, because there's 800,000 jobs needed right now in the tractor-trailer industry,” Williams explained. “So you get a job right when you get in, all you have to do is finish the program successfully, and you're off.”
Williams said starting jobs pay around $65,000 a year, and participants are required to drive with a supervisor in the truck for close to three months before they are certified.
Blakeman allotted $200,000 of the county’s opioid settlement funds to contribute to bringing this program to the county because it “checks a lot of the boxes to make sure that people are healthy."
"We have people that are coming out of jails and prisons throughout the United States,” he said, “and if they don't have a productive job, they're going to go back to a life of crime. So recidivism is very high in America, and this will also cut down on that, because it will give people a second chance to lead a productive life.”
Williams started Rebound Institute in Florida 10 years ago, where he said “teammates” go through “unorthodox” treatments, including skydiving and horse racing. The program also places an emphasis on healing through faith.
He explained how he spent a lot of his youth driving trucks with his father, a truck driver and brick mason who owned a gas station in Harlem for 41 years. He said this program is a passion of his, and it stems from his youth.
“We drove tractor trailers in the wintertime, and we laid bricks...out of Union, New Jersey in the summertime, and the gas station was all year round,” he said.
Williams spent 11 seasons in the NBA, playing briefly on Philadelphia 76ers before playing on the New Jersey Nets. He suffered a career-ending leg injury in 1999 and retiring at 32.
He fell into substance abuse, which culminated in an aggravated assault charge in 2010 for the death of his limousine driver, Gus Christofi, and a sentence of five years in prison. He got a DWI charge after crashing his Mercedes, which added an additional year to his sentence.
He said he believes in always giving people “another chance” and a way to change their lives.
“You give a man a job, you give him hope, and he got self esteem and self respect, and he (will) go out in this world and change it,” Williams said.
