What Recovery Really Takes: A Conversation with Rudolph Woody for National Recovery Month

September is National Recovery Month, and this year’s theme says it well: Recovery is REAL: Restoring Every Aspect of Life.

At McClendon Center, that’s not a slogan. It’s the work Rudolph Woody has shown up for every day for 20 years — meeting neighbors living with serious mental illness where they are, walking alongside them through some of the hardest chapters of their lives, and refusing to look away when the challenges get complicated. Few people here embody Recovery is REAL more than Woody, and few have lived it longer.

This September, Woody will mark two decades at McClendon Center as our Substance Use Disorders Program Coordinator, having built the Day Program’s substance use recovery component from the ground up and sustained it through every challenge that followed. He is, by any measure, an institution within an institution.

A born-and-raised Washingtonian, Woody’s path to this work was shaped by his own journey through recovery. He didn’t set out to become a counselor — the field found him. And once it did, he never looked back. With nearly four decades in the field, he has developed a reputation for directness, deep conviction, and an ability to reach people that colleagues describe as rare.

We sat down with Woody to hear how he got here, what keeps him going, and what he wants Washington, DC to understand about the people he serves every day.

You’re approaching two decades at McClendon Center this September. How did you get here?

It started with a connection. I had a colleague who was doing day program work. We’d worked together before and I was doing pre-residential and aftercare in substance abuse. At the time, the Day Program was starting to recognize that a lot of clients were self-medicating to manage their symptoms, and leadership decided they needed someone who could build out a real substance use recovery component. She knew the then-executive director, Dennis Hobb, and she put my name in. He called me in, told me what he was trying to do, and two weeks later I was hired.

What made it special was that there was no program yet. No format, no structure — nothing. Dennis said: build it. And that’s what I did. I designed it from the ground up, based on everything I’d learned in the field. For someone who’d been doing this work as long as I had, that was a gift. We grew that program significantly. At its peak, we had two tracks running simultaneously. One for people in early recovery, their first time in a program. The other for people with some time behind them, using us more like long-term aftercare. Between the two, we had somewhere around 30 to 40 people in the recovery program alone. That was something to see.

You’ve said this work found you — not the other way around. What do you mean by that?

I was working in accounting when things caught up with me. I was using, and I got to a point where I needed help. My sister knew people, and through her I got connected to an inpatient substance abuse program here in DC. I went in. I wasn’t even sure I was done at the time — I can say that honestly now. But once I was in there, my head started to clear. Things started coming back.

And I moved through that program fast. By the midpoint, I was doing staff training. People kept telling me: you’ve got it. You’ve got the thing. When I got out, they told me: you can’t go back to your old job, your old relationship, your old everything. Start fresh. So I got a job in counseling. Just like that.

DC was changing at the time, and you had to certify. So I went to UDC, took the courses, sat for the test, got certified and licensed. And here I am, 38 years later. The work chose me. I didn’t go looking for it.

What keeps you going?

I tell people: I’m the Michael Jordan of this. I would do this for free. I love it. And you have to, because this work is hard. It is stressful. It will break you down and burn you out if you’re not genuinely about it. You can’t fake your way through 20 years of this.

But the other thing is, I’m in recovery myself. This isn’t just a job for me. It’s a way of life. When I’m here, I’m not just a counselor. I’m someone who has been where these folks have been. That matters. It changes the dynamic. And it keeps me honest. Every time one person gets it — makes a turn, finds some stability, shows up differently than they did six months ago — I’m good.

I’m not trying to change the whole world. Just trying to make some changes right here.

How have the people you’re working with changed over the years? What are you seeing now that’s different?

The drugs have changed dramatically. Back when I started, it was primarily crack cocaine and alcohol. That was the landscape. Now it’s fentanyl, and it has completely changed the game. Fentanyl is unforgiving. People are dying from small, accidental exposures. They’re using in combinations that didn’t exist before. The level of danger is different.

And the dual diagnosis piece has become more pronounced. Serious mental illness and substance use — they are deeply intertwined for a lot of the people we see. You can’t treat one without understanding the other. Self-medication is real. People are trying to manage symptoms that haven’t been addressed, or that the system hasn’t helped them address well enough. You have to meet that honestly.

What hasn’t changed is the need for real relationship. These folks have often been written off, shuffled around, treated like a case number. That’s not how recovery works. Recovery takes trust. It takes consistency. It takes someone showing up the same way, every time, and meaning it. That’s what I try to bring. That’s what the Day Program tries to be.

Can you give us a sense of what a day at the Day Program actually looks like?

So much of what we do doesn’t get captured. It’s not in the documentation. It’s the one-on-one. The daily interaction. The small things that add up over time. We have something on Friday mornings called Morning Showcase — it’s almost like a little town hall, a gathering. People perform. They sing. They dance. They share.

And I’m telling you: some of the people up there on a Friday, when they first walked through our door six months ago, they wouldn’t talk to a single person. Not peers, not staff, nobody. And now they’re singing. Now they’re dancing. You can’t put that in a note. But that is the work. That transformation – that is what McClendon Center is doing every single day, quietly, in this building, for people that this city doesn’t always think about.

You’ve described yourself as old school. How do you think about your approach compared to newer ways of doing this work?

I’ve seen a lot of changes. A lot of attempts to reinvent the wheel, to modernize things that were already working. And I’m honest about that — I push back. Not because I’m closed-minded, but because I’ve lived this. Thirty-eight years. I know what works because I’ve seen it work, and I’ve seen what happens when you drift from it.

My colleagues think I set the bar high. I’ve heard that. And I hear it. I try to stay open to that feedback and adjust. But I won’t apologize for holding this work to a high standard. This is not business. This is life and death. I’ve treated it that way for 38 years and I’ll keep treating it that way.

Where I’ve grown — and I’ll own this — is in my willingness to embrace tools I was skeptical of. COVID forced that. We took the Day Program virtual during the pandemic. I’m sitting at home in a t-shirt running groups on a screen, and you know what? It worked. People got introduced to the program that way who never would have walked through the door otherwise. I’m a believer now. If we had the staffing, I’d want to do more of it — virtual as an add-on, not a replacement, but an extension of what we do here.

What do you want people in this city to understand about this work?

That it’s happening. Quietly, consistently, for 45 years. That there are people in this building who have devoted their lives to neighbors that the city has too often turned away from. And that it works — not perfectly, not without struggle, but it works. The people we serve are not problems to be managed. They are members of this community who are fighting hard and who deserve the same investment and attention as anyone else.

When you see someone who came in silent and isolated stand up on a Friday morning and sing in front of a room full of people — that’s a miracle. And those miracles happen here every week. People just need to know about it.