Addiction to Advocacy: One Man’s Recovery Journey with LSF Health Systems
Jermaine J. Williams is a mayoral candidate in Pensacola, a successful filmmaker and a community leader who emphasizes the importance of mental health. All in all, Jermaine is what anyone would consider an upstanding member of society.
But if you listen to Jermaine tell his story, you will see the journey to success was not a straight line. In fact, it nearly became a line with an end point.
There was a time when Jermaine was tired in a way that sleep could not fix. Thirteen years of addiction to cocaine and alcohol had shaped a man into someone he no longer recognized. Jermaine tried to get clean, but as many who experience substance misuse will tell you, falling back into the same cycle is easy. He knew exactly where that cycle was leading.
That kind of honesty paints a picture of the place where Jermaine found himself. He was a man doing the math on his own life and coming up short.
Jermaine remembers the sequence of events that eventually led to change, and it all started after the Florida State vs. Florida rivalry football game in 2015. Jermaine was excited because his Seminoles had beaten the Gators for another year, and that gave him cause to celebrate.
What started out as a victory beer turned into a bender complete with a 12-pack of beer, a bottle of vodka and about $250 worth of cocaine. The next day, feeling the consequences of his spiral, Jermaine went to work. He worked for a party planning company and was unloading chairs for an event at a local church when he was approached by a man who invited him to attend service the next day.
Jermaine made a promise to himself. He would go to that church, but if God did not show up for him, he was done.
“I decided I would give life one more chance, and I said if God did not show up at this church, I would commit suicide,” Jermaine said.
As he so often does when we ask for help, God showed up.
“I was sitting at the church waiting for God to show up,” Jermaine explained. “But then I heard the voice of God telling me, if you want to be done with this forever, you need to praise me. And normally I would not because I was worried about looking cool, but that day I did not care and I stood up. I have a picture from that moment, and in the photo you can see the man that brought me there, Terry Green.”
What came next was not a clean break, a perfect recovery or a succinct miracle. For about six months, Jermaine stayed sober on his own, struggling every step of the way. A family friend told him about a program that assisted with mental illness and substance misuse.
That is when Jermaine found his way into Florida Self-Directed Care, a program supported through LSF Health Systems. This period in his life was marked by a journey that would require Jermaine to lean into his faith and his own willingness to do the work.
Over the next three years, Jermaine worked on himself with the support of a team that cared about him and gave him a voice on his road to recovery. His therapist, Dr. Dr. JC Belizaire, and life coach, Patricia Pitts, helped Jermaine create a holistic toolbox and address his mental health issues that perpetuated his negative relationship with substances.
Somewhere in that process, Jermaine started to see a different version of himself, and he saw the line of his life path continuing forward.
He went through peer recovery training facilitated by LSF Health Systems and became a certified peer specialist because he believed in the work that helped him change his life. He knew that hearing from someone who has been there, who knows the weight of it, truly helps.
Jermaine leaned into that idea of using his lived experience to give back to his community. He started taking suicide crisis calls. Hundreds of them. More than a thousand, by his count. Conversations with people standing in the same place he once stood.
“I have only lost three people,” he said. “And that is three too many.”
At the same time, Jermaine was leaning into the creative passions he had always possessed. He made a documentary about his recovery, told through the eyes of his family. The team at Florida Self-Directed Care and LSF Health Systems supported Jermaine through every part of the process. That documentary won international awards and led to meetings with major networks like BET and Starz. More importantly, it highlighted what addiction and recovery looked like in a raw way.
Post-recovery, Jermaine was a man on a mission. He started hosting teen suicide summits, mental health town halls and conversations that did not always make people comfortable, but certainly helped save lives.
This version of Jermaine is not scared to share what rock bottom looked like or how the line of his life path changed and curved to get him to where he is now.
Jermaine will tell you his story started to change because someone believed in a different way of doing things. Because a program said yes when it could have said no. Because people showed up and stayed. His gratitude for LSF Health Systems and CEO Dr. Christine Cauffield is another part of his journey that he is more than happy to discuss.
“I remember working at Here Tomorrow and Dr. Cauffield was visiting, and they were guarding her like she was the president,” Jermaine said.
“But I did not care because she and her program had done so much for me, so I wanted to see her and thank her.”
At first, he could not get to her. Too many layers. Too many people saying no. But Jermaine was insistent on sharing his thanks with Dr. Cauffield. He was able to introduce himself and explain who he was and how her work had changed his life. That introduction turned into a conversation. Then an email. Then something more lasting.
“She did not change my life, she saved my life indirectly just by doing the right things and being responsible,” Jermaine said. “LSF Health Systems is the best managing entity in the state.”
At LSF, that is the mission. Walking alongside people when the outcome is still uncertain. Building systems that treat a crisis and stay to help someone find their footing again. Seeing the person behind the statistics and refusing to give up on them.
Across Florida, that work reaches people in their hardest moments through behavioral health services, recovery programs and community partnerships that make long-term healing possible.
Jermaine is one of those people. A man who once sat in a church begging for a sign that his life was not over now spends his days making sure other people do not reach that same conclusion.
An award-winning filmmaker. The 2026 National Peer Specialist of the Year. A local politician looking to change the stigma around mental health.
Proof that the line didn’t end where he thought it would. It just changed direction.
