Page 103 - South Mississippi Living - December, 2025

THE PROBLEM
More than 100,000 Americans die from drug overdoses each year. Behind every number is a name — a parent, a child, or a friend. Unfortunately, addiction doesn’t just harm the individual, but it destroys families, unravels communities, and traps generations in cycles of brokenness.
In Mississippi, few families are untouched by this crisis. Whether it’s a child, a sibling, a parent, or a friend, we all know someone whose life has been wrecked by addiction. The numbers are staggering: nearly 400 Mississippians lost their lives to overdose in 2023, and thousands more are still fifighting to break free from addiction.
But statistics can never capture the way addiction drains hope from a home—leaving children without parents, parents without children, and loved ones with broken hearts.
If you’ve walked through addiction in your own family,
you know the sleepless nights, the fifinancial strain, and the quiet shame that isolates. Addiction thrives in secrecy and silence. But recovery is possible. Even in the most hopeless circumstances, new life can begin.
A Proven Path to Recovery
For 60 years, Home of Grace has been a place where men and women trapped in addiction have found freedom through long-term, Christ-centered recovery. Since 1965, more than 35,000 have walked through the doors believing they were
beyond help, and left transformed—restored to their families and fifilled with hope for the future.
What makes Home of Grace difffferent is its commitment to healing the heart, not just the habit. Its approach to recovery goes beyond stopping behaviors to addressing the underlying pain, shame, and brokenness that drive addiction.
Research shows that programs lasting 90 days or more lead to signifificantly better outcomes—and Home of Grace combines that long-term structure with Christ-centered care that transforms lives from the inside out. Decades of changed lives stand as proof—when the heart is healed, recovery lasts.
Meeting Mississippi’s Greatest Needs
Today, Home of Grace operates a 160-acre men’s campus in Vancleave and a women’s campus in Gautier. Together, these programs serve Mississippi’s most vulnerable people— individuals who have cycled through short-term rehabs, jails, or hospitals without lasting success.
Long-term, affffordable care is possible because of the individuals, churches and businesses who faithfully support the organization.
Addiction is a terrible journey—one no family chooses. But there is hope. For 60 years, Home of Grace has been helping Mississippi families fifind healing and wholeness through recovery that lasts.
SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living | www.smliving.net
December 2025 | 103
story by Carol Smith
Hope & Healing on the Gulf Coast