The Chris Atwood Foundation helps people struggling with substance abuse

For those burdened by substance abuse addiction, the Chris Atwood Foundation offers a helping hand.

The organization helps people get into detox and offers peer recovery coaching and support, harm reduction services, housing assistance, support for the families of addicts, Narcan kits, and help with health insurance, food, employment, and legal documents.

The Chris Atwood Foundation publicized its services at a health fair on June 1 at the Vistas apartments in Annandale.

The health fair was hosted by FACETS, the nonprofit that runs Fairfax County’s Opportunity Neighborhood – Annandale initiative. The event featured county and nonprofit resources, Narcan training for reversing an overdose, and burritos from Anita’s. Two raffle winners took home insulated bags full of groceries.

“We save lives,” says Daniel Adams, senior peer and outreach liaison at the Chris Atwood Foundation. “We provide resources to people in the grips of substance abuse disorder and mental health challenges.” Peer coaches are all former addicts in long-term recovery.  

“Everything we do is confidential and free,” he says.

The organization is named for Chris Atwood, who died from an accidental overdose at age 21 in 2013. When his sister, Ginny, discovered him experiencing an overdose, she didn’t know what to do, Adams says. Narcan wasn’t readily available back then. She quit her job in a law office four days later and established the foundation.

“We meet people where they are,” Adams says. Every Friday morning, the Chris Atwood van parks by the Fairfax Methadone Treatment Center in Annandale. On Wednesday mornings, the van heads to another methadone clinic in Manassas.

Adams and his colleagues hand out sterile syringes and dispose of used ones and provide information on peer recovery support, preventing HIV and hepatitis C, and treatment resources.

They also warn people about the risks of Xylazine (“tranq”), an increasingly popular non-opioid tranquilizer found in street drugs.

The Chris Atwood Recovery Community Center opened in Fairfax in July 2023.

The foundation also helps secure housing for people in recovery, transitioning from justice involvement, or experiencing housing insecurity due to prior substance abuse.

Atwood covers move-in expenses and rent at group homes run by Oxford House. Each home has six to 10 men plus a house manager. There are 12 of these group homes in the Annandale/Mason District area, including one for women on Wakefield Chapel Road.

Adams has been in recovery for 17 years following 34 years of drug and alcohol abuse and mental health challenges.

“I was a wreck,” Adams says. He grew up in Arlington in a home where the psychological and physical abuse he experienced as a child “made you feel other than yourself.” He started drinking at 12 or 13 years old and was homeless in his 20s, crashing on friends’ couches.

Adams spent time in jail and went through treatment several times. Then “something clicked,” he says. “A man dying of lung cancer asked me to promise him I was going to get my life together.”

After getting clean, he got certified as a peer support professional for substance abuse recovery and as a trainer of trainers.

Adams feels so strongly about helping addicts turn their lives around that he canceled a beach trip so he could be at the health fair at the Vistas.