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MINNESOTA (WCCO) -- This fall, Jason Lennox is walking 15 to 25 miles every day for three weeks: a 307-mile journey through Appalachia from Williamson, West Virginia, to Nashville, Tennessee.
His mission is to raise $307,000 to fund mental health and addiction programs.
"Three-hundred-and-seven-thousand people. That's how many people we lost in our country alone last year to drugs, alcohol and suicide," Lennox said.
Lennox will walk in memory of lives lost and lives still fighting. It's a mission rooted in his own pain and survival.
"I think I was 12 years old when I started getting into alcohol, smoking cigarettes, then marijuana came, prescription pills after and some of the harder drugs," Lennox said.
By his early 20s, he was running from the law, numbing the pain of mental illness and addiction until an overdose at a group home landed him in jail.
"I was convulsing, I was going through withdrawals, all the mental anguish, the depression, the anxiety. Those things all hit me, and it was the worst day of my life," explained Lennox.
He went into treatment. A week into recovery, his grandmother, who once tried to intervene, died.
"I'm either running out of here and going back to the old life, which is going to not end well, or I'm going to do everything I can in the honor to try and to make up for these things that I've done and live this kind of life for my grandma," Lennox said.
That was 15 years ago. Today, Lennox is a business owner, speaker and founder of The Recovery Road campaign.
It's a mission he invites others to join him in.
"It's going to require a bunch of people. We can get 307,000 miles and then a dollar for each mile to raise $307,000 to build programs within high-need, under-resourced areas," Lennox said.
Lennox has a message for anyone who is struggling with addiction or mental health problems and is not receiving treatment.
"I always say just hang on for one more day. The difference between the end of a really bad journey and the beginning of a really good journey is 24 hours," Lennox said.
Lennox's walk for The Recovery Road begins on Sept. 29.
You can donate or pre-register to walk and log your miles online.
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