Let me introduce myself to you. My name is Peter Ninemire. I own and serve as the Director of The Caring Center of Wichita which I founded in 2012. We specialize in serving patients who have substance use disorders, suffer from the disease of addiction, and experience mental health issues. Much of the work that I do relates to the mental health disorders my patients suffer due to their dependence on drugs or alcohol. Some also use drugs and alcohol to cope with the mental health problems they were struggling with as part of their lives.
I take great pride in my staff and the work we do at The Caring Center for the patients we serve.
My Professional Credentials
I am a Licensed Specialist Clinical Social Worker (LSCSW). This is the highest level of clinical social work licensure in Kansas. This credential allows me to provide counseling services to our patients at what I have been told is the only stand-alone private behavioral health practice that is also a state licensed substance abuse treatment facility in Wichita.
I earned my Licensed Clinical Addiction Counselor (LCAC) that is governed by the Kansas Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board in 2011 which is the highest level of licensure for addictions in Kansas. My specialty is in helping people understand how addiction is a disease that I call “The Neuroscience of Addiction as a Biopsychosocial Brain Disorder.
I came to specialize in this area because the science explained to me why I was doing what I was doing in my addiction and come to terms with my past life which I can now share and explain to others. Passing on this knowledge and understanding also helps my patients let go of the same guilt and shame that keeps them in the disease. It also enables them to counteract the powerful impact that drugs and alcohol had on them and regain control of their lives because knowledge equals empowerment.
I worked hard to get to where I am today.
In 1990 I was third on Kansas’ most wanted list for my career in the drug trade business. How I got there is not something I am proud of. I look around at my siblings and realize my life could have been different with different life choices that all began in my adolescent years. That being said, I now try to use what I learned from that life as an asset to better communicate with the patients I see on a daily basis.
I started with Marijuana
I started smoking marijuana when I was young as an escape. Just for fun. And nothing else was as much fun, which was how it took over my life as an adolescent growing up on a farm in western Kansas. Our front door looked out on Coffin Rock which was the name of our ranch. The only business in my nearest hometown was the Catholic Church and cemetery. My grandmother wrote the local news column in the regional paper. I longed for the city life and the excitement it brought with it which fueled my adventuresome and rebellious spirit which was also fueled by protests of the Viet Nam War.
I also believe I started smoking marijuana to deal with the conflicted relationship that I had with my father. At the time I did not know that I was developing an emotional dependence on it to deal with my anger and other difficult emotions throughout my life.
While my siblings were going off to college, farming our land, getting married, and raising families — I began to sell marijuana to supply my habit. Later I focused on growing marijuana to make money – eventually I became entrenched in the drug trade lifestyle of using and selling marijuana and other drugs.
It all happened before I knew it.
This ultimately led to three drug-related convictions for cultivating and distributing marijuana. These convictions culminated in a 27-year “federal mandatory minimum sentence” in 1991. The war on drugs hit me hard with its mandatory minimums.
That view out my front door looking at Coffin Rock seemed like light years away. My view of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado was depressing. That’s because I was looking at them through the windows and fences of the prison.
I knew that I had to somehow turn this seemingly horrific situation into a positive. First, I took accountability for how hard I worked to get to prison. And I accepted that I would likely be there for most, if not all, of the rest of my life. I decided to live my life not focusing on what I could not do in prison but what I could do from there.
Prison opened other doors to my life by separating me from the drugs, associates, and lifestyle that had me captured in on the outside.
I took advantage of a chance to speak to a group of troubled teens. This led to the foundation of a prison youth counseling program that changed my life and is the foundation of the work that I do today.
In this transformative moment I discovered that you only have what you give away to others. I had gained something that no one could take away which is that unbelievable feeling of knowing that you helped someone else. I knew this in my heart and realized it, this feeling of service to others, would be with me forever.
Although I was living in a federal prison, I felt freedom and a sense of meaning and purpose for the first time in a long time – and maybe in my life. I began to take college courses and thinking about life outside of prison – in 20 years. That was depressing but it did not stop me because I knew I had to be and do positive things to survive the prison experience.
From there I started helping others.
Working as a team, we established a prison youth counseling program. We named it Jericho Road as a symbol of hope through difficulty.
My involvement in our troubled-youth counseling program gave me the confidence to help more people. I helped develop a training curriculum for my fellow inmates to learn how to better communicate with at-risk youth. We also trained inmates on how to listen and show respect towards our youthful visitors as they share their stories.
It had been decades since I felt this good about myself.
Working as a team of inmates with much help from key staff members, we established a prison youth counseling program. We named it Jericho Road that correlated with a Biblical story where a person came to a fork in the road that led Jericho or another road to somewhere else. Jericho Road proved to be the harder, but right road to take.
My involvement in our troubled-youth counseling program gave me confidence and a desire and passion to help more people. I helped develop a training curriculum for my fellow inmates to learn how to better communicate with at-risk youth.
We also trained inmates on how to listen and show respect towards our youthful visitors as they shared their stories. We also taught inmates how to help these youth make better choices and dissuade them from the paths that we took in our lives.
It truly was a story of human redemption that also changed the culture of the prison environment. Inmates in the program began looking at themselves differently — showing more confidence and hope.
I ended up serving 10 years of that 25-year sentence in federal prison.
On January 20, 2001, 15 minutes before he left office, I received word that then President Bill Clinton commuted the remaining 15-years I had left to serve on that sentence. That day will remain forever as “The Greatest Day of My Life”. The birth of my only child a few years later would not have happened if not for that day.
That day is only saddened by the recent loss of a lifelong friend. My friend kept encouraging me to apply for commutation which I had never heard of before he mentioned it to me. My early release would not have been possible without his help — and a lot of help along the way from my family and friends who never gave up and supported me over the years I was in prison.
Turning my life around was a process that took a commitment to myself.
After my “miraculous” release, I moved to Salina, Kansas to be with family. It took a year to decide what I wanted to be when I “grew up.” I was unable to secure a grant to create a youth counseling program, largely due to my four felonies and no college degree
Quite frankly, my life of drugs and the related lifestyle created lot of fear and aversion to going to college after my release from prison. I also felt I did not have time to get a college degree because I felt I had no time to waste — after wasting so much of it going the wrong direction in life.
It was another chance encounter in the first year of my release that has had a lifelong impact on me.
A school counselor had invited me to present to a group of high school teens at Rock Springs 4-H Ranch on “How to Communicate with Your At-Risk Peers”. Afterwards she asked me, “Do you know what you could do with a college education?” My reply was “I don’t have the time.” Her reply was, “You not only have the time, but the right kind of time!” Boy was she right! And I remain forever grateful.
Some months before my “miraculous release” from prison, I responded to a request from “The November Coalition” for their readers in prison to submit essays on “Why Society Should Want me in Their Community?” This was largely based on their advocacy against long mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders. Research shows that these lengthy mandatory minimums extended far past their point of diminishing returns.
The essay I wrote was published without their knowledge of my release at the time. I believe that you will find that my essay illustrates how I am actually living the dream of what I envisioned I could do as a free man if given the opportunity.
This and my commutation were rare instances when I allowed myself to envision dreams that I was afraid to dream — because that was counter-productive to do with the long prison sentence I was serving. I am otherwise a huge believer of envisioning goals and dreams because that has actually worked for me throughout my life.
College
Beginning in 2002, while I was earning my drug and alcohol licensure, I worked part time in the field to become a Licensed Addiction Counselor (LAC) in 2004.
I fell in love with college, and in particular, Social Work. A Social worker is what I envisioned myself to be.
In 2006 I earned my master’s degree in social work from Wichita State University. Over the next 7 years I accumulated over 7,000 hours of master level practice earning my licensure as a Licensed Specialist Clinical Social Worker (LSCSW).
Education and experience, along with hard work and commitment, allowed me to have those initials after my name.
This is what education, commitment, and hard work allowed me to do.
My past work experiences include serving as
- the adolescent treatment supervisor at Adolescent/Adult/Family Recovery Inc (Wichita),
- a substance abuse counselor and therapist with both the Wichita and the Sedgwick County Day Reporting Centers, and
- the addiction treatment supervisor and mental health therapist for COMCARE with the Sedgwick County Drug Court.
I also had a great support system of friends, family, and colleagues.
Steven Steinhaus, CEO of Counseling Inc in Ellsworth, Kansas gave me the opportunity to create a Wichita branch of Counseling Inc in 2012. I began my solo behavioral health practice then. We partnered with our substance abuse services for a few years until I gained State licensure on my own in April 2017.
I remain forever grateful to Steve and the many others who believed in me and gave me opportunities over my years in these fields.
My personal experience as someone who suffered from my addiction – and lived in denial – combined with my work experience with people from all walks of life — gives me the opportunity, strength, and insight to keep learning, growing, and changing.
I specialize in the treatment of addictions and mental health.
My philosophy is “knowledge is power.”
I believe that our patients and their family members can better prepare for recovery with a greater understanding of the disease. Knowing what’s going on in your brain, and the subsequent behaviors that follow, can help you understand why you kept using and could not control your behavior no matter how many times you told yourself you were going to. This can be psychologically devastating until you gain this understanding of how the disease works. Professional treatment can help you identify and counteract addiction’s powerful disruptive effect on your brain and your behaviors.
At The Caring Center of Wichita, we specialize in treating patients who have both substance abuse and mental health concerns. Individual and group co-occurring sessions often involve referrals and/or ongoing collaborations with medical management.
We treat the majority of all behavioral health disorders. Primarily we treat depression, anxiety, bipolar, PTSD and ADHD/ADD that are associated with substance use disorders.
Our practice has expanded to include private group sessions for parents, managers, and other caring adults in addition to group sessions for our patients.
With awareness, you can adapt your behavior to counter the impulse to be angry. Anger is a secondary emotion to feelings of fear, frustration, and hurt. In treatment you will learn how not to be a “Stimulus Response Machine” when triggered by people or events in your life. These responses lead to more self-defeating behaviors that worsen our problems and can bring on even more anxiety and stress.
Addiction is a chronic brain disease.
Repeated abuse of drugs physically changes your brain that can persist long after you quit using the drug. Many people have relapsed multiple times – and just as many have not. Recovery requires commitment. You will find Recovery to be a process and not an event. Once you make the commitment – that’s an event. You will also find that it is the best and lasting decision you could ever make in your life.
My story remains surreal to me even today.
I mean, here I am today living the dream of helping others that I was so afraid to dream in prison.
I have to touch myself to believe it is real. I’m here only because I gained recovery from drugs that allowed everything that is wonderful to happen in my life. I am living the dream. You can also live your dream of whoever and whatever you want to be in life — if you can make and honor a commitment to recovery.
Being dependent on drugs to survive is a prison in and of itself. Life only gets better without them as I and so many others can attest to.
Ex-prisoner Peter Ninemire tells his story
Wichita Eagle story December 19, 2015
Connecting to my Community
I want to acknowledge a few of the many people who made my life after addiction possible. Their belief in me and willingness to connect meant all the difference in the world.
Julie Stewart, former president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, who presented and supported my commutation of sentence. Julie’s belief in me throughout my lifetime is enduring and endearing to me in all ways.
Marilyn Trubey, the former Federal Public Defender who stood beside me during my 10-years of incarceration. Marilyn believed that the length of my sentence was not right. She vowed to get me “…out of prison and exhaust every remedy possible along the way.” She obviously made good on every aspect of that promise, which I will be forever grateful.
My brother, Father Kerry Ninemire, provided me the emotional support throughout my lifetime and has been by my side during and after my release from prison.
My best friend, Neal Zouzas, and his wife Pam provided basic needs of shelter, food, and safety while transitioning from a decade of lockup. They visited me often in prison and stood by me throughout our friendship that began in 1978.
I also want to thank all my siblings and cousins for their love and support. They supported me during my time in prison by reminding me that I am loved. Their love gave me the strength for me to decide how to build my life on the outside.
I also must thank Former President Bill Clinton for commuting my sentence. Without that selfless act that took a lot of courage on his part, I would not be here today.
Again, I want to thank Steven Steinhaus, CEO of Counseling Inc in Ellsworth, Kansas who gave me the opportunity to create the Wichita branch of Counseling Inc.
Thank you all. Your love and support which proves that “the opposite of addiction is connection.”
Now you know my story. What’s your story?
If you need help to free yourself from your addiction to drugs and alcohol or from your mental health issues, maybe we can help. Give us a call to find out at 316-295-4800.
Take care. Stay focused.
~Peter
P.S. I also enjoy public speaking to organizations and training groups of people. Topics vary yet always center on helping people to better understand that substance use disorder is a brain disease. Once that’s established, I customize the talk to meet audience needs.
Call me and let’s see if I would be right for your group.
Group Presentation examples of Peter Ninemire
Click on the name to view entire slide presentation.
