Peace and joy have often come to Camille Lopez through art.

“This is just a wonderful way for me to do what I love,” Lopez said as she started to draw the outline of a flower on the canvas in front of her. “Painting for me, it relaxes me, it gets me to come out of my head and go to a very creative place.”

For the past 31 years and seven months, a well-placed brush stroke here and the right dash of color over there have been just some of the ways she says she’s managed to keep the demons of her past in the past.

“I just need it,” Lopez said. “I actually have come to the conclusion that I need it now more than I ever had before.”

With COVID-19 cases falling to their lowest levels in months, activities like this have resumed for Lopez and others in recovery.

When she was a young mother still living in the Bronx, Lopez says she battled a serious addiction to just about any drug she could get her hands on.

“My son was young; he was a toddler and I was still using,” she said. “I was very, very much afraid that I was going to affect him for the rest of his life. The pain that it caused and the guilt that I felt, I never want to feel that pain and guilt again, never.”

Two nights a month, she attends a guided painting class for people in recovery from substance abuse disorders. The classes are called “Paint and Chip” because of the salty snacks participants munch on while they work.

“Being clean and being able to do this in a clean environment with just chips and coffee, it is a blessing,” Lopez said. “I am good, you know? I am so good!”

“It is very similar to a 12-step meeting,” said Krystn Logan, the class’ instructor. “People can come in here and freely talk about their problems, and we can just be there to listen.”

Logan is a certified peer advocate and artist-in-residence at the Second Chance Opportunities in Albany, where the class is offered on the first and third Mondays of every month. She has been in recovery herself for about four years and four months.

“It’s so rewarding,” Logan said of teaching the class. “Just like this line of work, helping people stay in recovery, stay away from a drink or a drug.”

When the coronavirus first started to spread last year, the Paint and Chip class and most other forms of in-person treatment were put on hold. Lopez and millions of other Americans battling addiction were suddenly isolated from their support networks and the impact was often dire.

“It got to a point where I was so depressed where I started just reaching out to my friends and saying ‘please check on me, please check on me’ because I was so worried, so distraught,” Lopez said.

“The overdose rates have increased tremendously,” Logan said. “We have been in a pandemic this whole time, the opioid pandemic.”

With COVID-19 cases falling, the class resumed in early May. Two months into his recovery, Brandin Vantassel picked up a brush for the first time.

“I feel proud. I feel accomplished,” said Vantassel, who grew up in the Catskills. “I did something with my time today instead of getting high.”

Vantassel says his troubles mostly began last year.

“It made it difficult when I lost my job and I had to stay home all day, every day because of COVID,” he said. “That’s when I started using.”

Logan says bringing back in-person programs offers hope to people struggling to hang onto their sobriety.

“I’m here around people and not alone in my apartment,” she said. “People come in here and they feel at home. I hear that phrase a lot, ‘this feels like home’ and that’s what we want to achieve here.”

The class serves as a reminder that Lopez doesn’t have to face her battle alone.

“We need people in our lives who are going to be supportive, it can’t happen without it,” Lopez said as she put the final brush strokes on her painting. “I need a buddy. I need somebody who’s going to be in my corner, so to speak. I can’t do it without that.”