Matt Bell came to The University of Toledo in 2006 on a full scholarship to play baseball and study international business.
A shoulder injury, a surgery, an opioid prescription and a few short years later, he was homeless and addicted to heroin.
“I went down a road I never thought I would,” Bell said. “It was almost a decade of 28 different treatment centers that I went to all over the country. I was arrested 13 times in four different states and overdosed multiple times.”
Bell, who dropped out in the middle of his sophomore year, didn’t think he’d ever complete a degree. He didn’t even think he’d live to see the opportunity.
Now 38, Bell has been sober for nearly a decade.
CELEBRATING SUCCESS: UToledo recognizes the Class of 2025 with a series of stories featuring students receiving their degrees at spring commencement.
He is the founder and CEO of Team Recovery, a Toledo-based addiction treatment center that offers detox services, inpatient and outpatient treatment and recovery housing. And he’s nearing completion of a master’s degree in social work from UToledo, a year after earning his bachelor’s degree in social work as a Rocket.
“It hits me here,” Bell said, putting his fist over his heart. “It started there at The University of Toledo. I thought it ended there. Now it really does end there, in a fairytale type of story. I thought dropping out was going to be a regret I had for the rest of my life. The University was very supportive from day one of me trying to come back and laid out the plan and told me exactly what I needed to do.”
Bell got the idea for Team Recovery in 2015, while fighting sleeplessness in what would be his final detox experience.
The concept was simple — he’d use his own experience to help others overcome addiction. There was value, he reasoned, in what he’d learned as an addict and someone who had been in and out of multiple treatment programs.
The organization found early success in its grassroots outreach efforts, but Bell didn’t have the formal educational background expected of someone running a full-fledged treatment center.
“I have an entrepreneurial mind and I love business, but I didn’t have the credentials,” he said. “That was one thing that a lot of people used against me, used it to minimize my credibility and Team Recovery’s credibility.”
So, in 2020, he walked into the admissions office at UToledo and enrolled in the University’s full-time undergraduate social work program. Bell completed the undergraduate degree in four years and immediately enrolled in the master’s program.
William Weaver, an associate lecturer of social work who got to know Bell during his senior year and has taught him in master’s level courses, described him as a dedicated and eager learner.
“I think a lot of other people may have rested,” Weaver said. “I’m already working in the field, I’m already successful. I don’t need to expand my knowledge, my experience. But Matt saw that for him to be the most effective and successful clinician he could be, he needed the education and the experience in social work. To me, that’s a testament of his commitment to his clients, to the recovery population.”
One of the most difficult things in education, Weaver said, is teaching someone something they think they already know. That wasn’t a problem with Bell, despite his deep involvement in the recovery community.
Matt Bell, founder and CEO of Team Recovery, a Toledo-based addiction treatment center, will graduate May 2 with a master’s degree in social work.
“Matt came in open-minded, he came in eager to learn, he came in recognizing that he needed to learn more,” Weaver said. “I don’t think initially he realized how much that was, but he grabbed onto it and really dedicated himself to the work. He’s been a great student.”
Though Bell’s lived experience surrounding addiction and recovery was invaluable, he said he’s developed a much deeper understanding of the root causes of addiction and how to effectively treat it through his education at UToledo.
One of his biggest takeaways, he said, has been the importance of taking a slow and methodical approach to understanding the nuance of everyone’s individual situation.
“It’s helped me not jump to conclusions so quick, and that’s what social work is in a nutshell,” Bell said. “It’s not looking at things at face value and knowing we need to do our diligence and really look into something before we make an analysis or come up with an assessment of what’s going on. It hasn’t just helped me in my professional career, it’s helped me in life in general.”
Team Recovery has grown significantly since Bell conceived it in detox in 2015. Today, the organization operates a treatment facility on West Sylvania Avenue, is preparing to open a second treatment facility on Monroe Street and operates a number of single- and multi-family residences for recovery housing.
Over the last decade, Team Recovery has served more than 10,000 clients and provided family support to an additional 50,000 individuals. He and members of his team also have collectively spoken to more than 1 million students.
Bell’s life has come full circle from his first experience at UToledo, where he dropped out midway through his sophomore year after tearing his rotator cuff and becoming dependent on prescription pain pills.
As he reflects on his story — the end of his dream of becoming a professional athlete, years of drug abuse, crime and homelessness — the one thing Bell says he was missing was a role model when he got sober.
“All I knew is that I wanted to stop using drugs, stop doing what I was doing,” he said. “I just knew I was capable of so much more. But I had no examples to look at — ‘I want to be like that person.’ I want that to be different for people.”
Graduating from UToledo on Friday, May 2, will provide Bell yet another example he can hold up to show what’s within reach for those who take the right steps.
“It’s phenomenal for me, for this organization, for my family, for my children,” he said, “but also for other people that are like me who have struggled or are still struggling to know that recovery is possible, and you can achieve anything that you want to achieve.”
