HELENA — Helena area veteran Marvin Colman with Colman Community Services recently reached out to MTN News in hopes of helping others by sharing his story.
MTN had worked with Colman in 2016 when he was participating in a vocational rehab program through the Montana VA and the now-closed Helena Industries, and coaching mixed martial arts at the Helena Indian Alliance.
In the six years since we first met Colman, he has completed his bachelor's degree, and his masters in social work and opened a counseling service specializing in substance abuse treatment.
"Keep following your feet forward, eventually you will be through it and you will be doing something that you love to do," Coleman explained.
Colman has always been open and honest about the challenges he faced and how he's overcome them, saying in 2016, "I slipped into addiction for about 10 or 15 years," Marvin had also admitted he had done time in prison.
Now, almost six years to the day from MTN's first interview with Colemen, he runs Coleman Community Services, or CCS out of the Sharbono building on Last Chance Gulch.
His mission: connect others in need with the same help he once needed.
"When we are talking to clients they can feel that we know what they are talking about. And we have knowledge in our heads that not everyone has about how to get out of these things and what exactly it takes. And what life looks like without drugs and alcohol," Coleman says.
Coleman opened his counseling non-profit in October of 2022 and since then, he has grown his client base and now helps more than 100 people a week.
CCS helps people not just with substance abuse, but also with anger management and DUI prevention education.
But really, it is just the latest effort by Coleman to help his community.
"People in town love a comeback story," Colman explained, "if they see somebody trying to come up from whatever situation they are in they will move heaven and earth."
Colman has been writing his comeback story for more than six years. MTN looked back in our archives and found we had already crossed paths with Colman more than once.
Aside from our interview in 2016, MTN also interviewed Colman in 2020. At that time he was working with Good Samaritan at Our Place. He helped develop a nutrition program to keep the facility open for people in need during the pandemic.
We showed both previous pieces to Coleman and talked about what steps others should take if they need help.
He said the most important part is to take the first step and ask.
Colman Community Services offers group meetings six days a week.
- Monday: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
- Tuesday: Acceptance + Commitment Group
- Wednesday: Psychological Education + Processing Group
- Thursday: Women's Batterers Intervention and Moral Recognition Therapy
- Friday: Family Engagement
- Saturday: Anger Management and Batterers Intervention
For details on substance abuse and mental health help in the Helena area visit our You Are Not Alone page.
