Four years clean from methamphetamine and with five associate degrees in hand from a community college in California’s Central Coast, Cheech Raygoza began his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley in 2022 feeling like he was in prison — again.

Away from his fiancé, kids and grandchildren, and plucked from his community in Santa Maria, he was alone — like all those years he served behind bars.

“Something that came natural to me when I moved to Berkeley was isolating,” Raygoza, 55, said. “I was in a cell for 13 years, so I know how to do time by myself.” For the first year at one of the nation’s top public universities, “I didn’t go out anywhere, I didn’t go to the libraries, I didn’t utilize the resources at Berkeley.”

But over time that began to change as he met more friends — themselves students in drug recovery — through a small program at UC Berkeley that’s also at half of the University of California’s 10 campuses. These collegiate recovery programs hold regular weekly meetings for students in some stage of battling drug and alcohol addiction or some other form of self-harm.