Located on the picturesque Oregon coast, in the seaside town of Astoria, Astoria Pointe is a men’s-only facility, while The Rosebriar serves the female population. Both employ highly trained and experienced clinicians for whom superb patient care is the primary focus.

Treatment focuses on the whole person; as such, families are integral part of the program in identifying problematic issues, resolving them and empowering the entire family to heal and support recovery long term. Programs typically last 30-90 days, with arrangements possible for long-term care. Each program comprises individual, family and group therapies, all of which are grounded in the 12-step philosophy.

Located on the picturesque Astoria, Oregon coast, Astoria Pointe and Rosebriar will also be the future site of continuing education for not only its staff, but also the community and regional professionals; as well as cooperative networking events. Additionally, Herndon plans to update the facility and increase beds in 2012: “We see 2012 as a year of rebirth and tremendous growth,” Herndon states.

Astoria Pointe’s founder, Bill Dooner, is a pioneer in the recovery field, with 56 years of his own sobriety, whose sponsor’s sponsor was Bill W., the famed creator of Alcoholics Anonymous. Dooner founded Astoria Pointe with the mission to provide the best treatment possible at an affordable price, so no one is denied the opportunity for a clean and sober life because of financial constraints. “We are proud to manifest that vision with extremely reasonable cash-pay rates, and the ability to accept insurance,” Herndon states.

Currently, The Rosebriar has beds available for new patients.  Please contact admissions at 877.435.7790, or visit Astoria Pointe and The Rosebriar online at www.astoriapointe.com.

Thus began his 13-year career in the recovery business. After leaving the first facility, he had a few stints as a program director at an adult and adolescent treatment center, as well as developing programs as a consultant. While each position enriched his knowledge and breadth in the field, “I wanted to settle down and get a regular job,” he states. “I gave myself the goal of doing five job-search activities a day. One day, my last task was posting my resume to Monster.com, which I truthfully thought no one actually got jobs from,” he recalls.

And then CRC Health called. The largest provider of chemical dependency treatment in the United States was looking for a Marketing Director for all 22 West Coast programs, and Suzmeyan, as it turns out, was their man. In his current position, he “talks to a lot of people and goes to a lot of meetings”, listening to what each facility’s marketing needs are and coming up with creative solutions for them. Currently, he is working on a method to identify likely callers looking for treatment and market to them.

Thanks to the modern-day virtual capabilities, he travels far less than he used to, using email, Skype and the like to conduct meetings up and down the West Coast. “I make a lot of initial contacts in person, but now I’m able to follow up and maintain relationships via email and phone,” Suzmeyan states. “Basically, I find electronic means to make connections these days.”

Suzmeyan is quick to point out that his success at CRC was largely enabled by the support of Kathleen Rodriguez, John Peloquin and Ryan Franke. These people, Suzmeyan states, “shared my vision and believed we could achieve growth. They helped me get where I am, and I am so grateful.”

In addition to Suzmeyan’s commitment to the recovery field, he is equally passionate about making a positive impact in his own backyard. To that end, he is councilman in his East Hollywood neighborhood of Little Armenia. “I have to say I’m most proud of my service work,” Suzmeyan says. “I’ve been able to create opportunities for learning for low-income kids and adults. Additionally, our neighborhood had very little green space – we didn’t have one park. But now we have taken over a former maintenance space and are turning it into a community park.” For a man committed to bringing people together, building a community park is a poetic conduit to that goal.

From the proverbial ashes to budding trees and flowers where concrete once choked out any natural beauty, and planting the seeds for recovery in the drug- and alcohol-addicted, Suzmeyan reflects, “I sleep well now knowing I help instead of hurt.” Undoubtedly the true mark of a successful life.

This is the scenario Craig Gordon encountered when his oldest son, Chris, became addicted to drugs in his teens. After several trips to the hospital for drug-related issues, Gordon knew he had to find his son a treatment center. With limited resources at his disposal, he found a center in Utah – a significant distance from their Phoenix home. Chris stayed a total of 10 months, and in that time, Gordon made the 12-hour roundtrip drive twice a month to meet with Chris’ treatment team and stay abreast of his progress. Sheer frustration about the lack of communication while he was home in Phoenix fueled this trek of love.

Once out of treatment, Chris thrived for a solid year. However, unbeknownst to Gordon and their family, Chris remained involved in drugs, eventually overdosing and dying in 2006. Shortly thereafter, Gordon went to his childhood home in Columbus, Ohio, to surround himself with his family and lifelong friends. It was then that he reconnected with Neil Moore, a friend since 1964.

Moore had worked for 24 years in health care on the Information Technology side of things, most recently in senior health care. “The communication families received from providers was poor to non-existent,” Moore recalls. “My personal experience with this was so unfulfilling that I thought, ‘I can fix this by using what I know’”.
Moore created the company’s first product, Connect for Healthcare™ with a very simple premise: To be a portal between family members and inpatient and outpatient treatment providers for status updates that are distributed to everyone simultaneously, via email or text. Initially, the system was directed toward senior health care, connecting families to their loved ones in nursing homes and the like.

When the childhood friends reconnected, it became clear that their respective experiences aligned their desires to improve the way inpatient facilities currently communicate. When Gordon came on to do business development, he had a strong desire to expand to serve drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities as well.

“Immediately after we began to delve into the addictions field, we had met with many consultants, who all thought we had a great idea, but needed to focus on communication with referral sources who don’t know what happened to the people they referred to treatment centers,” Gordon explained. “So we see our primary value now as not only informing the families about their family member’s status, but also keeping the referral sources up to date on the status of the referee.”

Connect for Healthcare for Behavioral Health™ makes the process as simple and user-friendly as possible. “Once you tap into the service, it is all automatic,” Gordon states. Treatment providers can customize the status criteria for each patient. To complete an update, they simply click on a spectrum of progress and add comments. The service automatically notifies the referral source and approved family members (as appropriate) that a new status update is available on the patient’s highly secure Web page. The entire process usually takes no more than five minutes, making it painless for the treatment provider and invaluable to those receiving the updates.

“Some providers also use the system as an easy way to organize all their patients and monitor their progress at a glance,” Gordon states. Though the circumstances that brought Connect for Healthcare™ to behavioral health are heartbreaking and frustrating, it is this very personal association that drives it forward, potentially saving other families from the same experience.

For a limited time, the company is offering a no-risk trial of the service to qualifying treatment centers. To learn more about Connect for Healthcare for Behavioral Health™, visit, www.connect4healthcare.com, or contact them directly at 480.251.8124, or craig@connect4healthcare.com.

“If Amity Foundation is an hourglass, I’m in the middle,” he explains. “At one end is our volunteer board of directors, who I work with and for in fundraising, strategic planning, financial viability and policy making — ensuring always that all of our activities are congruent with our mission statement and that we are funding the mission.” Mullen describes the other end of the hourglass as all of the employees — about 150 at present — who, in administrative jobs and direct-service positions, implement Amity’s mission in three states (Arizona, California and New Mexico).
“It is interesting and challenging, to say the least,” Mullen states. What has been particularly challenging as of late are the changes in policies and funding. “Non-profits play such a critical role in American life,” Mullen states, “but the economic woes of the global economy and the decreases in funding in almost all of the states have made it particularly difficult to do what we do best for the folks on the bottom rung of society who are in the greatest need and have the fewest resources.”

“We have a different array of services in each state,” he continues, “Some of that reflects government priorities in that state, and it also reflects what we believe we can do best in that state. In California, we have been providing services for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for more than 20 years — both in prisons and in community-based settings.”

Amity’s services have been subject to several major research studies by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and, because of their effectiveness in reducing recidivism to substance abuse, criminal behavior and re-incarceration, they have become a national and international model for effectiveness. Mullen is just returning from a three-week sojourn in Japan where the Amity methodology has been adopted by a private prison and by community-based programs as well. He points out that research and evaluation are critically important to ensure that the services Amity delivers are effective — and that the public’s funds are being used to bring the greatest “bang for the buck.”

“In carrying out the ‘dissemination of information’ piece of our mission, I recently spoke at two universities in Mexico about treatment approaches to drug problems,” Mullen states, a problem very real to many of Mexico’s citizens on a daily basis. “They are getting it that the war on drugs can’t be won on the supply side alone — there must be a very heavy emphasis on demand reduction, and that is what we do best.”
Amity’s Circle Tree Ranch in Tucson, Arizona, is supported by 20 to 30 different contracts, including 16 with Native American tribes. “People find it hard to believe that we can serve men, women, women with their children, African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican-Americans and more, but it’s this diversity that makes what we’re doing so exciting,” Mullen states. “And we’re seeing great success, too, so this is clearly a need that was waiting to be met.”

“We know that all evidence points to longer residential treatment stays as predictive of long-term success – at least 90 days; more is better – but insurance companies and government agencies often cut this as short as 30 days or less,” Mullen states. “While we work with stays as short as 90 days, we have made it a major goal to create programs where our students (we deliberately call our clients “students”) can stay as long as they need to.”

To this end, current projects in Arizona include transitional and permanent housing – “a more sophisticated version of sober living” – as well as a new home for women and their children, Dragonfly Village. Mullen currently oversees the $2.3-million renovation of Circle Tree Ranch, Amity Foundation’s largest residential treatment program. “I’m doing everything from meeting with contractors to figuring out where to get the funding for it,” Mullen states. In New Mexico, Mullen oversees the two federal grants for women that support two outpatient programs: one for homeless women coming out of prison and one for HIV-positive or high-risk women who also have children. The same mission is applied in these programs, focusing on education, mentorship and strengths-based approaches. In addition to his administrative roles, in his “spare” time, he uses his previous professional experience as a photographer to produce photos and videos to help promote Amity and educate others about Amity’s services. Mullen joined Amity Foundation in 1982 and says that in the last almost-30 years he has “never been bored – there is plenty to do – and I’m always excited to go to work.”

Perhaps it is the strong desire to challenge this conception that gets Mike Nolan moving in the morning. Vice President of the Addiction and Treatment Market at Avee Laboratories, based in Clearwater, Florida, Nolan first spent 10 years in pharmaceuticals, in the behavioral health field. “The doctors I worked with were typically psychiatrists, neurologists and addictionologists,” Nolan states. “So I really learned a lot about addictions from the clinical perspective, as opposed to having gone through my own recovery.”

Nolan observed the growing epidemic of prescription medication abuse and addiction, but also witnessed the strides taken on the pharmaceutical end to address the problem. When an opportunity became available to move into a more active role in the solution, Nolan jumped at it. “I was excited to be able to take it up a notch, with the cutting-edge technology of Avee, and get in on the ground floor,” Nolan states.

Only three years old, Avee Laboratories has grown in leaps and bounds. In fact, it has seen 20 percent growth every month for the last 18 months – rare for most new companies, and practically unheard of in a struggling economy. But Nolan isn’t surprised. “It shows that what we’re doing works and is better than anything else out there,” Nolan says.

And what it is that Avee does is comprehensive testing for drugs and drug abuse. Working exclusively with physicians, Avee takes samples and applies a cutting-edge technology called  Liquid Chromotography, or LCMS. This technique quantitatively tests urine samples in a way that requires less of the sample for each test, thereby enabling more tests to be run on a standard sample size, yielding more results. “We are able to detect substances more accurately and specifically using this methodology,” Nolan states.

The use of this precise and efficient tool, along with a committed staff that is truly passionate about the work it does seems to be Avee’s winning combination. Nolan states, “I think we are very transparent and are proactive from a clinical and business approach with every client. We have a partnership with every client – I think that makes a real difference in our industry.”

To learn more about Avee Laboratories, go to www.avee.com, or contact Mike Nolan at TKTK.

Additionally, Amity Foundation is now raising money to build Dragonfly Village on four acres of Amity’s current 50-acre compound in Tucson, Arizona. Dragonfly will act as a separate campus for 40 women and 80 children; this “mother” site is already home to a residential program, Circle Tree Ranch, which provides 139 beds for adult men and women (and their children), who are going through drug and alcohol rehabilitation, as well as co-occurring disorders (such as gambling, eating disorders and mental disorders). The ability of students to have their children with them during their stay not only makes Circle Tree Ranch unique, but is a key component to the students’ success in maintaining long-term sobriety.

This family component is also what resonates most deeply with Rettmer, herself sober for 35 years. “My passion is truly working with families,” she states. “Even though I work largely in an administrative capacity, I am blessed to be able to design and implement our quarterly family workshops, as well as our weekly family groups.”

These groups use a multi-generational approach, as well as a multi-family structure, where several families meet together to, according to Rettmer, “take a straightforward look at the issues of the whole family and how they impact the family system.” The goals are usually to open the lines of communication or improve them. “We are all about family reunification,” Rettmer states, “so we come from a strengths-based position – no blame or shame, no finger-pointing. We just help families identify the roles they play or are stuck in and teach them how to make positive changes.”

The result is that family members often learn what life is like in an addiction, and the family member with the addiction learns what is like to be a mother, father, husband or sister of someone with an addiction. This focus on empathy further serves to draw families closer together. “We also emphasize letting go,” Rettmer states. This holisitic and realistic approach has brought tremendous healing to the thousands who have gone through the program since its inception in 1983. In fact, Walter Cronkite has called it “one of the nation’s most successful treatment programs”.

Naturally, ensuring that each of these programs run smoothly and with the utmost integrity is both a tremendous honor and responsibility – and it is one that Rettmer manages to balance with both professionalism and a spirit of genuine warmth and compassion. “I am so happy to be part of the program I’m in now because I can be so hands-on. I know every student, their family and pieces of their unique story. It’s so wonderful to be able to be connected.”

To learn more about Amity Foundation and Circle Tree Ranch, visit www.amityfdn.org and www.circletreeranch.org.

Enter the aptly named NuHab treatment center, based in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino. New to the scene, NuHab is an outpatient drug and alcohol treatment program that uses a holistic and integrated approach. What truly sets it apart, however, is its court advocacy component. Headed by Thomas Adler, a certified criminal justice professional, a certified alcohol and drug counselor and a leading court advocate in Southern California, anyone who has incurred a legal infraction related to his or her drug or alcohol addiction can receive advocacy in the courts. Adler specializes in advocating for alternatives to prison by humanizing the situation, demonstrating that the person who is suffering from an addiction isn’t necessarily a criminal, for whom jail is always the most appropriate consequence.

Another unique component comes courtesy of NuHab’s Executive Director, Dr. David Glaser, one of the leading forensic psychiatrists in the nation: He works on site. Having an M.D. present and available to clients full time further sets NuHab apart from the majority of other programs. Crystallizing NuHab’s mission and guiding the clinical program is Clinical and Administrative Consultant, Dr. Donna Markus, who brings more than 30 years of experience in residential and outpatient programs, as well as 15 years experience as core faculty at UCLA’s addiction certification program, where she taught courses on addiction treatment, pharmacology, family counseling and group counseling. Rounding out the full-time clinical staff is Billy Schreurs, a group facilitator and drug and alcohol counselor, who began his career at Cliffside Malibu residential treatment center as a tech and worked his way up to group facilitator before branching out on his own as a life coach and counselor.

The seeds of NuHab were planted when Drs. Glaser and Markus, Schreurs and Adler began to brainstorm about opening their own outpatient clinic – a meeting of “big brains and big hearts”, according to Schreurs. The name, NuHab, is actually an acronym for Nurturing, Utilizing, Healthy, Attitude and Behaviors. As the idea developed, NuHab took shape around these principles, focusing on a progressive approach to its treatment, and intent on making an indelible impression on the community. Schreurs states, “We know there are a lot of treatment programs in the L.A. area, but we want to introduce ourselves to the community as a place that will be a fixture and stick around”.

Clinically, NuHab uses a multiple-model approach, taking from varied treatment modalities, including group and individual counseling that focuses on relapse prevention, 12-step principles, traditional psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, spirituality (inclusive of yoga and meditation) and recreational therapy. “We take all these approaches and meet clients where they are. Through the process, clients see where they fit into our philosophy that the recovery process should be dynamic and transformative, with no single approach being effective for everyone,” Schreurs explains.
Additionally, NuHab offers flexible schedules to clients, so each person can truly tailor a program that fits best into their life. Group times and days can even be moved, on occasion, to accommodate differing time constraints. Currently, clients can create a two- to five-day program, with the guidance of the clinical staff. Further strides to meet clients where they are include a sliding scale, as well as one or two scholarships at a time, embodying the altruistic nature of the program’s creators.

Having just opened in April of this year, NuHab is now ready to introduce itself to the recovery community through an open house, held June 21 from 3 to 8 p.m. at its facilities. Schreurs states, “Our office is warm and modern, which you might not expect since it’s in an office building. But we believe that the environment does play in role in how comfortable people feel, so we intentionally chose calming colors for the walls and pictures of peaceful settings to contribute to that feeling of safety and serenity”.

In a market saturated with the “latest and greatest” in drug and alcohol treatment, NuHab is thoughtfully carving out a special niche to meet its communities needs.

For more information about NuHab and its grand opening celebration, call 818.290.5100 or visit www.nuhab.com.

“I’m very interested in stress,” Sideroff states, “because it’s a universal modulator. It magnifies underlying emotional problems in individuals and in relationships.” This became a natural segue way into neurofeedback when it first emerged in the early 1990s, along with the advent of high-speed Internet. Since then, Sideroff is frequently on the cutting edge of the uses and impact of neurofeedback as a therapeutic and research tool.

Sideroff’s current projects are both varied and intriguing. The first is his development of a nine-component model of personal resilience. From this he has created a 40-item questionnaire that assesses people on these nine dimensions. He envisions clinicians in all settings using it as a tool with their clients to assess their emotional and physical health. It incorporates a self-scoring profile, so the client gets an immediate inventory of his or her strengths and weaknesses. As such, the assessment can truly be used by anyone who wants more insight into their emotional wellbeing. Dr. Sideroff has also created two CD programs, Resilient Living and Resilience that are self-guided trainings. The topic of resilience has long been of interest to Sideroff, who is writing a book, The Path: Mastering the Nine Pillars of Resilience.

A different branch is Sideroff’s research into the use of neurofeedback in the treatment of chronic pain and substance abuse. He is a co-author on the only controlled research study on the use of neurofeedback in a drug treatment program. (Their impressive results can be found in their published research article: http://moonviewsanctuary.com/research/eeg-biofeedback-effects-on-substance-abusing-population.pdf .)

Putting this into practice, Sierra Tucson (a comprehensive treatment program for a range of addictions and mental health issues) currently uses Dr. Sideroff’s turnkey Mind Body program to help the brain heal itself from addictions. Sideroff explains, “It can actually remediate the damage to the brain caused by drugs, as well as inherent neuro-physiological vulnerabilities .” Because the program is complete and self-explanatory, it is an ideal treatment tool for any inpatient or outpatient program, as well as for trained independent clinicians.

Another area in which Sideroff has employed the use of neurofeedback – to great success – is with elite and professional athletes. At the International Sports Performance Institute in Santa Monica, California, Dr. Sideroff has installed a neurofeedback and peak performance program to help athletes, as well as executives, achieve optimal functioning by monitoring the brain and mirroring the brain activity back to the person. The brain learns to adjust, using the new information to maintain it in an optimal way. As a member of the Mind Room International, an association of elite sports psychologists’, Sideroff has gleaned insight into the practical applications of this tool in improving the performance of many professional athletes. In fact, he wrote a chapter entitled, “Tuning Your Mind with Neurofeedback for High-Performance Golf” in a recently published book on sports performance.

Continuing his history of involvement in ground-breaking research, Sideroff has now taken on breast cancer. At UCLA, he is conducting research on the use of neurofeedback with cancer patients, specifically targeting the remediation of cognitive deficits due to chemotherapy, otherwise known as “chemo brain”. “The initial results are very promising,” Sideroff states. “We are seeing improvement in cognitive functioning, reduced anxiety and improved sleep patterns,” he continues. He is currently in the middle of the initial study on this subject, indeed, the first time neurofeedback has ever been used in the treatment of chemo brain.

Sideroff is also Clinical Director of Moonview Sanctuary in Santa Monica, California. He helped in the original development of this program and in the hand-selection of its more than 50 professionals, all of whom are recognized as experts in their fields. This collection of the best-of-the-best comprises a wide range of clinicians, specializing in everything from Chinese Medicine, acupuncture and Ayurveda, to movement therapy and cranial sacral therapy – as well as a full range of psychological approaches, including Neuro Emotional Technique and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. (You can read more about this program in an article he wrote along with Dr. Gaetano Vaccaro, “The Moonview Model”: http://www.counselormagazine.com/feature-articles-mainmenu-63/27-treatment-strategies-or-protocols/862-the-moonview-model.)

Fully employing the range of expertise Moonview’s clinicians offer, it has constructed a multi-modality team approach to the treatment of everything from the traumatic effects of substance abuse disease to emotional problems and chronic pain. “We find this approach to be very effective,” Sideroff states. “We integrate eight to 10 modalities and find the synergistic approach of following one therapy with another to be more effective than any one treatment on its own.” Common outcomes as a result of this multi-pronged approach include overcoming personal crisis, releasing addictions, transforming physical health issues (cancer, chronic pain) and achieving optimal performance and functioning for professional athletes and entertainers.

Sideroff’s passion for finding the practical and even life-changing uses of brain research and therapeutic tools, such as neurofeedback, has enriched both the quality of life for countless patients, and our understanding of how to harness the rich and complex power of the brain to heal ourselves.

For more information on Dr. Stephen Sideroff’s therapeutic tools, books, and availability for speaking engagements; for professionals interested in using Dr. Sideroff’s questionnaire in their practice to get permission for its use, as well as to order copies of his CD programs; and for information on Moonview Sanctuary, go to www.moonviewsanctuary.com or www.ThirdWind.org. Contact Dr. Sideroff directly at ssideroff@moonviewsanctuary.com.

Written by:  Meredith Watkins, Clinical Editor of RecoveryView.com

After achieving hard-fought sobriety and maintaining it for many years, it can be extremely disheartening and even devastating to relapse. It calls into question the ability to find a way to live free from the shackles of addiction. No one knows this better than Michele Garcia, Co-Founder of Serenity Malibu in Malibu, California.

Garcia first got sober on April 23, 1991 at the Drug and Alcohol Center in West Hollywood. When she suffered a one-day relapse, she entered the women’s treatment center, Oasis in Sylmar, California, followed by a period in its sober-living program. Doing this, she managed to successfully stay sober for six years by remaining active in AA and the 12-step program, CEA How. “But I rested on my laurels after a while,” Garcia states, “and relapsed for a very painful two months.”

She then moved to Las Vegas for a while, but realized it was not a supportive environment in which she could stay clean. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Garcia once again relapsed, this time for only one day, but it became the turning point for her. She knew she needed to do something more than she had been doing or face a never-ending cycle of sobriety and relapse.

“I hit an emotional bottom [after the second relapse] and surrendered to a women’s step-study workshop in Westlake Village,” Garcia recalls. She also renewed her commitment to her local AA and ALANON groups.

In the meantime, she began to pursue a degree in education, driven by her passion for working with kids and adolescents. Garcia also became active at local Boys and Girls Clubs, leading field trips and nature trips and running workshops on writing and poetry. During this time, she obtained a certificate in child advocacy from Circle of Hope, an organization formed to raise awareness for helping abused children.

Then she met Mickey, a circuit speaker in AA, who would have a profound influence on the next phase of her life. After hearing her story, he warned her that she would relapse again unless she found something she was passionate about and engaged in it fully. His advice to “cultivate your life” resonated deeply with Garcia.

Not long after, she took a job with Serenity Loans and Freedom Consulting, a company that specializes in providing loans for people seeking drug and alcohol treatment globally. As a consultant, she became more deeply entrenched in the recovery community, absorbing the various facets that make certain treatments successful and others less so. Soon, her clients began to inquire why Garcia didn’t begin her own sober-living home. She initially balked.
“I just wasn’t confident in my ability to run one at first,” Garcia states. As time passed and she gained more knowledge and experience in the field, as well as more personal sobriety under her belt, two other clients approached her about opening a home. When one of the co-owners of Serenity Loans made the same suggestion, recommending the full-service recovery treatment model as a guide (clients receive treatment outside of the home and live in the sober-living facility, making it more cost-effective than inpatient treatment), Garcia knew she had received direction from her Higher Power about her greater purpose.

A testament to everything coming together at the right time, Garcia shares that she was consulting with Don Varden, who owned a home that he wanted to be used as a treatment center. She had sent three different people to him in her role as his consultant, but none seemed to be a good fit. The same co-owner at Freedom Consulting suggested that Garcia approach Varden about using the home for her sober-living facility. She did and he agreed. The final piece of the puzzle – financing – came together and it became clear that the program Garcia envisioned would soon be a reality.
So in July, 2010, Serenity Malibu opened, celebrating the event with a big bash. Among its top priorities is to provide very personalized treatment for its clients. “Serenity Malibu…offers participant residents a unique, individualized program focusing on their body, mind and soul, using a 12-step program foundation and numerous holistic, therapeutic and medical treatments offered by a carefully selected professional network of independent licensed providers,” Garcia states. Additionally, clients can participate in workshops, including art therapy, hypnotherapy and weekly guided meditation, featuring crystal bowls, which creates reverberations that are at once serene and powerful.

Putting a strong emphasis on discovering how fun sober living can be, Garcia also organizes Sober Fun Days with community members, where clients spend the day hiking, playing Frisbee, rock climbing and barbequing together. “We love to build our network,” Garcia states, “so we always share meals during our open meetings and events to foster that sense of community.”

She makes a point of emphasizing the importance of education, particularly in the area of relapse prevention. “After personally relapsing two times in 12 years, I have realized that aftercare is so important,” Garcia states. “We are proud to offer a program that is progressive and cutting-edge in the recovery community,” she continues. “And we are very proud to say that 90 percent of our graduates come back and have strong testimonies to share.” She has also actively maintained her sobriety since September 20, 2006 and regularly sponsors others, has her own sponsor and attends meetings daily.

Garcia’s passion and commitment to her work is clear. “I discovered all things are possible with my higher power,” she states. “My recovery comes first today.” And Serenity Malibu offers sanctuary, love and healing for anyone struggling with drug or alcohol addictions, putting them on the path to true health and joy.

Serenity Malibu is certified by the Sober Coalition Board and hosts fundraisers for the Sober Coalition Network, and Garcia is certified for Leadership Management by the Sober Coalition. For more information about Serenity Malibu and Michele Garcia, please call 800.715.0018 or visit www.serenitymalibu.com.