What Does It Really Take to Stay in Recovery?

Recovery can begin with a decision to stop using drugs or alcohol. But staying in recovery often depends on what comes next: safe housing, mental health care, employment, relationships, and someone willing to answer the phone at the moment help is needed. 

That was the message from four recovery professionals who shared both professional expertise and deeply personal experiences during a meeting of the 10:33 Initiative in Pulaski County, which was held in recognition of National Recovery Month.

Their discussion moved beyond the traditional idea of treatment as a single intervention. Instead, panelists described recovery as a long-term process that requires communities to address the whole person and to recognize that substance use rarely exists in isolation. 

For Justin Buck, executive director of the Wolfe Street Foundation, one of the clearest examples came from a man who arrived at Wolfe Street in an unlikely way: a bail bondsman dropped him off straight from jail. A peer specialist immediately went to work. By that night, the man had a place in sober living. By the next morning, he had a job interview scheduled.

It initially felt like a success. Then Buck picked him up for the interview and learned that roughly 22 men were sharing three bedrooms in the sober living home. “Well, that ain’t good,” Buck remembered thinking.

He went back to coworkers with lived experience and asked whether conditions like that were common. They told him they were.

The experience eventually helped lead Wolfe Street to launch its own recovery residence program. Today, Buck said, it has 70 beds for men and women. Rather than developing its own definition of quality housing, the organization sought national standards and became certified in them. Wolfe Street also helped establish the Arkansas Alliance for Recovery Residences to help other recovery homes meet those standards.

But Buck said the larger issue is choice. People entering recovery are often forced to accept whatever treatment bed, housing option, or job is available at the moment they need it.

“People shouldn’t just have to take the breadcrumbs off the bottom of somebody else’s shoe,” Buck said. “They ought to have a choice where they’re gonna do recovery housing, where they’re gonna experience treatment, and what kind of job opportunities are available to them.”

Panelists also emphasized that substance use and mental health cannot be treated as entirely separate issues. They explained that when a person enters recovery with a mental health condition that has gone untreated for a long period of time, it makes an already difficult recovery journey even more complicated. 

Damon Rowlett works as a Men's Recovery Coordinator at Every Arkansan. He described that the program, called EA Recovery, addresses the body, mind, and spirit. That means recognizing what an organization can provide itself and when it needs partners with different expertise. 

For example, EA Recovery brought in mental health professionals through telehealth before expanding the partnership to include on-site services. “Successful people do consistently what other people do occasionally,” he said. “I think consistency is the key to that.” 

Kate Riggs of The Sounding Board, who consults with recovery programs, described the whole-person approach through a biopsychosocial and spiritual framework. The biological needs, she explained, can be very basic: getting someone out of a harmful environment, eating regular meals, drinking water, and receiving needed medical care. Psychological care addresses mental health and how a person processes experiences, while the social component involves relearning how to build and maintain healthy relationships.

And that support, she stressed, cannot simply disappear when someone walks out the door of a treatment program.

Her experience has also shaped her views on mental health medication. She described previously working in a program that did not allow such medications before later working in settings that embraced more holistic care. She said she saw retention increase and relapse decrease when people were met where they were rather than expected to fit into a rigid model of recovery.

As the discussion turned toward National Recovery Month, panelists celebrated the milestones that once seemed out of reach. Many panelists had family members who have long struggled. 

Justin Welborn of Serenity Park shared that he and his younger brother are both in recovery and went through treatment at Renewal Ranch. For years, they hoped their father, who struggled with alcohol, would also stop drinking. Eventually, he did. But about a month after he stopped drinking, their father became sick and was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. 

He eventually made it onto the transplant list. On the day of the meeting, he had something significant to celebrate. “Today actually marks two years sober for him,” Justin said. His father has received a new liver and is now doing well.

“Can’t get better than that for my own family,” he said.

Buck's connection to the work is personal, too. His family has seen both a success and a tragic ending. His brother experienced recovery, reunited with their family, and is raising his children. But his sister, he shared, died in 2018. “My family’s seen both sides,” he said.

He said those experiences stay with him when he walks into Wolfe Street and works alongside people in recovery. But he also thinks about someone else: the next person who will walk through the door.

Buck remembers a time when Wolfe Street was preparing for a 5K fundraiser and he went to Fuller & Sons to buy a padlock for a box truck. An employee noticed his Wolfe Street shirt. 

“Hey, there’s a guy outside that needs help,” Buck recalled him saying.

It was 5:15 on a Friday afternoon. The man happened to have his insurance information with him. Buck began making calls. About an hour later, the two walked into a treatment center together.

The story, Buck said, demonstrates why relationships among organizations and people working in recovery matter so much. When someone is ready for help, navigating an admissions line or waiting until Monday can become another barrier. A relationship can mean knowing exactly whom to call. 

“If there’s a way to make it happen, we’re going to treatment right now,” Buck said.

Those moments aren't unusual, he added. Wolfe Street's peer specialists encounter them regularly.

That willingness to make a call also reflected another theme running throughout the discussion: no organization can meet every need. Buck said Wolfe Street has learned to be clear about what it does well while building relationships with organizations that provide services it does not. “We’re not clinicians. We’re not therapists,” he said. “So we’ve got to have friends who are.”