Hoping to Heal, Recovery Centers of America Offers New Program Directed at Youth
EARLEVILLE, Md. – A new rehabilitation program, rolled out by the Recovery Centers of America, focuses on young adults and representatives say they are gaining traction.
In the middle of almost 600 acres of rolling Earleville hills, sits a house, narcotics addicts call home.
“I can remember watching him walk by in the hallway, he had a black hoodie on, and was very downcast and anxious to the point of in group he couldn’t even speak,” Primary Therapist Carrie Smith said about her former patient Zachary Wood.
Wood, 24, came to Bracebridge Hall last October to detox from opioids, like heroin.
“I’m an anxious person as is, but with all that [drugs] it was way worse. I think anxiety too comes from not being okay with yourself and not being happy yourself, and I was at the lowest point in my life,” Wood said.
Wood had the typical childhood, growing up with two older sisters, playing sports with neighborhood kids in Perry Hall. Then, as a teen, a friend introduced him to pain pills, “I was probably about 17.”
He wanted to fit in, so he tried them. Popping one every once in a while, then addiction dragged him deeper.
“All my money went to drugs, I wouldn’t show up to work…like court charges pending… I never did anything major but just still as a man just embarrassing things just stuff you never want to do,” Wood said.
He called this stage “animalistic” because he did whatever it took to keep chasing the high. He jolted back to reality when his friend overdosed and died.
Wood and his mother looked at programs seeking recovery, they found RCA’s Bracebridge Hall.
“You get up every day at the same time, and we write down our goals for the day, we go around the circle and everybody shares their goals and that helps a lot because that’s building the structure in your life, it’s building that foundation,” he said. A foundation built on sober living.
He went through the 30-day Young Men’s Program, tailored to men 18 to 34-years-old, the demographic hardest hit by the opioid epidemic.
“They have trouble sometimes balancing a checkbook, managing a checking account, simple things like nutrition dietary, you know eating healthy, communication skills, relationship skills, that’s the biggest thing we see in this age group is healthy relationships,” CEO of RCA’s Bracebridge Hall, Domenica Personti said.
They have a similar program, focused on young women, 18 to 28-years-old.
The goal, to teach their clients how to find happiness and fill the void drugs left in their lives.
