Derek Greenwood is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Gorge Community College, an emergency department nurse who works in Goldendale and a certified drug and alcohol counselor. As someone with lived experience, he credits having a safe space he could go to socialize when he was recovering from drug addiction as a young adult. But finding safe, sober spaces to form those connections with other people in recovery can be a challenge, especially in rural communities.
That challenge motivated Greenwood and others to launch an effort to help people recovering from drugs and alcohol in the Columbia Gorge. As first reported in the Oregon Capital Chronicle, the Gorge Recovery Center received a $2 million grant this summer from the state’s opioid settlement funds. The center, which does not yet have a physical location, is expected to open sometime next year in The Dalles, with a possible expansion to Hood River. It will offer an array of services seven days a week, from peer support mentors to recreational opportunities and classes on parenting, financial literacy and other life skills. Joining us to talk about their plans and the challenges of navigating recovery in a rural community are Gorge Recovery Center board president Derek Greenwood and fellow board member Katrina Mace, who also works as a drug and alcohol counselor at Mid-Columbia Center for Living.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. For people in recovery from substance use disorder, finding sober safe places to socialize can be difficult. It can be an even bigger challenge in smaller or rural communities. A group of people in the Columbia Gorge, many of them in recovery themselves, are trying to change this. As first reported in the Oregon Capitol Chronicle, the group received $2 million this summer from the state’s opioid settlement funds. The Gorge Recovery Center has not secured a location yet, but its organizers hope to open sometime next year in The Dalles.
I’m joined now by two of those organizers, both of whom are certified as drug and alcohol counselors. Katrina Mace is on the Gorge Recovery Board. Derek Greenwood is the president of that board and an adjunct nursing faculty member at Columbia Gorge Community College. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.
Katrina Mace: Thank you for having us.
Derek Greenwood: Thank you, Dave.
Miller: Derek, first. What is a recovery center? And what is it not?
Greenwood: A recovery center is a place where people who are seeking recovery, new to recovery or in long-term recovery can find others who are walking a similar path, and form those important social connections that, as a drug and alcohol counselor, I know is very important for clients. It might be the most important thing that people do because that social milieu and those connections are what make recovery fun. And if it’s not fun, then people … why would they want to do it?
What it isn’t is acute care treatment, inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment, counseling. It’s of the community, for the community. And so you might consider it sort of a recovery clubhouse where all those unofficial social connections are formed that allow people to role model from others, to chart a new way forward and most importantly, have fun in recovery.
Miller: How is a recovery center different from the spaces that currently exist in The Dalles, say, or in Hood River?
Greenwood: Well, the spaces that currently exist … there really aren’t a lot. We have mental health treatment centers, primary care offices, therapists’ offices, and a random variety of church basements where people might find a self-help support group. But a dedicated space, where people can come together and socialize, we don’t have that. I know, for myself, when I first got clean and sober for the second time – about nine years ago in the Columbia River Gorge – I find myself going to self help support meetings early. I was just lonely and looking for people to connect with, who were doing the same thing as me and understood the struggles I was going through. But that often meant that I was standing in the parking lot waiting for somebody to unlock the church doors so I could go into the meeting. And in the wintertime, that’s not really conducive to forming friendships.
So we don’t really have any of those spaces right now. And places like The Dalles, Hood River and Sherman County, we are deficient in having recovery centers such as you might find in Eugene, Salem or Portland. We just don’t have that. And I think in the broader landscape, rural communities … we don’t have as many cultural offerings and opportunities to get together. The last bowling alley closed down in The Dalles some years ago, we don’t have a YMCA. Even those churches, where you might find self-help support meetings right now – we’re losing churches as well. So we’re losing spaces where those meetings can happen.
Miller: And I don’t remember ever being in a bowling alley – you mentioned those – where beer wasn’t a big part of the social scene. So even there, I imagine it might have a different vibe than the, as you said, the sober clubhouse or recovery clubhouse that you hope to open in the coming year.
Greenwood: Yeah. Absolutely. We do have plenty of bars where people who are drinking or using drugs can find people of a like mind and find those social connections that are so important. But we don’t have that for people in recovery. And when people get into recovery, oftentimes there are previous associations, maybe their family, their friends, even if they’re not actively using drugs and alcohol in an abusive manner, quite often, those people don’t understand what it’s like to be in early recovery. And so we’ve got to find people like us who are struggling or maybe successful in recovery, so that we can model our new behavior on that, have people to socialize with. And I think that if you speak to anybody in recovery, it’s a really important part of what makes somebody’s recovery successful.
Miller: Well, Katrina, Derek mentioned, early on when he was in recovery – as he said, the second time about nine years ago – going early before a church had opened, say, for some 12-step meeting, just in the hopes that there could be some kind of social connections. Could you share with us just the short version of your own personal journey of recovery?
Mace: Yeah. Sure. Well, I struggled with substances pretty much all my life and it started out as fun. And the deeper I got into my addictions, the more isolated I became. And so when I moved to The Dalles, I didn’t know anyone, and I was still actively using, and COVID was going on. I actually found one of those church basements on Zoom and kind of got to build my little community on a computer screen that way because really when we’re in our addiction, like Derek had mentioned, those closest to us sometimes don’t understand what it looks like. We’ve cut out a lot of people. It’s a very, very lonely place to be. And as a drug and alcohol counselor, one of the things that I hear so often from people when they’re in my office is they’re scared to go to outside support groups because they’re intimidated, and the recovery center would be a place where you can make those connections. And if you’re scared, you might meet someone and hook up with someone, [and] those fears start to subside. You’ve made those connections and you can go to these places. I know that social connection was the catalyst for me being able to develop that in my recovery. And I am so grateful for that.
Miller: And it seems like that social connection for you started, unless I misunderstood, during the pandemic on Zoom.
Mace: Yes.
Miller: It’s interesting you say that because I remember very well talking to people on this show at the beginning of the pandemic, early on, people who were really worried about … at that time we had no idea how long this was going to go on for. But this was the time when a lot of in person meetings of all kinds, including recovery meetings, were on hold.
Mace: Yes.
Miller: And there were huge fears about what that would mean. I’m curious how your own, I guess positive experiences with remote meetings, remote social connections, [have] affected the way you think about the necessity of being together in person, because what we’re talking about here is millions of dollars to go towards being together in the same room physically. Why do you think that’s important?
Mace: There’s a study that was done by Bruce Alexander and he’s a Canadian psychologist. It was Rat Park, done in the ‘80s. And they had rats. They’d have a rat in a cage, and they had regular water and then drug-laced water, and the rat would just go and continue to use until it basically died. And then they looked at that and they said, ‘Wait, this rat is all alone …’ which in our addiction, we’re isolated, right? This rat is all alone. Let’s go ahead, let’s put in some other rats, let’s put in some toys, let’s give them a fun environment. And they kept those drugs in there and the water, and the rats started to interact with each other and to go more to the water than the drugs.
I think that’s a great example because when we don’t know how … So, a lot of us we’ve started using because of traumas, maybe, we’re lacking skills, we’re lacking coping skills. We’ve pushed people out of our lives. We don’t know how to do life on life’s terms. We really don’t. And so when we’re with other people, likeminded people and people who have been doing this, people who are paving that road before us, it gives us hope. We hear their stories and sharing, and we’re like, “Oh my God, it’s not just me. I’m not alone.” And it starts to give us hope when we’re among those people. And it’s crucial. I see people who come in and they’re hesitant to really put their fears aside for whatever reason – I understand – and to engage socially in the part of their recovery. I will tell you, it’s not a very high success rate. And on the other hand, I see people who do, that they find a way to build their tribe, a new tribe in recovery. And it’s the reason I love my job because, in my opinion, I get to watch miracles happen when that’s going on.
Miller: Derek, you were talking about the challenges for folks who want to be together, say, between AA or NA meetings. But are there even challenges now in getting those meeting spaces themselves?
Greenwood: Oh, absolutely. Traditionally, the church basement has been the host for those meetings, and yet we’re losing churches in this country and in the Columbia River Gorge at a pretty rapid clip. It’s really common that you’ll pick up a meeting schedule for any one of the different self-help groups and the meetings that are listed, well, they’re already out of date because it’s moved to a different place. I’m always trying to find out where that meeting has gone and if it’s a new meeting. What barrier does that present to somebody when they don’t know if that meeting is still there, or they go to somewhere that’s advertised as having a meeting and it’s no longer being held? So that reduces the impetus to maybe go to another meeting because you don’t know if it’s going to be there. Maybe this isn’t going to be worthwhile after all.
We just don’t have those spaces available. And even if we had plenty of church basements or rec halls to hold meetings in, what do you do in between, in these rural counties? Oftentimes, you have maybe three or four meetings a day, they’re spread out across town and it’s a long wait to get to that next meeting. Oftentimes, when I’ve had a client in my office, I’ve given them a handout and said, “OK, and the next meeting is tomorrow at noon.” And then that person is looking at it like, “Wow, well, what do I do until then?” And it’s like, “Well, I don’t really have anything to tell you.”
Oftentimes, I’ll give them a phone number of somebody that I know welcomes new connections in recovery. They might get connected with that person, and then suddenly they’re engaged in a barbecue or they’re going swimming in the Deschutes River, or they are going bowling because we do have some clean and sober bowling events in Hood River. But if they don’t have that, then they don’t make those connections and they’re just sitting white knuckling it until the next meeting shows up. Then they’re standing in that parking lot, hoping to make friends, go to the meeting, and then they lock the doors and go home again.
The recovery center is a place where any one of these professionals that sees a client can say, “The recovery center is open right now. Why don’t you go down and have a cup of coffee? There are no expectations. You don’t have to go to a meeting if you don’t want to. You don’t have to access any services if you don’t want to. But you will find other people like you.”
Miller: Derek, one of the words you used at the very beginning was you want this to be “fun.” How do you do that and how do you literally build into the space that, at some point in the next six months or 12 months, you’re hoping to secure?
Greenwood: Well, we put it in our mission statement, for one. So it always guides us in service of creating that fun space for people. And then we hope that that infuses through our staff. Then we trust our recovery community and they naturally are fun. As opposed to a meeting in a therapist’s office or an outpatient drug and alcohol counseling class, most of your self-help group meetings are really fun and boisterous affairs. And so we trust that our recovery community, if we give them the support and the space to be themselves and to elevate the strengths that they already have, that they will create that fun environment.
Miller: Back in July, the Oregon Capitol Chronicle reported that the hope was that you’d have this center open by January of 2025 – that’s just two months away. What is the best-case scenario timeline at this point?
Greenwood: I’d say the absolute best-case scenario would be sometime in spring, early summer of 2025. We forecast January 2025, maybe a little bit too optimistic that the levers in the state government would move quickly, but bureaucracies move slow. So we are awaiting the disbursement of the funds, and exactly how the mechanisms are going to work to administer and report on how we use these funds. And we’re also setting up a fiscal agent agreement with an experienced recovery center operator in the Portland area. So all that takes time.
We’d like to do it sooner rather than later, and we’re sad that we’re missing winter because winter is the time when it’s really hard to have recovery gatherings. There’s a volleyball group that meets every week in a city park and has a barbecue, and they’ve had to shut down for the winter because it’s just too cold and rainy. But I think it’ll be spring of 2025, and we’re working with our partners, and city and county government to identify suitable locations to place ourselves in.
Miller: Do you envision any opposition from potential neighbors who may be concerned about having a facility like this near them?
Greenwood: No, because we’ve done a lot of work to be broadly community-based and talk to the entire community, and let people know what we are and what we’re all about. And really, we’re for the entire community because the recovery community encompasses not just those who are in recovery, but the friends, the family members and the employers of the people who are in recovery. So when you look at our community, it’s this large, large space and we want to be welcoming of all of that community. We plan to have Al-Anon meetings. We plan to have informational talks and classes for friends and family members.
So, we’re not targeted strictly at the recovery community. We are for the recovery community, but we see our recovery community as being vast and broad. I already know that there’s a lot of support in our towns and in the Columbia River Gorge, because drug and alcohol addiction is such a crisis in our state that everybody’s aware that this is something that we need. And our recovery center is a happy, fun, vibrant place. When people are in recovery, they make great neighbors. We plan to be a great neighbor.
Miller: Derek, the $2 million I mentioned from the opioid settlement is supposed to cover three years. What happens after those three years are up?
Greenwood: Well, hopefully by then the state of Oregon and the federal government has figured out how to make sustainable long-term funding for efforts like this. That is a challenge. A lot of our dollars right now go to acute care fee-for-service type organizations and what we’re doing is not new in this country. It’s new in the Columbia River Gorge. It’s relatively new in Oregon. We would like to see that there be sustainable long-term funding, either through Medicare/Medicaid dollars, from Oregon Health Authority funds – something so that we’re not reliant on soft grant money every three years.
Miller: Katrina, before we go – if we look, say, five years in the future, what do you want to be able to say about the Gorge Recovery Center?
Mace: I want to be able to say that, first of all, it’s still there, and it really brought change in the way that we look at recovery, and that it is really a way that helped the Gorge and the success of it. That’s what I’d like.
Miller: Katrina and Derek, thanks very much.
Greenwood: Thank you.
Mace: Thank you.
Miller: Katrina Mace is a board member of the nonprofit, Gorge Recovery Center. Derek Greenwood is the board president. He’s also an adjunct nursing faculty member at Columbia Gorge Community College.
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