Thriving in Recovery: No Matter the Weather
As winter darkens the days and reshapes routines, people in recovery face unique emotional challenges. This piece offers practical tools for staying connected and emotionally balanced through the seas…
The Archive
Seven years of Journey sharing stories about Mainers. The people, businesses, organizations, and recovery centers getting it done every day. The work was already happening; these articles made it visible. Some details may be dated, but each piece reflects a moment in time that contributed to the conversations, experiences, and ideas that continue to shape our work.
121 pieces
Kennebunk Savings: Shifting Culture, Reducing Stigma
When Brad walks through Kennebunk Savings, he sees employees who've become "lighthouses" for colleagues struggling with substance use. The bank shifted from treating addiction as a performance problem…
The Rewards of Being There for Mainers in Crisis
Marissa Exchange sits with someone in crisis, providing a space where they can speak freely without judgment. As a mobile crisis worker, she connects people to resources and support networks. What kee…
Understanding Recovery Residences
Twenty people sit around a dinner table in a house on an ordinary street, sharing a meal and their stories. This is a recovery residence, where peers in recovery live together, support each other, and…
Nonantum Resort – Building a Recovery-Friendly Culture
At Nonantum Resort, a staffer mentions an upcoming sobriety anniversary at the team meeting, and colleagues applaud. This moment captures what happens when a workplace decides recovery belongs there.…
1000 Lives Campaign for Maine
A Maine emergency doctor worried that offering buprenorphine treatment in his ER would overwhelm the system. Instead, patients started talking honestly about their struggles, and he found a way to hel…
Bridgton’s Strong Recovery Network
A small Maine town gathers at a community rally to remember Dr. Peter Leighton, a physician in recovery who helped build something remarkable. Bridgton now has emergency doctors, counselors, peer coac…
WCCC Expands Criminal Justice Programs
A corrections officer spots potential in someone newly hired. A counselor recognizes when a person in recovery needs extra support. Washington County Community College is expanding its Criminal Justic…
How EFT Builds Stronger Communities
Karen stands before a room of healthcare workers and teaches them where to tap. Within minutes, shoulders drop. Breathing slows. People discover they can calm their nervous systems anywhere, anytime.…
Exploring Treatment Options
A person calls a treatment center unsure whether they need detox, a residential program, or weekly outpatient sessions. They don't know where to start. This article breaks down Maine's treatment optio…
Maine’s Recovery Community Center Offers Hope and Free Services
At a karaoke night in Portland, people in recovery sing off-key and laugh together. This is what Maine's Recovery Community Center offers: a place where healing happens through connection, free coachi…
Strategies for Living with Brain Injury
Marcus couldn't remember his doctor's appointments and kept missing important calls. After his brain injury, he felt lost. But then he discovered something: consistent routines, written reminders, and…
ROCC Solid Success, Empowering Recovery and Wellness at USM
Dakota Eddy lost her uncle to substance use disorder when she was nine. Years later, watching classmates struggle in her Vermont hometown, she found purpose at the University of Southern Maine's Recov…
Incarcerated Peers: Changing Lives Inside and Out
Inside a Maine prison, someone training to be a recovery coach listens to a peer describe their fears about release. This conversation, peer to peer, happens because a program treats incarcerated peop…
Drumming Up Wellness: Music Therapy’s Rhythmic Approach
Kate Beever sits behind a drum kit in her Maine office, ready to work. A client picks up mallets. Instead of talking directly about the stress that triggered their return to use, they express it throu…
Bridging New Opportunities, McAuley Residence’s Educational Model
Melissa watched women at McAuley Residence choose survival over possibility: entry-level jobs instead of college, poverty instead of the futures their children deserved. She knew reunification meant n…
Empowering Recovery: Maine’s Recovery Coach Training Programs
A person in recovery sits across from someone who has walked a similar path, someone trained to listen without judgment and help navigate what comes next. Maine's recovery coach training programs are…
The Power of Positive Experience, A Source of Hope
A child learns their feelings matter when a parent listens. A neighbor brings over dinner after a hard week. These small moments reshape lives. Research shows positive childhood experiences buffer aga…
A New Generation, Recovery-Friendly College Campuses
On college campuses across the country, students in recovery remain invisible, their struggles hidden behind stigma and assumptions. Yet nearly half a million undergraduates identify as in recovery fr…
Removing Stigma From the Employment Equation
Nearly three thousand working-age people were missing from Washington County's employment figures. Economists wondered who they were and where. That question led to something unexpected: a network con…
Mind Matters: Navigating the Maze of Brain Injury Symptoms
Sarah can't remember if she took her medication this morning, and conversations at work feel like she's hearing them through water. She never hit her head, so she didn't think brain injury was possibl…
Understanding Brain Injuries, Mental Health, and Substance Use
Patty King listens as someone describes the fog that won't lift, the anger that erupts without warning, the cravings that pull them back. She recognizes something others missed: a brain injury underne…
Surfing My Feelings
A person adrift in depression learns to distinguish between the body's signals and the mind's stories about them. Instead of fighting overwhelming emotions, they discover how to read their physical se…
Recovery Coaches: The Healing Connection
A person wakes up one morning and knows something has to change. They ask for help, but treatment slots are weeks away. A recovery coach answers that call, meeting them where they are right now. These…
Reframing Relationships
A friend struggling with opioid use found steady ground not through romance, but through peers who showed up to cook meals, wipe tears, pick up her son from daycare. This piece explores why those frie…
Somerset County New Options Liaison Spotlight
Keith Bellefleur arrived at a call that started as a mental health crisis and turned into an overdose response. The officer revived the person, and Keith connected him to treatment that same day. Now…
Rooted in Maine
In rural Maine, Abbie Rohde built something that reaches beyond preventing return to use. Her Opioid Health Home teams people with lived experience alongside counselors, psychiatrists, and peer coache…
Religious and Spiritual Trauma: 5 Ways to Start Recovering
Someone turns to their faith for comfort during crisis, only to experience harm instead. When religion or spirituality becomes a source of pain rather than healing, the damage cuts deeper because your…
Maine EMS SUD Response Program
On a Tuesday morning in September, Maine EMS responded to their 276th suspected opioid overdose. The paramedics arrived, treated the patient, offered resources. Then they went home carrying the weight…
The Growing Power of Connection for Maine’s OPTIONS Liaisons
Ashley Roberts meets a public health nurse on a rainy Bangor morning, heading out to find people living outside. As an OPTIONS Liaison, she builds trust, learns what people need, and connects them to…
Workplaces at the Forefront
Three panelists gathered to discuss how businesses can reshape workplace culture around recovery. One statistic stopped them: three out of four people with substance use disorder hold jobs. Yet most s…
Peer Recovery Coaching Making a Difference
A person in recovery in Maine becomes someone else's guide. Peer recovery coaches, trained to meet people where they are, are reshaping how communities respond to substance use disorder. Since 2018, n…
Maine’s Newly Launched RFW Certification
At Kennebunk Savings Bank, hiring someone in recovery isn't charity. It's strategy. Maine's new Recovery Friendly Workplace program helps employers build cultures where people dealing with substance u…
Considering an Employer?
You're sitting across from a hiring manager, resume in hand. But here's what many people overlook: this interview cuts both ways. Before you say yes to any job, especially in the trades, you need to k…
Fibers in the Threads of Community
In a small Maine town, a person in recovery discovers that the same community that remembers every mistake can also become a lifeline. This piece explores how chosen communities, built on shared value…
Power of Recovery Coaching
Someone in recovery walks into a room and meets a coach who's been where they are. That person knows the weight of it, the hope of it, the daily work of it. Recovery coaching, once rare in Maine, now…
Friendship House
When a police officer recognized a resident at a community meeting, he stood to thank the man whose overdose he'd reversed with Narcan years before. That moment captures Friendship House's mission: a…
Inspire Recovery Center — Ellsworth
A man walked into Inspire Recovery Center wanting only a warm place to watch television. Weeks later, he cried during a job interview, describing the space as magical. He'd gone from active substance…
OPTIONS Liaison Spotlight: Dave Bilodeau
Dave Bilodeau met a man who hadn't seen his grandchildren in five years. After helping him into recovery for one month, they reunited at Christmas. Two years later, the man passed, but his family stil…
The Writing of Recovery Allies
Alison Jones Webb trained young people in recovery to share their stories in church basements and school halls. When community members asked "What can we do to help?" she realized the answer: people n…
NAMIWalks Maine
On October 7, hundreds will gather in Augusta to walk together through Capitol Park. They're not just exercising. They're showing up for neighbors struggling with mental illness, reducing shame around…
She Recovers
MaryBeth Murphy was immobilized in a cast when her life shifted. That pause forced a reckoning that led her into recovery from alcohol and codependency. Years later, searching for deeper connection, s…
Maine Treatment and Recovery Runs on Dunkin’
Mike Kleiner arrives at work each morning as a people operations manager for a Dunkin' franchise. This spring, his company began hosting pop-up resource events at 36 Maine locations, offering recovery…
Savida Health: Recovery Health Model
Joe Graffius spent years chasing money and drugs across Alaska before prison stopped him cold. Now he works as a peer recovery coach in Maine, modeling the kind of life he fought to build. SaVida Heal…
We Are Not Alone: Community Connectedness and Resilience
When pandemic lockdowns pulled youth from classrooms and away from each other, isolation deepened. Some turned toward unhealthy coping. A Maine organization recognized the real answer: communities sur…
A Walk in the Woods
Greg steps into the Maine forest with no destination in mind, letting the dense trees and green fields quiet the weight he carries from his work in suicide prevention. What started in childhood as esc…
Westbrook Provides Help for Overdose Prevention
Janet Dosseva watches staff members practice administering naloxone in the Westbrook library. It's a small action, part of a larger shift: her community coalition is stocking life-saving medication in…
OPTIONS Liaison Spotlight: Lacey Bailey
Lacey Bailey sits at the Sanford Police Department, radio in hand, waiting for the next call. As an OPTIONS Liaison in long-term recovery herself, she answers when people most need someone who underst…
OPTIONS Liaison Spotlight: Dawn Kearns
Dawn Kearns starts her day at 7 am checking overnight reports with Augusta police, then moves through libraries, shelters, and soup kitchens searching for people on her caseload. Years into her own re…
Tucker’s House in Bridgton
Kirsten Wears grew up watching someone she loved struggle with substance use disorder. Years later, laid off during the pandemic, she channeled that experience into founding Tucker's House, a women's…
SaVida Health: Addiction Treatment Program
Kyle spent years seeking help from program after program, carrying labels that made him feel like a burden. At SaVida Health, something shifted. His counselor saw past the addiction to the person unde…
Career Centers and Grant Program
Rene Smith watches workshop participants practice answering interview questions with HR professionals from local businesses. These mock interviews are part of something bigger: Maine's CareerCenters n…
Coastal Recovery Community Center
In 2016, neighbors gathered to talk about something no one wanted to ignore: substance use disorder was affecting their community. Three people from that conversation became recovery coaches. Today, t…
The Ahab Inside Me
A playwright learns his brother died from opiate addiction and reaches for what he knows: theater. Instead of seeking revenge against the disease, he stages plays that bring people with lived experien…
Safe Harbor
Four organizations in Machias decided to build something together: a recovery home where women could stay, with or without their children. Katie Sell manages Safe Harbor, making sure residents get tra…
OPTIONS Liaison Meets People Where They Are
Tom MacElhaney started his job as a resource guide during lockdown, when isolation hit hardest for people struggling with substances. As someone in long-term recovery himself, he saw the urgent need.…
Oliver Bradeen Born to be … a Responder!
Oliver Bradeen rides along with police officers to calls involving substance use, riding in an unmarked car to meet people in crisis. Now he coaches others doing the same work across Maine. He teaches…
Understanding Moral Suffering and Cultivating Moral Resilience
When you compromise your values to survive a difficult situation, the guilt can linger long after the moment passes. This piece explores moral suffering, the pain that comes from acting against what m…
Washington County Centers are a Bright Light
Amy Day parks on Main Street in Calais and unlocks the Downeast Recovery Support Center, where someone might be seeking naloxone, another attending a meeting, a third just needing a smile. In rural Wa…
What Makes SaVida Health Different?
Brian Garrity missed an appointment and spiraled into shame, convinced he'd lost his chance at recovery. Then messages arrived from his entire care team, checking in. At SaVida Health Maine, this isn'…
Gordon Smith
Gordon Smith wasn't trained in medicine or law enforcement. He was a lawyer guiding the Maine Medical Association for three decades when Gov. Janet Mills asked him to lead the state's opioid response.…
Maine Association of Recovery Residences
Ron Springel once told Betty Ford that recovery homes frightened him, filled with "convicts and drug addicts." She replied, "You'll fit in perfectly." Decades later, as executive director of Maine's r…
Law Enforcement Officers: Allies in Uniforms
Kennebunk Police Chief Bob MacKenzie watched the same people cycle through jail repeatedly until he realized the pattern pointed to one root cause: substance use disorder. That recognition shifted eve…
SaVida Health Favors ‘Compassionate Accountability’
A team member asked how to hold members accountable while showing support. That question, posed in August 2021, sparked SaVida Health's core philosophy: compassionate accountability. At their Maine op…
Lakes Region Recovery Center
Aaron Smart puts down whatever he's doing the moment someone walks through the door needing support. At Lakes Region Recovery Center's new Bridgton location, that responsiveness defines the work. Cert…
New Hope Alliance
Katahli and Daryl Blums married while building their recovery residence business together. They run two Maine certified homes where residents progress through phases, writing goodbye letters to their…
Small-town Filmmakers Provide a Way to Open Hearts, Change Perceptions
Small-town Filmmakers Provide a Way to Open Hearts, Change Perceptions
A Community Film and Conversation
A seventeen-year-old filmmaker named Tyler Muise watched an audience cry at his fifteen-minute film about a high school boy spiraling through substance use. What moved them most wasn't judgment or sha…
Thriving During the Holidays
A person navigates a family dinner in December, watching others raise glasses while holiday music plays. The season brings joy for many, but for those in recovery from substance use disorder, the holi…
Generational Noor
When Amran Osman's brother died from an overdose, she realized her Somali community stayed silent about substance use disorder. Fear kept people from seeking help. Now the 24-year-old is breaking that…
Recovery Discovery for NoMoPhobia
Maria reaches for her phone before her eyes open. When the battery dies during her commute, her chest tightens. She's not alone. Millions experience NoMoPhobia, an anxiety triggered by smartphone sepa…
The Maine Mom Program
A woman arrives at her first appointment terrified, ashamed, wondering how she got here. Dr. Alane O'Connor sees many tears at MaineMOM's initial visits. But this program in Maine doesn't judge. It me…
Recovering at El Rancho de la Vida
Jamie Lebish lived in a refrigerator box in Seattle before finding recovery. Now, twenty-four years sober, he runs El Rancho de la Vida, a Maine residence where people in early recovery find safety, d…
Know Your Rights: Good Samaritan Law in Maine
Someone witnesses an overdose and wants to call 911, but fear stops them. What if they have an outstanding warrant? What if their friend does? Maine's expanded Good Samaritan Law removes that barrier,…
A Family Affair: Gatehouse Treatment
Brian Kiloski answers the phone at GateHouse Treatment, placing people into recovery programs. Years ago, he was the one needing placement. Now he helps families understand that addiction touches ever…
Larry Labonte Recovery Center
When Lonnie Labonte lost friends to overdose and suicide, he knew exactly what to do with his inherited business space. Working with his mother Kathie, a person in recovery herself, they built the Lar…
Fresh Start Sober Living
Scott Pardy watched the same men cycle through the county jail year after year. Years into his own recovery, he saw the pattern clearly: no stable housing meant a return to use, then arrest, then jail…
The Power of Prevention-focused Coalitions
A student at South Portland High School used a substance and faced suspension, a punishment that left them adrift. Now, when students struggle with substance use, they meet with a counselor instead. T…
Recovery Community Center Corner
Three women in recovery in Millinocket decided to stop waiting for help and started their own. Four years later, Pir2Peer Recovery Community Center is outgrowing its space. Now moving to Medway, the c…
Eastern Maine Development Corporation (EMDC)
Lee Umphrey walks through Eastern Maine Development Corporation's Bangor office, where one in six employees is in recovery. For Umphrey, hiring people rebuilding their lives isn't a special program. I…
Employers Play a Vital Role
Doug Dunbar sat in jail wondering who would help the young, poor, sick people around him find the resources they desperately needed. Now a recovery specialist himself, he knows the answer: employers w…
The Phoenix
A woman drove past the gym five times before she found the courage to walk in. She had no fitness background, just a feeling she needed something. Today, she's a strong CrossFit athlete in recovery. T…
Seabreeze Property Services
When someone notices a perfectly manicured lawn in Maine, they might be looking at work done by a person in recovery. Seabreeze Property Services, the state's largest landscaping company, has built so…
Belonging & Purpose
Jordan answered the phone at the recovery community center's front desk, greeting someone calling for the first time. Later, as a volunteer recovery coach, he'd sit across from people sharing their da…
Hiring People in Recovery
Dana Lariviere got a phone call two years after firing Sarah, an employee who struggled with attendance. She was calling to apologize, explain her heroin addiction and recovery, and ask for her job ba…
Be A Positive Influencer
A teen takes the keys from a friend at a party. Another says no to a drink and means it. These moments matter more than you might think. This piece explores how young people become positive influencer…
Intentional Peer Supports
Someone shares their story with a peer support specialist in a way they've never shared before. That moment of genuine connection, where trust builds without judgment or commands, is where healing beg…
Healthy Communities A Team Effort
Jess was pregnant, in her early 30s, and seeking a second chance at recovery. When federal rules blocked her from residential treatment, her counselor fought to make an exception. Now, walking out of…
What Are Puff Bars?
Your colleague mentions Puff Bars casually, and you realize you're hearing about a vaping product designed to slip past the regulations that caught up with JUUL. These disposable devices pack nicotine…
The McAuley Residence
Nicole walks through the doors of the McAuley Residence as a single mother searching for a way forward. At this Portland transitional housing program, she discovers something she thought impossible: a…
Recovery Friendly Workplaces
Keith Hornberger needed one chance to turn his life around. As a business owner in recovery, he understood that hiring others facing the same struggle meant offering something invaluable: purpose and…
Recovery Works for ME
A peer support specialist at a recovery center watched employers turn away qualified candidates because of past convictions and employment gaps. That observation sparked a workshop teaching business o…
Finding Meaningful Work and Helping Others Find Theirs
Zachary Walker turns 30 this summer, settling into a cottage with his girlfriend while helping other Mainers find jobs and stability. Seven years into his recovery, he works as a Peer Connector for Go…
When in Doubt, Choose Challenge
The water was 38 degrees, and everything in her wanted to stay warm and dry. That's exactly why she jumped in. This piece explores how intentionally choosing difficult moments, whether it's an icy oce…
Bringing Love Into the Room
After a decade in public health meetings, Zoe Brokos realized something crucial: community itself is the healing tool. Not strategies or statistics, but people showing up together, accepting each othe…
Accessing Recovery Supports
Bruce Noddin sat in a prison ministry meeting when he noticed the same faces returning to the system again and again. That observation sparked a statewide network connecting corrections staff, nonprof…
Peer Recovery Coaching
Marcus sat across from his recovery coach, uncertain how to rebuild his life after treatment. His coach didn't tell him what to do. Instead, she asked questions that helped Marcus discover his own ans…
Calling All Inner Healers
Nancy Risley nearly died from hepatitis at thirteen. That brush with mortality set her on a different path: learning everything about healing her body and mind. Decades later, her Spa Tech Institute t…
Family Support Groups : help, hope and support for loved ones
Susan sat in a Nar Anon meeting nine years ago, worried sick about her son's addiction and unsure where to turn. She discovered something unexpected: she needed support too. Through the group, she lea…
The Farm – Maine’s oldest co-ed treatment center
Michael Yerema has watched people arrive at The Farm for 25 years, many from detox units or jail cells. Maine's oldest residential treatment center, nestled minutes from the Canadian border, offers so…
How Service Leads to Self-Esteem
Three months sober, the author sat in a group and cried. She realized she hated herself. Years of hiding behind alcohol, ambition, and designer things had masked a deeper truth: she felt unworthy. Rec…
Becoming a Recovery Ally : No special skills required
Amy walked into the Bangor Area Recovery Network expecting to offer little. She wasn't a counselor or doctor, had never known anyone in recovery until her own family's crisis hit. But sitting in a roo…
Mission Driven
Eddie Greyfox Burgess parks his turquoise 1965 Ford Fairlane at festivals and car shows, spreading health pamphlets and conversation. A former social worker and counselor in recovery since 1994, he tr…
Tech Support
Dr. Ted Logan didn't wait for a crisis to bring treatment online. Years before the pandemic, he moved his practice to video visits so rural Mainers could access care without driving hours or sacrifici…
Sophia’s House, a safe place to call home
In a restored convent on Lewiston's Blake Street, six women trafficking survivors will move into rooms of their own this year. Sophia's House offers two years rent-free, plus job training and support…
The Ripple Effect
Heatherly Wing stood before nearly a hundred women in prison, holding pages she'd written but never read. She was nervous about sharing Glenn Simpson's puzzle idea, a project where each person writes…
The Center for Grieving Children
Bill Hemmens walked through a door looking for help for his grieving niece and found it missing. That absence became a mission. Thirty-three years later, the Center for Grieving Children serves thousa…
Brotherly Love
Ten men sit in a circle on Middle Street in Portland, shoes off, voices steady as they speak about hurt and hope. For twenty-three years, Stephen Andrew's Courageous Men Circles have offered something…
Boots2Roots
Col. Dave Hickey returned home to Maine after military service and quickly noticed veterans struggling to find their footing in civilian life. That observation led to Boots2Roots, an organization prep…
MaineWorks works
On a dark Portland morning, Margo Walsh stands by a fire pit asking her workers if they have a place to sleep tonight. MaineWorks isn't just a construction company. It's a community built on the belie…
Recovery off the mainland’s a little different
Keith Ivers watches the sun rise from his boat, headed toward mainland meetings, then watches city lights fade as he returns to Peaks Island. On Maine's smallest islands, people in recovery navigate i…
All together now
On a Saturday night in downtown Brewer, 125 people crowd into a converted furniture store for peer support meetings and dancing. The BARN, a recovery center, has become a lifeline for people seeking c…
Community acupuncture works because wellness starts with ‘we’
An older woman with arthritis reclines beside a young man battling anxiety, a cancer patient managing nausea, and a person newly in recovery from substance use disorder. They're strangers in a warm, q…
Veterans find military experience helps their recovery efforts
Dan Blake adjusts his uniform, remembers the acronyms. The military taught him to follow orders, to trust a mission larger than himself. Years later, sitting in his first recovery meeting, he realizes…
Making Connections
A woman held up a sock monkey she'd stitched and said, "This is the first thing I've made in my life." In recovery programs across Maine, creative activities like painting, pottery, and fabric work ar…
The Family Restored
In 2011, families sitting in Portland church basements shared the same heartbreak: they had money for rent, for food, but not for treatment. From those conversations grew The Family Restored, an organ…
The Holy Donut
When Jen Horton walked into The Holy Donut for her job interview, she heard laughter and singing from behind the counter. The CEO smiled and said, "That's our culture. I love knowing people are happy…
Wellness – EFT
Karen St. Clair spent sixteen years chasing relief from debilitating pain through doctors and chiropractors. Then she discovered tapping. By tracing her physical suffering to trapped emotions through…
Quieting the Mind
Sarah Siegel sat alone in her room over fifteen hundred miles from her son, needle in arm, and understood she would die. She got on her knees and asked for help. What followed was meditation, a practi…
Fit For Recovery
Keagan Delaney takes a walk through Portland's nature trails most mornings, but his real fitness goes deeper. Two years into recovery, he's learned that getting physically strong builds the endurance…
Employers Open The Doors for Those in Recovery
Charlie Bickford runs Maine Paint's four locations and regularly hires people newly sober. When someone from a recovery meeting asks about work, he considers giving them a chance. His reasoning is sim…