Welcome to LeMont Michel –

a kind of community laboratory where people learn how to stay sober in the real world. It is a home, yes, but it is also part of a larger system of recovery support resources and services that the Salt Lake City metropolitan area has to offer. At LeMont Michel, residents learn how to integrate those resources and services into their own recovery plan. I hope you will consider making our home your home … we can work together to turn your present foothold in sobriety into a lifelong process of recovery.

It is not always easy for those in recovery to rejoin their community. There are those in any community who have fears about recovering people. Most of these fears are unjustified, some are quite bigoted, but many of them are understandable. Chief among these fears is the mistaken belief that to call a person in “recovery” means they are not yet abstinent from drugs and alcohol. That is simply false – every resident at LeMont Michel has worked hard to secure his abstinence from drugs and alcohol before they even arrive at our home. Another unreasonable fear is that recovering persons are violent, or that they steal from their neighbors to buy drugs. This is far rarer than the evening news might have us believe. These beliefs are part of the negative stereotypes that people in the community project onto all recovering people. Sometimes treatment centers unwittingly strengthen these stereotypes by using language that reinforces stigma, or by using fear-based messages and coercion to try to motivate people into sobriety. All of this paints a picture of recovering people as damaged, dangerous, and destined never to get sober.

The real truth is people get sober all the time.

As I flight surgeon, I watched severe alcoholics get sober and go back to flying fighter jets. This gave me a strong sense that if addicts receive support for their recovery from a strengths-based, person-centered, non-punitive, solution-focused system of care, they can return to a life of dignity, productivity, and joy.

I’m convinced that there is nothing all that special about these addicted doctors, pilots and lawyers who enter treatment and have such high success rates in recovery. I believe that if all recovering people were given the same kind of support impaired professionals receive, they would stay sober too. Or, at the very least, they would be a lot closer to reaching their goals of recovery.

Addiction is powerful, yes, but recovery is stronger.

So why do these doctors, pilots, and lawyers have such high success rates in getting through their first year of recovery? Well, more research needs to be done to answer that question definitively, but it probably has a lot to do with the fact that they have something called Recovery Capital.

Recovery Capital (Cloud and Granfield,, 2004) is a concept that emerged from a strengths-based perspective on recovery – one that focuses less on pathology and what’s wrong with a newly-sober person, than on their resources and resiliency, or “what’s right” in their life that can support their recovery.

Recovery Capital refers to “the quantity and quality of internal and external resources that one can bring to bear to initiate and sustain recovery from addiction.”

applied recovery and LeMont Michel are specifically designed to help residents accumulate as much recovery capital as they can and put it to good work to stay sober. The things that make up recovery capital are strong social supports to friends and family, a concept of spirituality, attendance and affiliation with mutual support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, and the ability to find meaning and purpose in life’s journey.

What is “recovery?”

In September of 2005, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) – part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) – convened the first National Summit on Recovery in Washington, D.C.

The Summit was a giant meeting of a broad range of people working on the problem of addiction – from treatment providers to researchers to local, state and federal government officials. Its purpose was to discuss the concept of “recovery” - to define it, to devise methods of measuring it, and to recognize and celebrate all the diverse ways it manifests itself in the lives of recovering people. Summit participants succeeded in creating a broad-based consensus on the principles that should guide the creation of community-based recovery support systems, and they made recommendations as to what resources should be put in place to use these systems to help people who need recovery.

The consensus definition of recovery arrived at during the National Summit on Recovery was:

Recovery from alcohol and drug problems is a process of change through which an individual achieves abstinence and improved health, wellness, and quality of life.

At the Summit a set of Guiding Principles of Recovery were agreed upon, and recommended to treatment providers and other community-based recovery support services (such as sober living houses and aftercare programs) to promote improvements in care and enhance program coordination.

The Guiding Principles of Recovery are as follows:

1. There are many pathways to recovery.
2. Recovery is self-directed and empowering.
3. Recovery involves a personal recognition of the need for change and transformation.
4. Recovery is holistic.
5. Recovery has cultural dimensions.
6. Recovery exists on a continuum of improved health and wellness.
7. Recovery emerges from hope and gratitude.
8. Recovery involves a process of healing and self-redefinition.
9. Recovery involves addressing discrimination and transcending shame and stigma.
10. Recovery is supported by peers and allies.
11. Recovery involves (re)joining and (re)building a life in the community.
12. Recovery is a reality.

We worked hard to keep these principles in mind when we designed the applied recovery program and life at LeMont Michel.

What are Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care (ROSCs)?

One clear consensus at the National Summit of Recovery was the need to create Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care (ROSCs) in every community to help people more easily enter recovery and receive support so they can sustain it over time.

Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care (ROSCs) support person-centered and self-directed approaches to care that build on the strengths and resilience of individuals, families, and communities to take responsibility for their sustained health, wellness and recovery from drug and alcohol problems.

One way to think of Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care is as the sum total of all the resources in a community that support recovery – addiction physicians, therapists and counselors, faith-based organizations, mutual support groups (such as A.A.), even schools and workplaces – brought together so they can provide a diverse but comprehensive set of services for recovering people to establish and sustain their life of sobriety.

According to CSAT, Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care contain the following elements:

ROSCs are person-centered.
Individuals have available to them a menu of services that fit their needs throughout the recovery process. ROSCs involve family and other allies.
ROSCs acknowledge the important role of the family in securing sobriety. Families and other allies are incorporated into the resident’s recovery plan and support system.
ROSC services are individualized and comprehensive across the recovering person’s lifespan.
These systems are flexible and adapt to the needs of the individual rather than require the individual to adapt to them. These services are comprehensive and ongoing to support recovery long into the individual’s future. ROSCs are anchored in the community.
Services are nested in the community for the purpose of enhancing the availability and support capacities of families, intimate social networks, community-based institutions and other people in recovery.
ROSCs provide continuity of care.
Care is available along the entire process of addiction and recovery, from pretreatment, to treatment, to continuing care as abstinence progresses into the future. Individuals have a wide range of services appropriate to their stage of motivation for change.
ROSCs are partnership-consultant relationships.
Care relationships are patterned after a partnership-consultant model that focuses more on collaboration and less on hierarchy. Systems are designed so that individuals feel empowered to direct their own recovery.
ROSCs are strength-based.
They emphasize individual strengths, assets and resiliencies.
ROSCs are culturally responsive.
Individuals encounter care that is culturally sensitive, competent and responsive. It recognizes that beliefs and customs are diverse and can impact recovery efforts.
ROSCs are responsible to personal belief systems.
Individuals encounter care that respects the spiritual, religious, and/or secular beliefs of those they serve and provides linkages to recovery options that are consistent with those beliefs.
ROSCs are committed to peer recovery support services.
Systems of care include peer recovery support. Individuals with personal experience of recovery will provide these valuable services.
ROSCs include the voices and experiences of recovering persons and their families.
People in recovery and their family members will be included in the design and implementation of recovery services, will participate in decision-making and oversight of service provision, and will be prominently and authentically represented on councils, committees, boards and task forces at local, state and federal levels.
ROSCs will integrate services.
Systems of care will coordinate and integrate efforts to respond effectively to each individual’s needs. ROSCs will ensure systems-wide education and training.
Concepts of recovery and wellness will be foundational elements of curricula, certification, licensure and accreditation. The workforce will require continual training to reinforce the tenets of ROSCs.
ROSCs will provide ongoing monitoring and feedback.
Systems of care will promote continual participation, re-motivation and reengagement of participants.
ROSCs will be outcomes-driven.
Systems of care will measure outcomes and will include benchmarks of quality-of-life changes.
ROSCs will be research-based.
The practices of systems of care will be informed by research and based on the best available evidence to aid in decision-making.
ROSCs will be adequately and flexibly financed.
Systems will be financed to permit access to a full continuum of services ranging from detoxification and treatment to continuing care and recovery support.

We take very seriously the direction from CSAT to follow these guiding principles of recovery and integrate these elements of ROSCs into the program at LeMont Michel. We have used these statements, recommendations and principles as a blueprint in designing applied recovery and life in our home. We respect each resident’s values and beliefs in helping them formulate an individualized yet comprehensive recovery plan. We support healthy involvement with their family and recovery allies. LeMont Michel is situated in the community to help residents take advantage of all the local recovery resources available in the Salt Lake City area. Our program emphasizes each resident’s strengths over their weaknesses, and their resilience over disability. Staff relationships with residents are partnerships and non-hierarchical. All decisions out recovery plans are shared. The program at LeMont Michel is culturally responsive and respectful of each individual’s religious and spiritual beliefs. A major element of care is empathic support from peers – both fellow residents and recovering staff members – to help each resident meet the challenges of early sobriety with dignity and success. Staff continually assist residents in integrating their care – 12-Step meetings, appointments with their addictionologist, medication administration, counseling, faith-based support and vocational/educational activities – so it can be responsive to their changing needs as recovery progresses. And LeMont Michel measures outcomes of care in real-time, with daily data collection to document abstinence, track addiction symptomology, and measure each resident’s engagement in the program, as well as each customer’s level of satisfaction.
From the ground up, we designed our program to follow the latest consensus guidelines, based on the best available research, accountable to the highest standard of care in addiction treatment. We are confident these guidelines and principles will serve our program - our staff and residents – well, and long into the future.
So LeMont Michel is much more than just a sober living house. It is the finest, most up-to-date, cutting edge, recovery support program to be found in the addiction treatment industry.

I hope you will consider living in our home and joining our family. People get sober all the time here at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. We want you to be one of them!