Hello! This is Chef Greg and this is my first installment of my long awaited and highly anticipated “Food For Thought” blog! First of all, I feel it’s important to let you know that I not only work in recovery but I am in recovery. I have had a lifelong battle with alcohol and drugs and until the last couple years the addiction won every single battle. Not today! Today through God’s grace and mercy I have no desire to drink alcohol or use drugs. Talk about a miracle!
I have been a chef for 15 years and I have covered the culinary spectrum. From 5 star hotels in Nashville and Richmond to yacht havens in the Florida Keys to catering and consulting for new restaurants, and universities… You get the point! I never dreamed a few years ago that I would be working at treatment center- maybe a patient- but not the chef! What a godsend this place has been to me! Not only do I get to be the chef but I get to share my own personal experiences of strength and hope with the guys and each new arrival helps to keep my memory green! To see how they change in their time here is something miraculous to behold. It looks a lot different from this side!
Well this concludes my first installment of my long awaited and highly anticipated “Food For Thought” blog. Now that you know a little about my story we’ll move on to what’s really important. The FOOD!!
Stay tuned and God Bless- Chef Greg
In the early weeks of treatment at Spirit Lake, I took the men on a hike through a section of our 66 acre woods. It wasn’t what I expected. And I’m sure it wasn’t what the men expected, either.
I’ve spent plenty of time in the woods in my life, hunting and hiking and exploring. And although I’d never actually been on this part of the property of Spirit Lake, I had no apprehensions about leading a hike. (In recovery, I think that is called “overconfidence.”)
What I expected to be a short forty-five minute hike, turned into a two hour grueling, arduous journey. We followed a ditch that was at one moment full of running water, then dry ground. And just when you thought the ground was firm, your leg would sink two feet into mud.
There were felled trees and stumps to crawl over and under.
The ditch twisted back and forth, never straight for any distance. You never knew what was to greet you around the next turn.
After two hours, I finally called a halt and we climbed out of the ditch on our hands and knees.
We were a sight! Wet and muddy from head to toe.
We sat on a log and reflected on our hike. Good natured fun was poked at each other’s misfortunes. Skinned chins and bruises were added up.
There was a sense of pride at having accomplished such a difficult journey, especially for some who had never hiked in the woods before.
I asked them what we should name the trail. Several ideas were bantered about until someone said, “It should be called ‘the Disease.’”
Immediately everyone understood the implications of the name. Traversing the disease is about unexpected turns, uncertainty, pain, confusion, frustration, anger, and fear.
It has now become sort of a “rite of passage” for everyone who stays at Spirit Lake to be taken to “The Disease.”
As the seasons have changed, the faces of “The Disease” have changed. She looks nothing today like she did in March. But she still remains unyielding and unmerciful in how she treats those who choose to travel her.
Check back here for periodic updates and reflections on “The Disease.”
- David Johnson, Treatment Director
Obviously this is a new blog and I’ve been spearheading the movement, but I really wanted the staff here at Spirit to get involved in blogdom as well. Our staff is passionate and committed to our mission and I’d love for visitors to our site to get a sense of that. After a conversation about the blog, our office manager/insurance liaison/admissions coordinator/go to gal for everything, Katrina, sent me an email sharing some things she’s been thinking about so I asked her to share in blog form. She has worked in the A&D field before Spirit Lake and has a huge heart for this work. Below is her post. ~Ginger
So this will be my very first blog……not the first blog for Spirit Lake….my first blog EVER; needless to say, I am very new at this. I just had a few thoughts on my mind that I wanted to share. I worked in Outpatient before God pushed me down my path to Spirit Lake. In Outpatient, I saw people(….clients, as we refer to them at work….family, as we think of them personally)……every day, 4 times a week. I came to know and love these people like they WERE my family. I still talk to several of them to this day, one of them being one of my very good friends or BFF’s, as we would joke (though meaning it deeply). But to see these people every day, all day is a new world for me!
It is amazing to me to see our clients/family after getting sober. You originally see them, the trouble they have encountered, the pain they have felt and caused, the shame they feel like they will never get over…….but you give them 40 days of sober time, 40 days of the hardest work you will never know if you have never been in that situation, 40 days of accomplishments, of accountability, of FREEDOM……you see a different person. You see them talking, and laughing, and sharing…..HEAD HELD HIGH. They learn to embrace these things they did, the people they hurt, the lies they told; not PROUD of them, but ACCEPTING them. They realize that those things don’t make them a terrible person, those things are just something they did while struggling with a disease! And there’s much more to them than the negatives and they start seeing the good in them. All those things make you better able to help the next person. Those things make you a story to save the next person’s life.
So imagine…..if 40 days could give you a sense of hope, a sense of “maybe I CAN do this”, a sense of “I am NOT alone in this disease”…..just imagine what 60 days or 90 days of sobriety can give you……..I guess what all this babbling is about is this: IF YOU DON’T HAVE IT, YOU CAN GET IT…..& IF YOU HAVE IT, YOU CAN HOLD ON TO IT……JUST FOR TODAY!
Katrina
