Substance Use Treatment program will target young adults’ “developmental sweet spot.”

Leicester, North Carolina, March 31^st, 2014: 

Red Oak Recovery^®, an adventure-based drug and alcohol treatment program located in the Smokey Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina will begin accepting clients on April 16^th 2014. The program, founded by treatment industry veteran Mark Oerther, is designed to meet the unique developmental needs of male and female clients between the ages of 18 and 30.

“Developmentally, young adults differ greatly from adolescents and older adults,” says Kline, an experienced clinician who has helped design and run several treatment programs for two large, well-respected behavioral health organizations. “This sensitive developmental phase is well documented in clinical and brain research and has profound implications for substance use treatment.” Despite this research, says Kline, traditional treatment approaches fail to adequately address the unique developmental needs of young adults.

To address these needs, Red Oak Recovery^® balances the following approaches:

Gender-Separate Programming: Red Oak Recovery^® treats young men and women in separate programs to allow for sensitive topics, such as trauma and abuse, to be addressed according to gender-specific best practices. Red Oak Recovery^®’s single-gender approaches also account for important cognitive and emotional differences between male and female young adults.

Therapeutic Adventure Journeys™: Unlike traditional adventure-based treatment, Red Oak Recovery^® will offer individualized Therapeutic Adventure Journeys™. These brief, yet intensive journeys include fly fishing, white water rafting, rock climbing, backpacking, and canoeing.  Each unit is designed to teach and test specific recovery skills. “For young adult recovery,” says Oerther, “we have to remember that engagement is critical. So we’ve picked activities that are extremely fun—hence ‘Journeys.’ This teaches our clients appropriate ways to re-engage and enjoy life without the use of substances.”

Neural Recovery:Yoga, meditation, and martial arts are powerful, research-validated approaches for healing the brains of addicts in ways that aid the recovery process. This is particularly important for young adults whose brains are in the midst of a sensitive developmental phase with lifelong implications.

Nutritional Therapy: Clients will enjoy meals prepared by a professional chef featuring local farm-to-table ingredients and can take culinary-arts classes. Most of the cooking will take place in an open kitchen with both a Brazilian-style wood-fire grill and a brick pizza oven. Clients will also help grow much of the organic food that they will prepare and consume throughout the duration of the program. This hands-on approach to nutrition helps clients gain an appreciation for the role nutrition can play in their recovery from addiction, and in the physical and mental healing that follows.

Concentrated Clinical Work: Red Oak Recovery^® will quadruple the amount of therapist-led clinical work that typical treatment programs offer, says Kline. “We have a special opportunity with clients to do an enormous amount of therapy in a compressed timeframe. We don’t want to miss that opportunity.”

Milieu Assessment: Since recovery is a day-to-day process with both forward and backward progress, traditional pre- and post-program assessment is not enough, according to Oerther. “Our clinicians use every activity and interaction as part of a real-time, milieu-based assessment approach.” This kind of assessment is crucial for effective treatment, post-treatment planning, and aftercare support. Outcome data will be tracked and collected as part of an evidenced-based approach to treatment.

According to Red Oak Recovery^®’s founders, abstinence is only the first step in what should be an integrated, whole-person healing process. Red Oak Recovery^® is designed to provide healing that is physical, spiritual, cognitive, practical (i.e. life skills), and social in scope.