Rethinking Addiction Recovery With Fitness

Welcome to the Phoenix Boston! I think about how many people are in this building today and I think how many people need this building and the only way we're going to get to them is if everybody who's here goes out and shares that recovery is possible. The Phoenix is a free, sober, active community and we use the transformative power of sport to help people heal from addiction. Addiction in our country is at a pandemic phase. When we started in 2006 we always knew we wanted to be a national non-profit so we started working with Stand Together to be able to meet the demand nationally but I never imagined we'd have the impact that we do today and it's grown even to a partnership with the Boston Red Sox. I got sober here within a half a mile of Fenway Park so to bring Phoenix to Boston is a pretty proud moment. For the first time I really think we can change the way the nation thinks about addiction. To be here doing a workout at Fenway is just powerful because the city I think really needs that beacon of hope around addiction and Phoenix can be that. I think in my early recovery I was in the boxing gym and I was racing triathlon and racing mountain bikes and what I started to realize is it was the people I was sharing that stuff with that was the real magic in my recovery and that's really where the idea of Phoenix was born from. You only have to be 48 hours clean and sober to be part of it. People come in for the workout but they end up staying for the new community that they've built. The way that we're approaching addiction nationally we just have the wrong mental model. We're doing acute care treatment that keeps people sober for 30 days but has really poor outcomes once they leave treatment. Our last survey showed that 86% of the people that come to Phoenix at three months have stayed sober. That outperforms a lot of treatment centers. We had this new innovative way that was working better but we couldn't get the word out to have it reach the people it needed to and then we met Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community that helps non-profit leaders take their work to a whole new level. They helped us with our business management philosophy. They were helping us establish a clear vision so we could drive the organization forward. We talked about Phoenix is going to grow and be all across the country. We're going to help thousands of people and they said why not hundreds of thousands of people or even millions because of the Stand Together community that we got partnered with the Red Sox. We've never seen a program like the Phoenix in my 20 years here. You know for us this is really the first time we've ever done a sort of sponsorship or partnership deal with a non-profit. It's just impressive what they do every day. They're using the ballpark for something we don't normally use it for so it's pretty neat. Today we're at Fenway Park doing a workout with a bunch of Phoenix people and first responders. This is a chance for them to realize like that person they helped out of their overdose actually found sobriety and now has this rich full life because of them. The partnership with the Red Sox has been great. Now we get to get the word out to the whole Red Sox nation. When we come together and work on this issue there's the possibility of a real solution. Recovery is possible and because of this partnership we get to amplify that message. It is now time for a ceremonial first pitch. Please welcome the founder and executive director of Phoenix, Scott Stroh. Like many of you in here there was a day that I put down a drink and a drug for the last time. I didn't think that I'd be able to accomplish all the things I did until people believed in me and now I get to share that belief with new folks coming in. So it's going to take all of us to do this but I have no doubt we can. Thank you. Because of the Stand Together community and local Boston donors we now have this beautiful 12,000 square foot building. We've gone from three states and seven communities to over 23 states and 48 communities with Phoenix programs and we're just getting started. Right now there's somebody using thinking that there's no hope and that's not true at all. We just have to scoop them up with love and get them to a Phoenix event and help them believe that recovery is possible and knowing that we can do that is what keeps driving me. Fighting stigma means to create a space where you're not ashamed of who you are. Imagine if as a society we could give that to each other. We don't have to be defined by just the chapters of our life in our addiction and maybe for the first time in our life actually be who we're meant to be. In our series Catalyst we're profiling inspiring social entrepreneurs who are developing bold solutions to our biggest problems. Subscribe to Freethink now and be the first to see new episodes.