Vida Nova Recovery earns international accreditation

So any new client entering our building, this is where they would come in. So they're greeted right here by usually myself and our office intake manager. They're usually greeted with a big hug. Vita Nova is a six-week inpatient treatment program that offers a full medical detox as well. So you can detox in our building and then do a six-week program. And then you also have the option to move into our sober living cottages, which we have 20 beds, 10 cottages, and you can stay in there for up to three months. And you can still avail of the programming in the building while you're doing that. You can come to and from work, things like that. And yeah, so, you know, I think we're the only facility that offers a six-week program. And then also the only one that has adjoining sober living cottages to it. So you can potentially stay with us for four and a half months. So we feel like that's a lot longer than other places. And yeah, it's helping people stay cleaner longer. Can you give us a sense of who comes through your door? Everyone. Yeah, all different types of people. You can be 18, you can be 70. We're noticing that addiction does not discriminate. You know, everyone struggles. So yeah, it's hard to pinpoint one demographic, one thing. Newfoundland is a very heavy drinking province. It's ingrained in our culture in ways. So alcohol is big, but there is a major epidemic with drugs, with hard drugs, with fentanyl, opioids, cocaine, crack, heroin, are also rampant in Newfoundland as well. So it is a mixture of both, but both very, very dangerous and scary right now. Me, myself, I struggled. I've been clean for multiple years now, but I think daily about still being out there and the way that the drugs have changed and the stronger that they've gotten and more potent and lethal. It's so frightening to think that, you know, the person out there using today, it very well could be their last use. That's the way the drugs are today. So they're very unforgiving. And yet it's very, very scary out there right now from what I'm hearing and what we see every day ourselves. My journey started about, you know, about seven years ago when I had a few traumatic experiences go down in my life. I turned to alcohol and started abusing it, unfortunately, but, you know, that happens. I've been in treatment three times, twice in this province, once in the Grey Centre, once here. One thing about here, I mean, it's a six-week program instead of a four-week program and it's just more about connection here. You build connection and the aftercare is actually really well here. Like, they follow up. I mean, they just genuinely care about you here. What does it take to kind of make the decision to get help and to carry through with it? At first, it was really hard for me. I didn't want to admit that I was abusing a substance. I felt, I guess, that people were going to judge me type deal if I said it to people. But once I get over that stigma and get that help, like here it was one-on-one counselling and group counselling and stuff like that. I dealt with that issue. So I'm doing so much better right now. It's just a phenomenal experience here and, like, I feel like a new man. It's great. Well, I think the hardest thing for people to do is to realize, of course, first if they have an issue and then really difficult to come to the doors because they don't know what they're going to expect. They don't know if they're, you know, if they're going to be judged or have any negative components. And so we've made a lot of effort in connection and keeping a very warm, welcome environment. And as they go through here, their whole life then has to be really recovery. So we want to give people the chance to heal in whatever way will work for them. So we have sauna, sensory deprivation tank. We do hypnosis, Reiki. But we also look at the pharmacology, which we have medical people for. And so that we can look at all sides and keep everybody open to all different ways of healing. When I made the decision to get clean and knew that I had a problem and wanted help, I had an army of people pick me up and scoop me off and surround me and help me. And I knew and I realized that not everyone is as lucky as I am and certainly was at that time. And I think VitaNova was born from that belief in that everyone deserves to have that army behind them, supporting them and caring for them. And that's what we do here. So it's that continuity of care that when you come into VitaNova, you are entering a family that we hope you stay with forever. VitaNova is a private treatment facility, but we have been working with the Newfoundland government to take people off of the central waitlist. So there's a central waitlist that anyone looking for a public bed in Newfoundland would go on to. And before that you would go on that list and you would either go to the Grace in Harbour Grace or you'd go to Humberwood in Corner Brook. And so recently VitaNova became the third facility taking people off that central waitlist to help cut down on wait times for public treatment. Because right now I think the wait time is around 12 to potentially 14 or 16 weeks. So which is incredibly high. It must be hard for someone if they want treatment to have to wait that long. It's 100%. You know, we need, we would love, and I'm sure the province would agree, you want to be in a place when someone says I need help, they're able to leave the next day. Tell me about the significance of being accredited because that just happened, right? It did, yes. So we just became accredited about two weeks ago. You know, I think like it does a bunch of things. I think, you know, first and foremost it validates what we've been doing here. It shows that, you know, the last year the things that we've been putting in place and implementing work. Our numbers also support that in the success rate of people going through the program. It gives us the ability to reach more people and help more people. And that's huge for us because that's what we're all about. We would love to be able to help every Newfoundlander and Labradorian struggling in this province. And that accreditation gives government and NL Health Services, I think that validation as well that, okay, this is a good business. This is someone that we can work with. So we're very hopeful that we can continue to take people off that central waitlist. Yeah, after maybe some more discussions with government. How many people have gone through the program? So we've roughly put around 65 people through the program since we opened our doors 11 months ago. And we have a very, very high success rate right now, which is excellent. We understand that we've only been open 11 months and that can, you know, we'll probably go down a little bit. But yeah, it's just, it really, yeah, it shows what we're doing here is working. And yeah, we're very excited about the future.