A Message from our Founder & CEO
Arrowhead Lodge: Substance Abuse Treatment for Men in Arizona
The question: “What makes Arrowhead Lodge different from other recovery programs?” is one I get asked on a regular basis. Each time the question comes up, I think about how and why Arrowhead Lodge got started and what it has meant to the men who have benefited from their experience with us.
There are several reasons I can give you to answer “What” makes us different, but there is one reason for “Why.”
In 1988 my marriage of thirteen years had unraveled, I was miserable and I started drinking – again. I left my family and moved across the country in an effort to survive the inner emotional and spiritual turmoil that consumed me. For the next six years I sought therapy while my drinking escalated and my career started to tailspin. I remarried but that was short-lived. The drinking got worse and I sank emotionally and spiritually to what became my bottom.
On January 10, 1994 I surrendered to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in an effort to stop the tortuous pain I felt deep inside. The next ten months were the worse ten months of my life. I had stopped drinking, but emotionally and spiritually I deteriorated to the point panic attacks and despair that culminated in the planning of my suicide. My psychotherapist admitted me to a mental health facility where I was placed on suicide watch. That facility was what was called a dual-diagnosis treatment facility. I was indeed an alcoholic, but I was also clinically depressed with acute anxiety disorder. I was hopeless and dreaded the thought of continuing to live like I was living.
In that facility I had an epiphany: I realized that there was a way out of the darkness and terror and something shifted inside me when that realization occurred.
The purpose of the inpatient facility was to stabilize me and that’s what it did; however, I was still a shell of a man. I needed a residential long-term rehabilitation program that catered to men like me – about 40 years old, diagnosed with alcohol dependency and clinical depression and acute anxiety. Unfortunately there was no program available for men like me that offered a long-term solution.
I spent the next several months living in my sister’s basement and then in a room over someone’s garage and then in a two-bedroom apartment. In the privacy of my bedroom I cried and screamed and cried and screamed for days until there was no more. It took several months of attending AA meetings, psychotherapy, long-distance running, reading books and working with my sponsor before I started feeling somewhat “normal.”
Something inside me drove me to write a book about my experience and to start a men’s group where men could talk about anything they needed to talk about.
My experience is the “Why” of Arrowhead Lodge. I needed a safe place to fall apart and none existed. The thought occurred to me that other men needed a safe place too. Arrowhead Lodge is that safe place.
If you, or your loved one can identify with the why of Arrowhead Lodge, then I personally invite you to call us now. We are men helping men recover from substance abuse and co-occurring disorders. We understand addiction and more importantly we understand the empty, hollow feeling that addiction creates.
Give us a call now to see if we can help you.
With sincere regards,
Kenneth Chance, D.Div.
Arrowhead Lodge
CEO & Founder
