Archway Marks 1st Year

By Caleb Chapman, Kerrville Daily Times, Texas

Jun. 23–Kerrville’s Archway Recovery Center has been helping addicts break the habit for the past year. The area’s only intensive outpatient program celebrates its first anniversary this month.

The center opened last summer in the Healing Arts Center on Fairway Drive in an effort to help the recovering community avoid relapsing after leaving inpatient programs.

“We have a lot of people who come out of residential treatment and who don’t feel ready to get back into society, “said Bill Barnes, a licensed chemical dependency counselor and the clinical program director. “We are able to help them apply the principles of recovery into everyday life.”

Administrative director Marion Watson said although some patients may come from residential, inpatient recovery programs, Archway serves as a primary recovery center.

“Some folks need the most intensive care — residential treatment — and we point them in that direction if that’s what they need. But we also work with many who can get treatment without leaving society,” Watson said. “You don’t need to stop your life to stop your addiction.”

Barnes said the program consist of four key components.

The first is a strong 12-step, spiritually based program, followed by life skill development, relapse prevention and family group sessions.

The program lasts eight to 10 weeks, but Watson said the support system can last as long as needed.

That support may include going with recovering addicts to additional types of therapy, such as Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

“We want to walk them through things that are hard and difficult,” Watson said. “Instead of pushing them through recovery from behind, we really try to walk beside them through this process.

“Recovery is not about sustaining but building a quality of life.”

In the past year, Watson said, about 50 people have completed the program, and about 80 percent have remained connected in some capacity with the center.

Barnes isn’t surprised with that number.

“The strength of the outpatient program is that it helps people out in the real world, and it gives them a strong support system,” Barnes said. “We are doing phenomenal work here.”

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