- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Friends & Family
submitted by: Susanne Johnson
Scott is the director of Agora House, a treatment center near Atlanta, Georgia, which specializes in helping young men recover from drug and alcohol issues and all kinds of other addiction use disorders. Agora House was founded years ago by Scott’s father and Scott helped him from the beginning. After his father got sick and could not continue his work, Scott was at the crossroads of either continuing his job or doing something else. He chose the more meaningful path and took over the legacy his father started to help young people get clean and sober. “One thing gave me a purpose and the other one didn’t,” he says about how he made his decision to leave his established business and stepped into leading Agora House as a full time opportunity.
Scott took his father’s platform and expanded on it. At Agora House, he and his clients are very closely connected and do a lot of recreational activities together as a group, joining charity runs, hiking trips, spending time outdoors, camping, organic vegetable gardening, and more. His work includes a lot of structure and accountability for the young men to learn life skills and responsibility. But fun activities like golf tournaments or chili cook-offs are also offered. Life in recovery should be structured, but fun. It’s all about the learning experience, that nobody has to be bored in recovery and that there can be lots of fun without the use of any substances.
“We are high risk individuals,” Scott says, “We don’t want to be bored or we are at risk for relapse.” The program is usually a 12 month program, but most decide to stay up to two years. Even mandated clients like to stay after their court mandated period is over. Since the program is very affordable, it often has a waiting list, but Scott tries to get people in as quickly as possible, if they qualify and he sees a good match.
Scott’s father was in recovery himself and was employed as a counselor for many years in the Atlanta area. He always said, “I want my own place,” and with Scott’s financial help and when an opportunity opened up, he founded Agora House, built a completely new program, and made it up to over 50 clients in a short time. Then they decided to dial it back down and focus more on quality than on quantity. Also he loved the idea of involving alumni in coming back. Therefore they started their own meetings in the area and they are led by alumni for the current clients. Alumni are also invited to join their camping or hiking trips.
“Agora House” stands for “Meeting Place,” but it has also another meaning for Scott and his family. His family is from Cleveland, Ohio, where his uncle owned a bar and nightclub with this name. His father worked there and that was where his addiction started, so he named the place where recovery starts after it to resemble a closed circle for himself.
Scott is in recovery himself. At age 22 he went into treatment for the first time and stayed in a halfway house for 16 months. He stayed sober for ten years and then relapsed. The relapse produced tension and problems in the relationship with his father, who was not only sober, but working as an addiction counselor. Scott did not want to expose his father to his sickness and as his own personal consequence he stayed away from him. His addiction went to a whole new level, as he added cocaine to the mix of alcohol and other things during these years of relapse.
It got really bad and he knew he need help again to overcome this addiction and contacted his father. His father was such a huge part of his sobriety before, so it was just the next step to reach out to him for help. Scott describes it as being God working in his life, because just shortly after this his father started to get sick. Scott’s complete family has struggled for generations with addiction– from grandparents to siblings– they are all affected with this disease. They also grieve multiple overdoses and suicides as result of addiction in their huge family.
Scott is married and has also children of his own and started the conversation with them about substance use, alcoholism and addiction. Since exposure to it is part of growing up, he wants them to trust him and come home and talk to him openly about what happens in their life.