Healing In Recovery With Compassion With Rich Murphy
Join us for a heartfelt episode of Serenity Sit Down, where Father Jim welcomes Rich Murphy, the dedicated Director of Admissions and Marketing at The Retreat in Wayzata, Minnesota. In this episode, Rich shares his transformative journey from being a guest at The Retreat over eleven years ago to becoming a pivotal figure in helping others find their path to recovery. Discover the unique approach of The Retreat, a 12-step based recovery center that offers a supportive community of volunteers and staff, all of whom are actively working their own recovery programs. Rich's personal story and professional insights provide a compelling look into the life-changing impact of The Retreat’s programs and the compassionate care they offer to those seeking help.
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Healing In Recovery With Compassion With Rich Murphy
Compassionate And Caring Heart Opens Us Up For Healing
I'm here on the beautiful campus of The Retreat in Wayzata, Minnesota. With me on campus here is Rich Murphy, who is the Director of Admissions and Marketing here. We're here in Wayzata, Minnesota at The Retreat, a recovery center for people. Rich, thank you for being here. I look forward to talking to you a little bit about what you do here and a little bit about what The Retreat is all about. Thank you for being here.
You're welcome. I'm happy to be here.
Thank you. Tell me about The Retreat. What your responsibilities are here?
I'm the Director of Admissions and Marketing at The Retreat. We are a twelve-step recovery program, helping people dealing with substance use disorder, alcoholism, and addiction. We help people get connected to the recovery community. We have lots of volunteers that come in and bring workshops and meetings. We have a lovely staff that is all working their own program of recovery themselves. I'm also an alumnus of The Retreat’s program. I was here as a guest many years ago, and I did our 30-day residential program. I did a little over a year in one of The Retreat’s sober living houses in St. Paul. The Retreat changed my life. I had never made any attempt at recovery before. I had never even been to a twelve-step or AA meeting or anything. My family gently nudged me in this direction. I was desperate for help. I realized and it did change my life and save my life in a lot of ways.
Recovery is about connecting to a community. It's not just about stopping use, but finding a new way of life with people who understand and support you.
How did your family intervene with you or nudge you? How did they nudge you?
They did a full-on intervention. A close friend of mine who had been in recovery, they reached out to him and he got them in touch with someone who did twelve-step interventions. I’m the youngest of nine kids in my family. All my siblings flew out to Boston and a couple of my friends. They surprised me in a hotel room, read their letters to me about how my use affected their lives but it was done very lovingly. I think I always say I was mad for about five minutes and then I calmed down and I surrendered. It was my first surrender. My life was falling apart. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know if I wanted help. At that moment, I accepted that help and I'm grateful for it every day.
Are you still working with your family? How's your family doing? How was it because that's always an interesting conversation?
Improving Family Relationships Through Recovery
Things are going well with them. Like it says and the promises and everything, my relationships have completely improved, I had to move halfway across the country, but I'm closer with all of my family now than I was, especially in those last ten years of my active addictions. I'm able to show up much better. I'm able to call them. I answer the phone when they call. Things are good.
Addiction Recovery: In recovery, relationships improve. You become closer to family, more present, and able to show up in ways you couldn't before.
What type of work do you do here at The Retreat?
Working in admissions is a big piece of what I do, and it's what I love. I help people when they call and ask questions, be it family members or individuals looking for their own help. I work a lot with those family members when they're trying to figure out if we're the right program for their loved one and if their loved one would be interested in coming here. I have a small team that works with me as well, and we try to follow up with everyone once they reach out to us for help too.
They get a consistent message from us that we care and that we're interested in helping them. When they come out and reach out to you, do you sense fear and apprehension when they call you?
All the time. One of the things I like doing is trying to understand where they're coming from, and it makes it easier because I was that person on the other end of the phone.
Are you able to convey that a little bit?
Yeah.
I know that sometimes in our work certainly we believe in keeping things to ourselves. That's important to us, but when people come to you, are you able to share a little bit about your experience and how you came to The Retreat?
Absolutely. One of the nice things is we are able to talk about our own experience with recovery and what our program of recovery looks like now with guests when they're in our care and with people on the phone. One of the real highlights of The Retreat is that we are all working our own active programs of recovery. Especially when I'm digging in with someone, we have to ask questions about their use history. You can sense people getting stressed out by it sometimes. It's probably the first time they're admitting how much they've been using. They also are afraid to tell the truth for a lot of reasons. I understand all that because I felt the same way when I had to answer those questions. Sometimes I let people know that, “I was once on the other end of this phone call. It was hard for me to feel everything about myself, but it was the beginning of my recovery and my surrender.”
How long was that now?
Many years. It was 2012.
You had also mentioned, not just here at The Retreat where you do primary work with people. Tell me what makes The Retreat any different than any other facility.
The Retreat's Unique Approach To Recovery
What we try to do is offer people a practical model of what the twelve steps in a life of recovery can look like for you. A lot of people might have had experience at other treatment centers, or they're like me, they've had no experience, but they're at that point where they acknowledge that they want to change and that they want to achieve a life of sobriety to improve all their relationships in the way their life works. With people that are, that want to have that life, what we can do is show them what working the twelve steps is every day.
The 12 steps offer a practical model for living a life of recovery. It's not just theory, but a daily practice that can transform your life.
We help them work their way through steps 1 through 8 if they come for a 30-day residential program. They also get 400 volunteers every month that come in that bring workshops and twelve-step AA meetings every night. They get connected to people in the recovery community while they're here. They can find a sponsor. They can also see what types and styles of meetings they like because all these groups that come out hold their meeting like it's their home group. People can decide, “I like the big book meetings or the step meetings.” When they leave here and start going to meetings, they have connections to people. It seems a little less scary. They also get that practice of getting some of those scary steps under their belt while they're surrounded by other people in recovery.
Working on that fourth step inventory, doing a fifth step with another human being. Step three, admitting that you believe in a power greater than oneself or starting that journey of believing in some spirituality. All that stuff that can be scary out there. You get under your belt in a loving community that can help achieve that long-term sobriety.
What I find the most unique here, if I may be as bold. It's just not a clinical program, but it has more and more people who are alumni or people who have had the experience of recovery and they come in and experience what recovery has been. There's a large alumni program here where people can proceed with the conversation, “I've been here. I understand that you may or may not be going through. This is what I'm going through.” Would you say that that would be a strong model of why The Retreat looks to be a twelve-step immersion program?
I guess when we say we're not clinical. It means that we're not necessarily doing a lot of the bicycle social things with people. They're our guests, not our patients or clients. We do want to get everyone connected to the recovery community. This is what happened to me when I was here. I saw these volunteers come in and they talked about their life and recovery. Even though I didn't understand what the steps were or I didn't know what spirituality was, I wasn't interested in it, to be honest. I saw these people that were giving of their time and wanted to help others who seemed happy, and at peace.
Something sunk in with me. I said, “I think I want that.” By that and then sharing that with other people, I met people in recovery. I found a sponsor. I was given this roadmap of what life can look like without the aid of substances, which I didn't even think was possible. That was the key for me, then when I left here, I stayed connected with the people. I was here as a guest with the people that worked here with the volunteers. I came back and volunteered myself. I started going to meetings with alums and seeing a lot of other alums. What I love to do now is connect people with the alum. It starts right at the beginning where sometimes it might be calling from another city and they're on the fence about coming to Minnesota or coming far away.
I connect them with an alum who lives in their area and can tell them about their experience. We have alumni who love to volunteer. They like to be volunteer drivers. They'll go and pick people up at the airport, from a detox or a hospital, and bring them to us. In that 30-minute drive, they are hearing not from a professional, but another person in recovery, what their experience at The Retreat was like, what their experiences in recovery. Their fears go down a little bit when they enter our doors. It starts that whole spiritual process.
The door is open in hearts and minds, and hearts and minds very much if I may be as bold as I'm picking up.
Always. There's a Sunday night meeting that's an AA meeting. They come here and they use one of our big meeting rooms. It's a lot of alums. Our guests go to that as well. They see alums in action living a life of recovery. What a great way for them to see what life can be like on the other side.
Tell me a little bit about the guests here. Do you have a program for women and men or elderly? Could you share a little bit about what you offer for different venues for your guests here?
Programs Offered At The Retreat
We've got our residential programs. We have a men's program and a women's program. They have their own facilities. It's a separate program. Most people do our 30-day program, but we have longer extended programs of 60 to 90 days that a lot of people do as well, then we have what we call our non-residential programs, which would be our version of outpatient. We offer an evening program, we offer it on our main campus here in Rosetta. We also have a location in St. Paul, Minnesota.
You have another. That's great. Thank you.
That's two nights a week for around twelve weeks, 6:00 to 8:00 PM so people can be working full-time or taking care of the kids during the day, but they can get away and they can learn some of their own tools of recovery. A lot of our alum will go into that program, but it's open to everyone. There are a lot of people who might not be able to commit to a residential program for various reasons, but they can make this work in their schedule. We also have people who might have had some recovery but have relapsed and are looking for some extra structure and accountability.
We have another non-residential program called the 55Plus Program, which is our older adult program. We've been offering that for over a decade now. We've become a hub for older adults in recovery. That's two days a week during the day for people that are looking for that structured help, but also maybe due to some of their life circumstances like empty nest syndrome retirement and having too much time on their hands, grief over the loss of a loved one, that can lead to the progression of the drinking you're using. They're going to be in a program surrounded by their peers who are going through similar life circumstances that can have a lot of power as well.
Addiction Recovery: Recovery is possible at any age. Whether you're young or in your golden years, it's never too late to start a new chapter of sobriety and healing.
Certainly, the peer-to-peer activity in terms of recovery in the twelve-step model is what works. What else do you find that is exciting and different about The Retreat here in Wayzata?
You're going to have Sherry on at one point. She's our Family Program Director. We have this vibrant family program. It's a whole weekend long and it's for the loved ones to learn some of their own tools of recovery. While our guests are here working on their twelve of recovery, their family members and people in their support network can attend our program and start learning some of their own structured family recovery tools that mirror what their loved ones are learning up here. We offer them in person and also we offer a virtual option so people can't travel here, they can do it from home. It's open to anyone. You don't need to have a loved one coming to The Retreat.
Sometimes the loved one isn't ready for help, but the family wants some help for themselves. We can offer that to them. I love that program. We automatically included in everyone's program that comes here is for one person to participate in our family program for no additional costs because we want the family involved as soon as possible.
Spirituality in recovery is personal. It's not about religion, but about finding something greater than yourself to believe in and draw strength from.
Thank you very much. Any other insights that you can offer about The Retreat here in Wayzata?
Discovering Spirituality In Recovery
Something special happens here. I remember coming here and I said to my friend that helped organize my whole intervention and everything. He gave me a big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. I looked at him and I said, “I'll do it, but I'm not doing any of that God stuff.” Something happened here. The other guys in the program with me told me how they started to figure out what spirituality meant to them. It became palatable to me, and instead of having this contemptuous reaction to the concept of spirituality, my mind opened, and I was willing to believe in a power greater than myself, which started with other people in recovery who helped me. That was my second surrender, and my life changed because of this beautiful building and campus and all the people in it. I'm grateful for it.
It's the people in it that make it shine, isn't it? Thank you very much. It's always a joy to be with you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for being here presented by The Retreat in Wayzata, Minnesota. We look forward to you tuning in again. Have a great day, everyone.
