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Area nonprofit helps families affected by substance abuse
Pam Lanhart knows the struggles that families of addicts and alcoholics endure. That’s because she lived it with one of her sons, Jake, helping him grapple with his substance abuse that started at age 12 and would eventually lead to his death, 12 years later.
During that experience, the Burnsville mother of four navigated the landscape of various treatment centers and programs with her son.
Jake started using marijuana and alcohol in middle school, Lanhart said, and then later as a high schooler used opioid pain meds after he broke his femur in a rugby match. He would spend much of his teenage years in and out of treatment.
“By age 20, he had already been through over a dozen treatment programs, different treatment centers, outpatient and inpatient,” in Minnesota and elsewhere Lanhart recalled in a recent interview with The Phoenix Spirit.
During those years, she said that she identified a crucial “missing piece” of these programs: support for the families affected by a son or daughter’s substance abuse. “A key question I asked myself was, ‘What is the age-appropriate support for a 17-year-old trying to get into recovery?’ Well, support is the piece, wraparound support…especially for young people.”
Lanhart said that many programs offered the affected person plenty of support: social workers, probation officers, mentors and so on. But she continued, “The family piece was missing.”
So, in 2017, as Lanhart and her family coped with Jake’s struggle that included recovering briefly and then relapsing, she began pursuing an idea of an organization that would provide that missing piece of family support. She first developed the concept under the umbrella of a nonprofit. Then, in 2021, she went out on her own and formally established Thrive Family Recovery Resources, now in its fifth year of taking an uncommon approach to supporting, educating and focusing on families that have been impacted by addiction.
Based in Eagan but with a regional and national reach, the nonprofit “takes a family-first approach to addiction and recovery with evidence-based solutions grounded in compassion, understanding and love,” as stated on the organization’s website.
Meanwhile, as Thrive Family Recovery Resources continued in its development phase, Jake found recovery for several years and settled in Colorado where he had regularly vacationed with family while growing up. Lanhart said that he had moved there because he was drawn to the region.
“He loved Colorado and the mountains and he really embraced his recovery in Colorado,” Lanhart said. However, Jake eventually relapsed there and died of a drug overdose in October, 2021. The toxicology report showed a mixed drug intoxication of cocaine, meth and fentanyl. He was 24.
We are mindful that addiction affects all walks of life and all families … great parents can still have kids that struggle … for us, it was learning that our son is not bad, he’s ill, he’s unwell … there are biological and bio-chemical things that are happening for him … this isn’t a moral failing.
Launching Thrive to help families cope
“Thrive Family Recovery Resources educates and supports families impacted by addiction,” Lanhart stated. “We are mindful that addiction affects all walks of life and all families … great parents can still have kids that struggle … for us, it was learning that our son is not bad, he’s ill, he’s unwell … there are biological and bio-chemical things that are happening for him … this isn’t a moral failing.”
She added, “It’s not a parenting thing, not a black and white thing, not a rich or poor thing. It’s just something that can happen at just the wrong time and it triggers substance abuse.” Indeed, the cunning, baffling, powerful disease of addiction affects people of every wealth level, job type and social background.
Lanhart pointed out that Thrive Family Recovery Resources offers non-clinical support. “We’re nontherapeutic and non-clinical. We don’t do therapeutic services; it is peer-to-peer support.” Thrive employs six staff who are professionally trained “family-peer specialists” who also have lived experience in substance use recovery, though they are not considered therapeutic counselors.
This family support takes shape in four components of Thrive:
- Providing support groups for families
- Presenting educational workshops
- Offering one-on-one family peer support which involves the specialists helping to guide families through their own specific situations
- Navigating resources; in other words, “vetting systems of care that are out there,” Lanhart said.
Support groups are offered online and in-person. Educational workshops are provided regionally, in the Twin Cities and beyond, including locations such as Duluth and the Iron Range in northern Minnesota. These are sometimes presented in partnerships with counties or health care systems.
The one-on-one peer support is in person or online, and the frequency of meetings with the peer specialists varies.
Finally, the resource navigation component helps families to figure out and vet the large number of treatment centers and programs that are out there. Parents will often look for treatment programs for their son or daughter, according to Lanhart, but “so many of the places have never been properly vetted, and are totally unknown.” So, Thrive developed “a national network of ethical providers. “We vet treatment resources to make sure they are ethical and safe…because we don’t want a family to send their kid off somewhere unknown and have the experience end up being more harmful.”
The organization also has developed a national reach through Lanhart’s many nationwide contacts in the recovery community. This national element includes virtual meetings and a mentorship program.
Thrive is one of about 20 Recovery Community Organizations (RCOs) in Minnesota which are independent, grassroots, nonprofit groups led by people with experience in substance-use recovery, according to the Minnesota Alliance of Recovery Community Organizations. RCOs offer free, non-clinical, peer recovery support services, education and advocacy.
Funding for Thrive comes from three sources, according to Lanhart: grants, private donations and contracts that the organization has with various entities such as Allina Health System in the Twin Cities, Duluth-based Essentia Health System and some counties. “We have no billable services, and we don’t charge for anything right now,” Lanhart explained.
Families are finding help and support with Thrive . “Because of the work of Thrive… I have learned new skills and connected with other families to walk this journey towards recovery, not just for my son, but our whole family,” said Nancy Nelson, a Twin Cities parent who has used Thrive’s services. “[Our son] is currently celebrating eight years in recovery. This group helped this possibility become a reality.”
Learn more
Thrive Family Recovery Resources
(612) 504-5424 (Helpline)
Angelo Gentile is a Minneapolis freelance journalist who is a regular contributor to The Phoenix Spirit. He recently wrote about Traveling Sober. Photography by Tracy Walsh Photography.
