Lakeview Health Alumni

July 16, 2019 | Lakeview Health |

True North Alumni Program

At Lakeview Health, we never stop guiding our alumni to find their true north. Navigating recovery can be difficult, that’s why we’ve developed a robust aftercare and alumni network to support our Lakeview Health Alumni at every stage of the recovery process. Our True North Alumni are over 20,000 strong and act as a positive force in the community, while also helping to support all newcomers or those in hard times.

While in our care, we teach you the skills required for a successful launch. After that, the responsibility shifts to you, but we neither expect nor want you to do it alone. In the grand scheme of things, your time in treatment is short in comparison to the full arc of your recovery. To make the lessons you learn at Lakeview Health stick – and to navigate the ups and downs of the process – we offer ongoing support. By ongoing we mean months and years, not just days and weeks.

Certified Recovery Coaches

Certified Recovery Coaches provide support via phone call, email, and social media. They are available 24/7 if you need assistance.

Local & Virtual Support Groups

Our Lakeview Health Alumni Team hosts local support groups in Jacksonville, FL and the Woodlands, TX. These groups are available to all of our alumni through video conferencing.

Family Support

Our Alumni Coordinators also make themselves available to connect with family members and loved ones of our alumni.

Sober Lifestyle Events

True North Alumni members are invited to join us at our monthly outings. We host local meetups for food, fun, and fellowship.

Lakeview Health Alumni Ambassadors

Finding support in your local area can be challenging at first. Our team can help link you up with other True North Alumni in your area.

Online Community

With almost 2,000 members, we have built a strong support network for our alumni to rely on when they need it most.

Social Support: An Essential Component of Recovery

Our biopsychosocial approach to treatment places as much emphasis on the social aspect of your sustained sobriety as on the biological and psychological aspects. You spend a great deal of your time in treatment learning about your addiction, unlearning old habits, and forming new ones. Our clinical staff monitors the biological and psychological aspects of your recovery, but that’s not the entire picture. You also get a solid and practical understanding of how social support groups work.

Research indicates social support is more crucial than most people realize. An important statistic many aren’t aware of:

“People who add at least one non-drinking member to their social network show a 27 percent increase at 12 months post-treatment in the likelihood of treatment success, and sustaining abstinence.”

Simply put, adding just one sober person to your life dramatically increases your chances of staying sober.

Our Alumni Network

At Lakeview Health, we make sure you don’t have to go looking for one person because we are that person – our True North Alumni network is more than 20,000 strong. It’s a group of caring people also in recovery and completely committed to supporting you on your journey. Many Lakeview Health alumni live close to our centers in Jacksonville, Florida and The Woodlands, Texas, but our network spans the nation. From Juneau, Alaska to Prescott, Arizona to Providence, Rhode Island, our people are everywhere. If you reach out, they are there for you.

Lakeview Health Addiction Treatment Alumni Program

If you reach out, our alumni will be there for you. Here are just a few benefits our Alumni Services program include:

Regularly scheduled emails, phone calls, and text messages

We schedule check-ins at 48hr (hours), 2 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, and 1-year post-treatment. We want to continue to support you as much as necessary. If you have trouble finding a sponsor, Lakeview alumni can fill in until you find the right person for you.

Private Facebook Groups

We monitor our Facebook groups regularly and read between the lines to identify struggling alumni, then reach out if we feel we need to help. We don’t advocate helicopter sponsoring, but we do follow our instincts.

Regularly scheduled healthy lifestyle activities

Our sober alumni activities are a blast. Ever done an escape room? We do that. Think your days of going to weekend or week-long music festivals are over? They’re not. Our alumni often attend festivals together, hold one another accountable, and help one another share in a fellowship of fun. Believe it or not, many festivals – including Burning Man, Bonnaroo, Coachella, Lollapalooza, and many more – include daily support meetings. We help connect you with the resources you need to keep your sobriety intact through these and other potential risky events.

Professional and personal support

Our Lakeview Health alumni support can help explain gaps in your resume to potential employers, give you advice on how to re-enter the dating world after rehab, and navigate unexpectedly challenging events like office parties or simply walking down the beverage aisle at the grocery store. Sometimes it’s the small things that can trip you up. We’re here to help you see them before they occur, or offer a helping hand if you stumble.

Check out our upcoming alumni events to see our list of upcoming activities.

Alumni Testimonial: Rex’s Story

Rex joined us for the Rose of Lakeview Dedication and Ribbon Cutting and asked if anyone from the call center was here, specifically Tarshi. He wanted to meet her since she is the intake specialist he spoke with before coming to Lakeview. The two were introduced. Upon meeting Tarshi, Rex was brought to tears saying Tarshi was the one who saved his life because she kept in touch with him every couple of hours, and if it wasn’t for her he wouldn’t have admitted himself to Lakeview Health for treatment.

Rex, Lakeview Alumni on the right, meeting Tarshi, Lakeview Health intake specialist, on the left.

Meet The Lakeview Health Alumni Support Team

Lexie Leehan, Certified Recovery Coach — Alumni and Aftercare Supervisor

Lexie Leehan, CRC is the Alumni and Aftercare Supervisor for Lakeview Health. As an alumna of the program, she understands what our patients go through. Both while they are here and after they discharge. Originally from a small town in Northwest Pennsylvania, Lexie made the decision to completely change her people, places and things, and come to Jacksonville, Florida to begin her journey in recovery. After completing treatment in January 2015, she went to a local sober living in Jacksonville. There, she started engaging with our True North Alumni support groups and events. In 2017, Lakeview Health hired Lexie as the Aftercare Coordinator at the Rose knowing she would be able to use her personal experience to help other women. Lexie believes Lakeview Health gave her the knowledge and the tools she needed to stay sober and says she feels honored to pay it forward to patients during their stay with us and afterward as True North Alumni.

Ryan Teague, Certified Recovery Coach — Alumni Coordinator

Ryan Teague, CRC is an Alumni Coordinator for Lakeview Health. His own personal journey through addiction allows for a unique and personal approach to helping people recover. For Ryan, being able to give back to the recovery community is very gratifying. He considers helping the newcomer find the path to long-term recovery a privilege and necessary for his own recovery. Born in St. Louis, he moved to the Jacksonville Beach area in 1986 and has been there ever since. When he is not at work or in an AA meeting he enjoys golfing and taking his boat out.

Rex Taylor, Certified Recovery Coach — Aftercare and Alumni Coordinator

Rex Taylor, CRC is an Aftercare Alumni Coordinator assisting patients in setting up aftercare resources in their local areas such as sober living, individual therapy, psychiatrists, or intensive outpatient services. His experience as an alumnus of Lakeview Health motivated Rex to become a Certified Recovery Coach and pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Services with a focus on addiction. When he isn’t working with patients and sharing his recovery journey, Rex enjoys spending time with his wife and son.

Kelsey Griffith — Alumni Coordinator – Lakeview Health at The Woodlands, TX

Kelsey Griffith joined Lakeview Health in 2018 as a Behavioral Health Associate and the Alumni Aftercare Coordinator at Lakeview Health at The Woodlands, Texas. Originally from Blackwood, New Jersey, Kelsey moved to Spring, Texas to change her environment and give her recovery a chance. After completing treatment in 2015, she dove into Alcoholics Anonymous and finally started doing all that had been suggested to her for so many years. She is a person of long term recovery and hopes patients will someday say the same thing about themselves. In her role at Lakeview, she is responsible for coordinating alumni events, including a staff-alumni softball team, service events, and other sober fun activities. Kelsey is incredibly passionate about her job and loves helping others get back on their feet to realize and achieve their full potential.

Melodie Wegner — Alumni Coordinator

Melodie Wegner adds a special element to her role as an Alumni Coordinator because she is also an alumna of the program. She credits having the support of Lakeview Health’s alumni program and aftercare services as a major reason why she has maintained her sobriety. Melodie understands being amongst peers in recovery allows them to be more transparent and open not only in times of struggle, but also in successes. She believes it is a privilege to be in this role because she has a deeper understanding of what it takes to be successful in recovery having gone through and applied what she learned in treatment at Lakeview Health.