Addiction: The Next Step
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Addiction: The Next Step
I Wanna ROCovery: Healing Through Fitness
What if the road to recovery wasn't just about what you give up, but what you gain? This episode offers a deep dive into the transformative power of integrating fitness and recovery, featuring Jonathan Westfall from ROCovery Fitness in Rochester, New York. Discover how ROCovery redefines the healing journey, offering a vibrant community that combines physical activity with recovery support to foster mental and physical well-being. From hiking and running to art clubs, the inclusivity and comprehensive range of activities ensure everyone can find their path to empowerment and healing.
https://www.rocoveryfitness.org/
The New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports, or OASAS, provides this podcast as a public service. Thoughts and opinions expressed do not necessarily represent or reflect those of the agency or state. This is Addiction: The Next Step.
Jerry Gretzinger:Jerry Gretzinger, here, your host for Addiction: The Next Step, and you know it comes to you from the New York State Offices of Addiction Services and Supports. Today we've got a really cool topic to talk about, a really cool program, and I say this because it not only speaks to the mental health of an individual and their work through substance use, obviously, but also it really works towards their physical health, their physical well-being, and it brings everything together in a really great combination of efforts to, I guess, address the whole wellness of a person, right? And so I want to introduce you to Jonathan Westfall. He's joining us today from ROC overy Fitness and ROCovery. We're out of Rochester, right there, Jon?
Jonathan Westfall:Yeah, that's correct, Jerry. Yep. Rochester, New York, beautiful sunny Rochester, New York, today, actually.
Jerry Gretzinger:You know, we get very fortunate some days, don't we? With the blue skies.
Jonathan Westfall:Yeah, we sure have.
Jerry Gretzinger:All right. So I kind of stumbled through doing my little explanation as to what ROC overy is all about, but one of the things I like about it is that it incorporates physical fitness in this. So why don't you tell our listeners how this all works?
Jonathan Westfall:Well, yeah, that was really. Actually I was going to compliment you. That was a great encapsulation of what we're all about, right? So our tagline is, our hashtag is Sober Living Through Fitness.
Jonathan Westfall:And so you know, sort of the reason for being, our reason for being, is the old cliche, the old mantra, you know move a muscle, mend a mood, move a muscle, change a thought. Just getting up, getting our bodies moving and getting it moving in a healthy direction tends to have a holistic and halo effect on the rest of our lives, right? So we start taking care of ourselves physically, we start taking care of ourselves in other ways, just by way of habit. So it's just one of those things that we found has been and obviously science and research backs this is that it's a great holistic way to rewire our brains, rewire our thought process, rewire our reward centers in our brains and really just address a lot of the things that cause us to use to begin with, right? So folks often talk about the co-occurring disorders of mental health and substance use, and we could argue all day long about what comes first, right? But the fact is that they often accompany one another, and so once we stop using the substances, the mental health challenges are still there, so it's a great way to address those as well.
Jonathan Westfall:Getting out, getting moving and, yes, doing it in a community with other people who are doing the same thing, is the secret sauce. I like to call it sort of the secret ingredient. People love to work out right, but once they start working out with other people who are also doing healthy, making healthy choices and doing what they want to do, it's kind of sneaky. That way, we sneak up and we build community.
Jerry Gretzinger:That use of community is a really strong motivator for sure. So we talked about the special sauce, as you say. So is ROCovery Fitness. Is it technically, is it a gym where this all happens, or is it a collection of activities? You know? Talk us through that part.
Jonathan Westfall:So, yeah, I guess you know I'll back up to what our mission statement is, and we strive to foster a sober, inclusive environment for healing and recovery, or a sober, inclusive environment for healing and recovery and whatever way that looks to our individuals that come in the door. That's what we want to be about. So it's not only fitness. Yes, we have a gym in our community center, but we also just have a community room where people can come in have coffee, play chess. We have a chess club, we have an art club, we have mutual aid groups, support meetings in our center, Anything that will support somebody's recovery and what that looks like to them. We want to be able to provide that to our membership.
Jonathan Westfall:And so you know the answer to your question is yes, we do have a gym and, yes, a lot of things happen here at our center, but an awful lot of things happen out in the community as well.
Jonathan Westfall:We have weekly hikes out in parks, we have weekly runs out in parks. In New York, and particularly Western New York and the Finger Lakes area, we're blessed with so many great trail systems and if you travel the country, you realize that there's little areas of our country that are really trail-centric and really have great parks and all kinds of other things, and we just happen to live in one of those areas that just we're so blessed with. You could walk out the door and be a five minute trip from you know some of the best trails in the country, and so we we really try and take advantage of that. So, so, yes, we have a lot of things that happen at the center, but also a lot of things that happen out in the community as well. So going out and meeting people where they are, literally, we like to be able to do that.
Jerry Gretzinger:That's one of the messages we like to drive home meeting people where they are. You know the other question I have for you too, if somebody's hearing this and they're in that area and they're thinking, well, this could be a great thing for me to get involved in, I could really benefit from this.
Jerry Gretzinger:So I want to address maybe some of the drawbacks they have. I mean, obviously, when someone is, you know, living with substance use and they want to change that, there is that for them to, you know, kind of to get on top of and be able to manage. But then also somebody may sit back like anybody else and say, oh gosh, I'm not in the best shape of my life. I don't know if I can go to being physically active on top of everything else I'm trying to handle right. So what do you say to somebody who calls up or speaks to you with those concerns?
Jonathan Westfall:Yeah, so that's probably one of the biggest arguments we get of why somebody can't come to a class or come to it. And it's so funny because you know it's not just in the recovery community but just in the general public. Just, you know, amongst the general public at large, most people feel like they're not in shape enough to go to the gym, which, if you think about it, it's kind of crazy. That's why you go to the gym is to get in shape. So we do our best to talk to folks about, you know, everything is adaptable. Every workout that we offer, you know, group fitness classes, hikes for the most part. Now, when we go to the mountains, we have to be a little more aware of, aware of where people are at in their journey, um, for their safety and the safety of the group Um, but, but generally, most of our, our um classes and events are accessible to anyone with modifications.
Jonathan Westfall:So if you, you know, struggle with back issues, you know we give people modifications to do for planks or for pushups or for you know we have folks in wheelchairs that come in and do group fitness classes. So, like, what's your excuse? Right? So so we kind of you know, lovingly use those kind of you know arguments for lack of a better term with folks to, to, to allay their fears and to say listen, if you're looking for someplace where it's safe to fail quote, unquote this is it. Because you know nobody's going to judge you here. Um, you know, it's the safest place to try something new because everyone's so encouraging and supportive and we always say that if it's not supportive, it doesn't belong here, right? So if you do, you know, struggle with something you don't have to worry about. You know how you look to others. Everyone has been a beginner here at one point. So, um, it's really the probably one of the safest areas that you can go to try something new or unsure about the way things you know feel. Um, you know you can take a break, or you can take, you can ask the instructor for tips on how to modify things.
Jonathan Westfall:So it's, you know, it's funny that you bring that up, because that is probably our most common excuse that we hear about for not coming into the gym, and it's it's hard not to laugh at it because it's like, yes, you know, we've all got that anxiety and and you can look at folks, and we try to be conscious of that when we're posting stuff. You know we're very active on social media. I don't know if you're aware of that or not, but like that's how we started as an organization, with a hike posted on Facebook in 2015. And so, uh, you know, social media has always been our biggest platform for spreading the word about ROCovery and letting our community know about our classes and everything. So when we do post on there, we try to to, to to look accessible to folks, to not be that extreme sports. You know we have. We have some folks that do some extreme sports, but we try not to glorify that too much because that can be intimidating for people too and we don't want to do that. We don't want to have that anxiety.
Jerry Gretzinger:So so it sounds like a great level of acceptance for anyone, no matter where they are in their journey, whether it be substance use or getting their fitness taken care of and addressing that.
Jonathan Westfall:And so people come into the center here. We don't ask anybody to identify. We have folks who come in who are family members or allies to the recovery community or just choose to live a sober lifestyle. So the only requirements for membership are 48 hours of continuous sobriety and you fill out a quick membership form online that takes about five minutes and it gets nothing more than just some basic demographics. It's a limitation of liability waiver signature and then just kind of goes over our community standards, which just says you know, be a supportive, nice person and you are in for life.
Jonathan Westfall:And our gym costs nothing to folks in the community to just come in. If we do so, sometimes we'll do events that have a small rental fee, like a ski trip or a kayak event and things like that. And if people can, you know, we negotiate that out with the, with the companies that we partner with, so we get a better rate. And if folks can swing that, if they have employment or whatever, that's great. And if they don't, they can just send us an email and we can discreetly scholarship them. So we have, you know, funds available to do that too. So you know, another big reason for our existence is we don't want costs to be a barrier for folks. When people are in early recovery, you know employment is usually not a thing for a little while, or if it is, you know finances can be challenging when you're in early recovery. So we don't want that to be a barrier to connection, community and healthy living for folks. So we help get over that really really well here.
Jerry Gretzinger:That's good, that's great. You said something there that struck me. You said membership is good for life, and I thought of your story, which I want to ask you about. Next, talk about membership. That's good for life. You kind of got in and stayed in and wrote it all the way to the top of the organization as executive director, right? Do you mind telling us a little bit about how you got involved and how you got to here today?
Jonathan Westfall:Yeah, yeah. So it's a long story. I'll try and condense it down and just put the meaningful parts, because I can. Definitely, I'm passionate about it and and I can go on for hours about it, so I'll try and uh.
Jonathan Westfall:So, most of my life, uh, from the time I was an adolescent to the time I was um in 2017, I turned uh 47 and I got into recovery this last time and you know, god willing, February of next year, I'll have eight years of recovery under my belt. And so I, from that time, from the time I was, you know that young, to 47, I was in and out of, you know, sobriety through all the consequences of my alcohol and drug use throughout my entire life. And you know I'm of the age where, you know, back then, all we had was 12 step and if you didn't connect with that, you know you didn't have a lot of choices. You went to treatment and you were mandated in 12 step and that's what you had to go to. And so and I don't take anything away from 12 step I still utilize it for my sobriety. It's great, um, but every single time, six to nine months in, I would go back out again, and so, as luck would have it, in 2017, when I got sober again, just not by any consequences. I just got, you know, sick and tired of being sick and tired, as they say and I met my predecessor, the executive director and one of the co-founders of ROCovery.
Jonathan Westfall:Six months into my sobriety journey, I became a CERPA-P. I took the certified recovery peer advocate training and wanted to get more involved in the field. I recognized that I needed to make more of my life about recovery, to really kind of attach to it, and I started volunteering with the organization doing street outreach. I had always been into fitness, running in the gym and everything else, but I never connected it with my recovery and even my entry into ROCovery wasn't through the gym, it was through doing street outreach uh, over on North Clinton, which in Rochester is, you know, are unfortunately one of our hotbeds of um open air drug activity here in Rochester uh, at that time, and continues to be but just doing street outreach, connecting with folks who are, you know, living out on the street and getting them connected with recovery resources.
Jonathan Westfall:And so I did that for about a year until we got a grant for peer support program manager, which then so I got hired because of my hundred hours a week of volunteering. They decided, hey, we want to pay you for at least 40 of those 100 hours and bring you into the fold. And it was my dream job. It was just, ultimately was amazing. You know, I get paid to go camping. I get paid to, like, take people on a run. Like this is amazing.
Jonathan Westfall:And so I was a peer support program manager and outreach coordinator for a while. And then we got hit with COVID and coming out of COVID, our co-founder and executive director was just ready to move on to the next chapter of her life. She had done this, got this started, and was just really kind of you know ready for what was next. And so the board tapped me to be the interim, as we were kind of deciding what we were going to do, and then, six months afterwards, elected me to be the permanent executive director, and so that was January of 21. And I haven't looked back. So it's been a pretty wild ride.
Jerry Gretzinger:Yeah, that's definitely a journey, but I think too, we always hear that peer element is so important and I think for people who are hearing, this today who are out there thinking, hey, maybe this is for me.
Jerry Gretzinger:I think knowing that it's led by somebody who's walked the walk or, in your case, has run the run, probably means so much more, also because you've been there, you've done that and you can work with them in a much greater way than maybe others might be able to. Jon, I think this is great. I want to give you an opportunity to get in touch. Do you mind sharing some information, whether it's a website, where you are on social media, how they can find you?
Jonathan Westfall:Yeah, so, as I mentioned, we're really active on all of our social media, our Facebook and our Instagram in particular. Just search ROCovery Fitness, we'll come right up. Our website is ROCoveryFitness. org. It's R-O-C because we're in Rochester, so ROCoveryFitness. org and then ROCoveryFitness on Facebook and Instagram, and we're very responsive through all those channels. So if you send us a direct message, we'll get right back to you. There's an email through the website. You can send us a message through there. Our phone number is 585-484-0234. And our email address is mail@ROCovery fitness. org.
Jerry Gretzinger:Got it. All right and I'm going to throw some more information to people. If you are looking for more information on addiction services or supports anywhere in the state of New York, you can go to oasas. ny. gov, oasas. ny. gov and, of course, our 24-hour HOPEl ine, 877-8-HOPE-NY. Jon, thank you so much for sitting down talking to us all about ROCovery. I hope it reaches a lot of people and that you get some calls and people wanting to you know, get their pump on with you and then make some good strides forward.
Jonathan Westfall:Great, thanks a lot.
Jerry Gretzinger:All right. T hank you and thanks for checking out this episode of Addiction: The Next Step. I'm Jerry Gretzinger. We will see you next time and until then, be well.
