Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Fort Collins. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Nick George helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Fort Collins, Colorado.
Is your business serving the residents of Fort Collins? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpFortCollins.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins
E26: Compassionate Addiction Treatment: How Porch Light Health is Saving Lives in Colorado
Finding the light when darkness seems overwhelming—that's the mission behind Porch Light Health, a beacon of hope in addiction recovery throughout Colorado.
Steve Carleton joins the Good Neighbor Podcast to share how Porch Light Health (formerly Front Range Clinic) has revolutionized addiction treatment in Colorado over the past decade. Their specialized approach using medication-assisted treatment—particularly Suboxone for opioid addiction—has contributed to a remarkable 30% reduction in overdose deaths statewide. But what makes their work truly powerful goes beyond statistics.
"We call ourselves Porch Light because we want to be the last light on in the neighborhood," Steve explains, highlighting their philosophy of acceptance without judgment. Unlike treatment centers that might turn away challenging cases, Porch Light welcomes everyone exactly as they are. This harm reduction approach recognizes addiction's complex roots in trauma, mental health struggles, and circumstance—not simply poor choices.
Steve's personal connection to addiction through loved ones who've struggled gives him unique insight into the journey their clients face. This understanding translates into Porch Light 's commitment to immediate care—typically within 24 hours of reaching out—recognizing that the moment someone decides to seek help can be fleeting. With comprehensive services including psychiatric care for depression and anxiety, plus individual and group therapy, they address the whole person, not just the addiction.
Whether you're in Fort Collins, elsewhere in Colorado, or even in an underserved rural area, Porch Light Health has made accessibility a priority through mobile units and pop-up clinics. Ready to take that first step toward recovery? Call 866-MAT-STAT or visit https://porchlight health.com/ to find your way back to light.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Nick George.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of compassionate and effective addiction treatment services? Today, I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, steve Carlton, with Porch Light Health Steve, how's it going? Porchlight Health, steve, how's it going? It's going great. Good to be with you. We're excited to learn all about you and your business?
Speaker 3:Tell us about your addiction treatment center? Yeah, I'd love to. So, first off. So we're known as Porchlight Health. Now We've been in the Fort Collins area for over a decade now and most people know us as Front Range Clinic.
Speaker 3:We've expanded and offer services throughout the state, and so people on the Western Slope don't like Front Range Clinic as much, so we've moved to Porchlight Health is how we're known, but in our clinics we were started by family practice docs at the beginning of the opioid crisis, and we're known as your go-to provider for medication for addiction treatment. And so what is that? Basically, when you're talking about opiates and we're talking about heroin and, more commonly now, when you're talking about fentanyl, the best and most effective treatment for helping people and getting them back to a better quality of life is a medication called Suboxone or Buprenorphine, and that is that's something that we've had a ton of success. You know Portside Health. We have been a huge contributor to this 30 percent drop in opioid overdose deaths that we've seen in the last year, so we're doing a lot of great work. In addition to that, we offer psychiatric services for people that are also struggling with depression, anxiety, and then we obviously offer individual and group therapy as well, just to give people that community connection and wraparound support.
Speaker 2:How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:get into this business. Oh, you know it's a long winding tale there, nick, but one of my first jobs was actually on a Coors Light beer truck and so I was back in Texas. But I've been in and around addiction personally and professionally for my whole life and I think you know the thing for me is, yeah, the people I love most in the world sort of have struggled with addiction, and so it's something that I understand. I haven't had that problem myself, very fortunately, but it is something that I understand and and just have a passion for doing.
Speaker 2:What are some myths or misconceptions in your industry?
Speaker 3:Myths or misconceptions so lots. So it's specifically with medication for addiction treatment that we do. People commonly think about it that suboxone or buprenorphine is trading one drug for another. Right, addiction is much bigger than just taking a substance. Right Addiction is marked by a loss of control. Right, like, people can't control how much, how often they're having significant social occupational consequences and they're doing things that are very risky. And so when you get on medication for addiction treatment, we're eliminating those first three large components of addiction. Right, we're eliminating that aspect of it. When you're coming and you're getting a medication that doesn't have a significant psychoactive, like, you don't get high on this medication, and so that's the biggest misconception about it.
Speaker 2:Who are your? Forgive me for the use of the word customer who is your target customers? Sure.
Speaker 3:Who would you?
Speaker 2:like to reach out to that aren't being reached out to Our client population.
Speaker 3:Yeah, our client population are people that are struggling with addiction. They're struggling with substance use disorder, and I think that this goes along with the previous question. When you're thinking about addiction, oftentimes people just think about this population of people as they're just making bad decisions, right. They just don't know inherently how to do the right thing. And I think you know our clients have typically had some pretty significant events come up in their life, right. They've had trauma in their childhood. They're struggling with depression, anxiety. They've had a lot of family members who have used and been exposed to substances at a young age.
Speaker 3:There's lots of ways that people get addicted, but sort of this willful idea that they're just careening and setting out to become addicted is not one of them. So people that have had difficulty challenge, I think, porch light. We're really known as we call ourselves porch light because we want to be kind of the last light on the neighborhood to people. A lot of our clients have been kicked out of other treatment facilities, right. They have not been welcomed in other programs and we are a place that really prides ourselves on harm reduction. We accept people in a nonjudgmental way. You can come as you are and we will accept you and we will work to support you and help you, no matter what the circumstances.
Speaker 2:Outside of work. What do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:Oh, all sorts of stuff. You know I'm a Coloradan now, so I fly fish, I ski. I'm a professor at the University of Denver, so I teach.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and then I have a 9 and a 12-year-old. That keep me pretty busy. Let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you overcame and how it made you stronger? What?
Speaker 3:comes to mind. Oh, sure, you know I think I've had a lot, like I mentioned earlier, sort of like having friends and family, sort of struggle with addiction and mental health. Yeah, definitely, definitely changed me, and you know in my one of the statistics that it is Mental Health Awareness Month in May and one of the things that is good to remind people about in this month is that half of us at some point in our lifetime are going to struggle with a mental health issue. One out of two. It's a significant number, and so you know I was no different in my late teens. It's a significant number, and so you know I was no different in my late teens and I was really fortunate to find Outward Bound and go and do some wilderness work and then go on to work at Outward Bound for five years leading wilderness expeditions and yeah, that really changed me and led me to find this career path and helping and working directly with people.
Speaker 2:Please tell our listeners one thing they should remember about porch light health.
Speaker 3:One thing to remember is that we have, uh, our. Our biggest mission is to provide easy access to care. So if you call us at 866-MAT-STAT, um, uh, other than Sundays, we're open Monday through Saturday somewhere, and we pride ourselves in getting people in within 24 hours, right when you have an addiction. We want to make sure people get rapid access to care. We don't want people to have to wait, because that moment in time when you're ready to get help can be really fleeting, and we want to make sure we provide that help right when people ask for it.
Speaker 2:Could you spell out that number again and tell us any other way that listeners can learn more about Porchlight Health online?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It's 866-MATSTAT, M-A-T-S-T-A-T. And then PorchlightHealthcom is another great way to find us. And whether you're in Fort Collins or anywhere in Colorado, great way to find us. And whether you're in Fort Collins or anywhere in Colorado, we have clinics everywhere in the state and we serve lots of rural communities as well, so people that wouldn't otherwise have access to therapy or psych services are met in communities where there's not a lot of providers. We have ways to connect with people with mobile units and other pop-up clinics as well.
Speaker 2:Well, Steve, I really appreciate you being on the show. We wish you and your business the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Nick.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpfortcollinscom. That's gnpfortcollinscom, or call 970-438-0825.