The Ohio House

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. - Leo Tolstoy #soberlife #opiodaddiction #sobermovement #wellness #sobrietyisbetter #breakthesilenceofaddiction #mentalhealthawareness #recoveryquotes #spiritualcommunity #womeninrecovery #addiction #mentalhealth #selflove #mentalhealthmatters #staysober #recoveryispossible #healthy #cleanandsober #onedayatatime #recoverywarrior #therapy #motivation #sober #recoveryadvocate #recovery #positivity #wedorecover #mindfulness #sobercommunity #sobrietyrocks

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen #soberlife #opiodaddiction #sobermovement #wellness #sobrietyisbetter #breakthesilenceofaddiction #mentalhealthawareness #recoveryquotes #spiritualcommunity #womeninrecovery #addiction #mentalhealth #selflove #mentalhealthmatters #staysober #recoveryispossible #healthy #cleanandsober #onedayatatime #recoverywarrior #therapy #motivation #sober #recoveryadvocate #recovery #positivity #wedorecover #mindfulness #sobercommunity #sobrietyrocks

Things don't change. you change your way of looking, that's all. @john.donoghue.77128 holding it down for 7 years and counting #soberlife #opiodaddiction #sobermovement #wellness #sobrietyisbetter #breakthesilenceofaddiction #mentalhealthawareness #recoveryquotes #spiritualcommunity #womeninrecovery #addiction #mentalhealth #selflove #mentalhealthmatters #staysober #recoveryispossible #healthy #cleanandsober #onedayatatime #recoverywarrior #therapy #motivation #sober #recoveryadvocate #recovery #positivity #wedorecover #mindfulness #sobercommunity #sobrietyrocks

Happiness is a state of activity - Aristotle #soberlife #opiodaddiction #sobermovement #wellness #sobrietyisbetter #breakthesilenceofaddiction #mentalhealthawareness #recoveryquotes #spiritualcommunity #womeninrecovery #addiction #mentalhealth #selflove #mentalhealthmatters #staysober #recoveryispossible #healthy #cleanandsober #onedayatatime #recoverywarrior #therapy #motivation #sober #recoveryadvocate #recovery #positivity #wedorecover #mindfulness #sobercommunity #sobrietyrocks

Congratulations to Will S for achieving 4 years of continuous sobriety today. You continue to set an amazing example for all those who are beginning their journey in sobriety with us.

"Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it." #soberlife #opiodaddiction #sobermovement #wellness #sobrietyisbetter #breakthesilenceofaddiction #mentalhealthawareness #recoveryquotes #spiritualcommunity #womeninrecovery #addiction #mentalhealth #selflove #mentalhealthmatters #staysober #recoveryispossible #healthy #cleanandsober #onedayatatime #recoverywarrior #therapy #motivation #sober #recoveryadvocate #recovery #positivity #wedorecover #mindfulness #sobercommunity #sobrietyrocks

Congratulations to our very own John D for 7 years of continuous sobriety. You have been a pillar in our community for years and it has been an absolute pleasure to witness first-hand all the lives you have impacted during your journey with us.

Conratulations to Lou P. for achieving 6 years of continuous sobriety today. From being a resident to a staff member and beyond we are proud to watch you from afar as you continue to thrive all the way in New Jersey.

An interview with our founders father written by an Ohio House Alumni. The Ohio House was built from the ground-up by a family and every time a new resident moves into our housing our family gets a little bit bigger.

Congratulations are in order for John F. for achieving six years of continuous sobriety today. We are proud to call you an alumni of The Ohio House. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

"I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost

We are proud to call so many successful alumni family. Its been a privilege to be apart of your story. Collin continues to find success right here in Orange County and we can't wait to see what's next.

Staff Spotlight Matt Keogh // Director of Admissions Written by Chad Steinetz The Smile ... How well can you ever really know someone? As I sat down with the Director of Admissions of Buckeye Recovery Network that is the question that weighed heavily on my mind. Matt Keogh is the gatekeeper of our Company; the phone answering work-horse who was tasked with convincing men and women that leaving their home-states behind to travel to our quaint treatment center in Southern California could potentially be a decision that transforms their lives. It wasn’t a hard sell, considering Matt himself had made that very decision nearly four years ago and arrived in California with a soul withered to shreds by his love affair with Jim Beam and Miller Lite. Like myself, he accomplished the seemingly impossible and built a life from the ashes of sadness and defeat. BRN played a crucial role in his recovery and he, like everyone who works here, knows the entire staff on a personal level far beyond the standard confines of traditional employment. I believe that this is what makes him so good at his job. When you sell something you truly believe in it does not feel like your selling anything at all. If you feel as though you are making the world a better place every time you dial the phone why wouldn’t you work 12 hours a day? He truly believes in the work he is doing and is universally known as the happiest person on the face of the earth. He never stops smiling. This is not hyperbole for the sake of my writing. Now you can say maybe he just smiles for his job as an admissions director and I am to here to tell you that it oddly goes so much further beyond that. I have been Matt Keogh’s roommate for nearly a year so out of all the interviews I have done or will do with Buckeye Recovery Network this is easily the most intimate and comprehensive of them all. Matt Keogh smiles while he works. He smiles while he cooks dinner. He smiles while he does the dishes. He smiles while he fills out his taxes. I am certain that if you teleported into his bedroom at 3 am you would find Matt curled up in his bed with a giant toothy smile plastered on his face. I think that was what flared my curiosity when I imagined the possibility of this interview. It of course was not the smile or the happiness that interested me. Instead, it was the desire to learn the truth behind the smile. The nature of who I am is to understand what is beneath the surface; always skulking around the Land of Oz with my magnifying glass, desperately searching for the man that was surely hidden behind the curtain. These interviews were written to uncover why the employees of BRN are driven to work in the field of substance abuse but I would be lying if I said I did not have ulterior motives with Matt. What sadness and heartbreak could lead to someone who constantly made a point of exuding so much joy at every turn of his existence. Maybe it is the reason I love to write so much, that I am always looking to poke holes in the fairytale. Always looking to prove Cinderella planted her glass slipper strategically as she left the dance and that Pinocchio was just a hallucination of Geppetto’s dementia-ridden brain. I think its clearly a reflection of my struggles with despair and life in general that I cannot accept a smile as just a smile. The clown at the circus may make the entire audience erupt in raucous laughter while I sit expressionless, attempting to physiologically unpack the series of unfortunate traumas that would lead a grown man to a career of makeup and colored jumpsuits. Matt Keogh was born in Long Island, New York. He is 30 years old with a full oak-brown beard and dark-blue eyes reminiscent of the pacific ocean. He is roughly 5 foot 10 and looks like someone you would allow to house-sit for you while you go on vacation without so much as a second thought about something going awry. Ever since I have known him, he has been the hardest working person I have ever met. At first, his work ethic was less of a quality to admire and more of the proverbial thorn in my paw as I attempted to climb the ladder of our company. Both of us worked in entry-level positions and it was nearly impossible to keep up with his production. If a task needed to be handled he would volunteer without hesitation nor consideration for the time it would take and the difficulty of it. He would not only accomplish whatever it is was asked but also he did it all with a smile. He was always making me look bad. I have never been the best at taking direction or doing things by the book. Matt would memorize the book and live and die by the rules. He was the perfect employee; never once daring to even so slightly color even the slightest bit outside the lines. Meanwhile I was spending a large chunk of my time trying to secure boxing fights throughout Southern California and moonlighting as a freelance breathing meditation instructor. My mind would be pushed and pulled by romantic relationships and a passion for writing. I would see Matt and I saw in him a model of consistency, efficiency, and focus that I have never known. Watching his bright white smile from afar as I rode a daily roller-coaster of emotional uncertainty; my face a revolving door of expression fluctuating rapidly through an endless spectrum of feelings. We were never close, that is until he became Director of Admissions and I an Operations Director for the company. In the training our predecessors gave us before moving on to the next phases of their career, they made it abundantly clear that operations and admissions needed to have incredible synergy for the company to flourish. That the synergy that exists between the two departments is the life-blood that will fuel great success for our treatment center. Matt tasked with finding prospective patients who fit the criteria of our program and myself with the guidance of those patients once they have admitted into our universe of recovery. I would be molding many of the operational pieces that we could utilize to improve our ability to manage clients and help them change their lives. Matt taking those pieces and making sure to emphatically explain them to addicts and families across the country. Convincing them the structure I created is a necessary building block in the recovery of an addict. Matt was Heimdall guarding the bridge and I was Thor greeting junkies and booze-hounds in the halls of Valhalla. Although our methods and personalities were wildly different we both shared common denominators that tied us together and continues to do so until this day. Ambition, a concrete belief in what Buckeye has to offer, and an unwavering desire to help people. If we were both challenged to travel to China on foot with the end result somehow magically being that the world would change for the better, we would both leave immediately and without hesitation. However, our methods would contrast. Matt would Forrest Gump his way across the globe with a never-ending smile and dark blue eyes. Greeting the inhabitants of this planet pleasantly along the way and making friends with sailors and fishermen who would gladly ferry him across the oceans and seas. Meanwhile, I would be manically attempting to dig through the center of the earth with raw and blistered hands, desperately trying to create a short-cut that turns out to be a dire over-complication of a simple equation. When our prior Director of Operations told me of the necessity of a close relationship between myself and Matthew, I jokingly said he will be the best man at my wedding one day. Little did I know that I would end up not only working with him but also living with him. Little did I know that through the strength of his character and the profound impact he has had on me over the years that the statement was true. If I were to get married tomorrow you would see him standing to the side of me and my bride. Dressed immaculately with a giant smile to match. Matt told me about growing up in Long Island with one sister and five brothers. I pressed him immediately asking if it was hard being one of seven and if his parents had a hard time giving attention to all of them. No, actually I think that they gave me more attention for some reason. He told me of growing up in an Irish Catholic household where weekends were spent at the beach with his mother and siblings. He told me of friends long-ago forgotten and a kindergarten romance that resulted in his first kiss. We didn’t make out or anything Is how he finished that topic of discussion. He stated that he was always close to his brothers and sister. I attempted to extract some kind of family disfunction during his childhood but every invasive question was met with a confident answer of serenity and functionality. Every inquisition into his childhood was retorted with stories of family bonding, vacations, and quaint summers. He did not, by my perception, seem to be distorting the truth or concealing information. When Matt spoke of beach trips with his mother, his dark blue eyes would drift to the ceiling of his office and more calmness than usual beset upon his already gentle tone. After spending time searching for the smoking gun in his youth that would surely explain his alcoholism later in life, as-well-as the sadness that surely lived behind his smile I realized that I was not going to find it. Simply because it did not exist. I then realized that his pain and darkness in life must be a result of the dastardly antics of his drinking years. He spoke of his first drink. My first drink was probably about 12. I drank at a family party or something. Snuck some beers. I asked him if he committed this rebellious infraction alone and he replied with simply Ya alone but the memory was hazy and he could not recall any specifics. When Matt spoke of his first real drunk his face lit up. This was his trademark Bill Wilson I have arrived moment. Every alcoholic has one. The night where you feel like alcohol is the missing ingredient that will transform the pumpkin that is your life until a beautifully designed horse-drawn carriage. Matt drank 12 peppermint cosmos at the age of thirteen and had the night of his life. Waking up the next morning with a vicious hangover and confusion of how he could have gotten throw-up on the ceiling. His drinking would takeoff from there but slowly and surely. More of a story of the traditional American high school experience of partying on weekends with his brothers and friends. Drinking on weekends and sneaking into New York bars. Keeping up with his brother’s trajectories and never having moments of true concern for his well-being. When I asked him when his drinking began to scare him he took a more somber posture then I am used to seeing from him. The smile still there but lessened to a dull. I think it was about 20 or 21. Everyone else was going to class and I would stay home every day to drink. I asked him how this made him feel and replied simply with Disappointed in myself. I was upset with his lack of struggle thus far in the interview and what I perceived to be a calculated evasion of truth. I bluntly said to Matt You have an avoidance of conflict in your life today and you have an avoidance of conflict in your memories. You’re an alcoholic and you burnt your fucking life to the ground. He snapped back with I do avoid conflict in my life but I’m trying to dig in. You know me. I’m trying to dig in but there’s nothing there. It was maybe the most serious I had ever seen him before he realized the conflict I had created. He had failed to avoid it. The smile quickly returned to his face accompanied by a nervous chuckle. I tried to go even deeper as I sensed that he was vulnerable as I believed the façade was about to finally crumble. I asked him with the sternest, most piercing tone I could muster What’s the worst thing you have ever done. Your entire life. The thing that keeps you awake at night. He replied Obviously the DUI. At the point, I didn’t have a license and I was in fear of going to jail. That was one of the worst points in my life. That was not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting an answer of poetry and sadness. Something so insidious that I would have to leave it out of this article and never speak of it to anyone. A DUI is an incredibly unpleasant and sad occurrence for sure, but in our world of recovery, it is usually the ice-breaker a recovering alcoholic would use before diving into stories of grand-larceny or panhandling. It was about a half-hour into the interview where Matt gave me some of the more philosophical insights that I have ever heard from him. He talked about dropping out of school without his parent’s knowledge. He would get on a random subway every day and drink while his parents assumed he was In class. He would ride the train for the entire day and was just simply existing for the sake of existing. Pretending to go to school and pretending to go to work. Either steal my mom’s wine or buy some forties to start the day. Living at my parent’s house before getting sober. I know there’s life out there but it’s just too far away. To difficult. It was genuine sadness he was speaking of and when he spoke the smile surely was extinguished from his face but only momentarily before returning to the ray of sunshine I knew him as. It wasn’t an overwhelming torment he spoke of but instead a crippling fear of the world and the conflict that lived within it. It was pain that was the result of his alcoholism and inability to stop drinking but had nothing to do with some cataclysmic event or powerful narrative. Matt’s oldest brother is an ER doctor. The two other oldest are lawyers. His immediate younger brother is a Michelin star chef. His youngest just graduated Maritime school with the desire to become a ship captain. His sister was a successful event planner before getting married and having her happily ever after. The Keoghs are an incredibly successful family. While each brother was priming themselves to pursue their greatest passions, he was drinking 40 ounces in New York City. Riding subways into oblivion and deftly afraid to enter a world of conflict that he did not want to face. I asked him if he feels like he is making up for lost time after he finally sobered up. He repeated the question slowly and exhaled before saying I don’t have a degree. This work experience only started a few years ago. I am 30 years old and trying to make a career. Another simple answer devoid of narrative weight or anything literarily profound. The truth of the matter is that this interview was more revealing of myself then it was of Matt. My unrelenting pursuit of truth had obscured me from truth itself. Listening to the recording of the interview I could hear how feverishly I attempted to press his buttons and dig into his soul. How manically I was digging to the center of the earth with raw and blistered hands. It is now becoming clearer that I search for blemishes on the beautiful simplicities of this world to justify the demons that live within my soul. If everyone’s past is filled with ghosts then that would allow me to sleep at night with the ones that haunt my own. My own over-complicated mind taking the trivial and increasing the focus on the microscope until I can’t even see what I’m looking at. Missing the beauty of the forest because I cant look past the ugliness of a tree. With all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. There was no destructive event or family dynamic that sparked the kindling of Matt’s alcoholism. He drank for the first time and he loved the way it made him feel. Then he couldn’t stop. His family loved him unconditionally and they were always there for him. Things got rough from his drinking and he faced consequences. He needed to change his life and get sober. He did. In the end, the power of Matt’s narrative comes from the complete lack of one. The fact that alcoholism doesn’t need to be tied to some Shakespearian tragedy and can truly corrupt even the best of us. Sometimes those things are there if you look for them. However sometimes you pull back the curtain in the land of Oz and you will find that it is you yourself who is standing there.

Dear Addict, this is a letter to you Screaming at god and friends that turn blue You are not invisible, at least not to me... The fringes of this world that no one can see Muting your dreams; while cranking agony to eleven The path to hell beginning at the gates of heaven Dear Addict, this letter is for your mom Clutching a rosary and reciting that psalm I see her by the phone terrified of what’s next The sleepless nights and that unanswered text Watching the lines on her face deepen like ditches Reaggravated wounds and the ripping of stitches Dear Addict, this letter is for your son Tears in his eyes while you’re off on your run Staring out the window and waiting for you Wondering what is false and what could be true Seeing the world through eyes that are clear Not yet filled with resentment or crippled with fear Dear Addict, this letter is for your friend Denying the cash you asked him to lend Asking where you went and how far you fell Witnessing a deal with the devil too easy a sell Staring at black eyes, windows that are draped Portals to the void where your soul has escaped Dear Addict, this letter is for your dad Missing the lost child that he once had Forgotten Christmases and the birth of fear Lonely nights and the death of cheer Remembering a child with a future of gold Wrong turn to the auction where that future was sold Dear Addict, this letter is for your daughter Watching self-destruction; a lamb to the slaughter Half-finished cigarettes masked with perfume Fearing the demons that live in your room You say Tomorrow will be different and it’s hope that your sending But tomorrow is a re-run and she knows the ending Dear Addict, this letter is for your dealer Blood-stained hands, disguised as your healer Mysterious brown powders / pockets of pressed pills Exchanging misery for the last of your bills Hook, line and sinker he watches you dance The snake charmer; the witch doctor you’re under his trance Dear Addict, this letter is for your memories Your greatest of friends and the worst of your enemies Written in invisible ink that is not always kind They can be erased and edited within your own mind It’s a sobering thought, a wound with a suture That the past is just as uncertain as the future Dear Addict, this letter is to me Knowing that recovery isn’t free It takes a lot of courage and a little bit of hope Not as tasty as beer or as quick as dope You will laugh a lot but you will also cry You will have to be honest with yourself instead of lie When god closes a door there is a window that’s open And if the window is closed then the glass must be broken Hope is to be felt, something that the eye cannot see For no matter how tough a lock there is always a key As helpless as you feel and dark the horizon Behind a mountain to climb there is a sun that is rising There is freedom from your pain I promise you this A beautiful world and a lifetime of bliss Say goodbye to what you are and dream of what could be For the thing is, whether you know it or not I am you and you are me - Written by Chad Steinetz

Proud to work so closely with such a strong sober-living that is designed by and for women. The Chadwick House continuously raises the bar for after-care and has crafted a safe and sober environment for all the women who call Chadwick Home.

Congratulations Mike M for achieving one year of continuous sobriety today. From the early day’s of your sobriety as a member of our boxing team to the life you lead today as a productive member of this community, it has been an absolute pleasure to be apart of your journey.

Congratulations to Gary S for achieving one year of continuous sobriety. To witness your transformation over the last year has truly been the pleasure of our entire community.

Seeing the growth and transformation of the guys in my house has been the highlight of my life. I went through the Ohio House myself like all the other house managers here. It was my first time getting sober and there were countless bumps in the road. In the beginning, I failed repeatedly with the little details however the Ohio House provided me the right balance of struggle to learn from those mistakes. I was and continue to be a work in progress. The 12 steps changed my l...ife and also saved it. When I had completed all 12 it felt like the first time I had completed anything in its entirety. I love working here. It’s a family here. The fact that everyone who works here was a resident who got sober in The Ohio House creates a unique dynamic that I truly believe can’t be found anywhere else. Jerry McNeill House Manager Sobriety Date 1/22/18