Collegiate Recovery Community helps MSU students find their sobriety “superpower”

Today, we're joined by Dawn Kepler, coordinator for the MSU Collegiate Recovery Community, and Chris Anthony vice president of US Consumer Goods at Salesforce. We're discussing recovery, sobriety, and the de-stigmatization of both on college campuses and in the corporate world.Dawn's passion for helping others struggling with substance use stems from her journey with recovery, 18 years in the making. With a BS in psychology and work in the substance use disorder prevention and recovery fields, Dawn strives to improve behavioral health services by incorporating research on program design with the ultimate goal of achieving sustainable outcomes for those in recovery.Chris studied marketing at MSU and has established himself as a business leader, public speaker, coach, mentor, and lifelong student striving to be of service to others. With over 25 years of experience in technology, he currently serves as the vice-president of US Consumer Goods at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, where he grew from account executive to vice president. Chris recently opened up about his 15-year journey with sobriety and established thesoberexec.com to help others navigate recovery and sobriety. “Our Collegiate Recovery Community here at MSU has been on quite a journey,” says Kepler. “From the very beginning, it has been spearheaded by students. It's for students and by students who have come to MSU. It was approximately three years ago that a more formal program was established that is similar to what we have today, the Collegiate Recovery Community.  MSU has the first on-campus recovery housing in the state of Michigan. It all stemmed from needs being identified then students advocating for them and working with staff and faculty on-campus to make things happen. The ultimate mission of the Collegiate Recovery Community is to help students achieve their goals - their academic goals, their personal goals, and their recovery goals - and live a full college experience feeling supported in their recovery from a substance use disorder.”Kepler and Anthony talk about the need to destigmatize recovery and sobriety, and they discuss how they dealt with their own recoveries while on campus. And they talk about how the pandemic is impacting recovery and sobriety.“It’s a really challenging situation we’re in for a lot of individuals,” says Anthony. “It's hard enough for people to make themselves vulnerable to reach out and ask for help. When we're quarantined or locked in place, it makes it harder sometimes to reach out to others. And with so many of us working from home, the challenge around addiction in any form whatsoever is hidden more than ever right now because we're all on Zoom; we're all on video. Someone can easily be living a very dark moment in their life and get on camera and smile to everybody. When that camera turns off, they're back in their dark dungeon of whatever misery they're experiencing. They're not going into an office space where someone can notice that they're declining, or it's easier to hide use now because you can have a coffee cup with wine in it and sit on a Zoom and do that all day long and no one knows the better.”“There's a lot of awareness, think goodness, around other mental health issues, particularly depression and anxiety,” Kepler adds. “I think that's the direction we need to go with substance use disorders. Some of the students we have in our Collegiate Recovery Community have told us that they were diagnosed with depression years ago and sought treatment for the depression, but they weren’t made aware that their substance use might be part of the problem. They didn't see that turning point until they were diagnosed with a substance use disorder and began receiving treatment and assistance for the substance piece.”Kepler says students in the Collegiate Recovery Community “are some of the most successful students at colleges. We see it here at MSU and the research that's been done across the country. Our students have gone on and graduated and done amazing things. As anyone who knows an individual in recovery knows, you will be able to recognize the resilience and strength and dedication of that individual. On top of that, most of our students also have jobs and do a lot of work through community service. Our students are very busy, they're very dedicated, and they do go on to do amazing things after they graduate MSU.”After 15 years of sobriety, Anthony felt comfortable with the vulnerability of becoming an advocate for recovery and sobriety and made his feelings public in a LinkedIn post. He explains how working with both Navy Seals and the band Metallica helped him come out publicly about his sobriety. The Seals thought Anthony’s sobriety was “cool,” and Metallica thought Anthony’s talking about it publicly would help others.“I knew that I was creeping up on 15 years of sobriety, and I was thinking a lot about the fact that here I am hitting almost 15 years and yet I really don't talk about it publicly. People around me who worked with me would know, but I didn't talk about it publicly, and that was really bothering me a lot.“My wake-up moment was, I'm like, ‘OK, if Navy Seals think it's ok that I'm sober, and the Metallica community thinks it's cool that I'm sober, I'm like, What is my problem? Why am I so ashamed and hiding this?’ On June 20th of this year, I decided to, quote unquote, come out about my sobriety. I posted an article on LinkedIn on the 15 Things I've Learned in 15 Years of Sobriety, and I put it all out there. I was scared as could be, and I put it on a couple other social media channels as well.“Exactly zero bad things happened to me. In fact, just the opposite occurred. In that very moment, I had discovered my why in life. I discovered my purpose in life, and I knew right then that it was simple, to be of service to others. Literally every day, since that post, I get asked for help. It's been an outstanding experience. Here I am, and it's the greatest feeling ever. And if it gives anybody an ounce of encouragement that they can speak up about being sober and be proud of it, I'm doing my job.”Both on college campuses and in the corporate world, there can be pressure to celebrate and commiserate with alcohol or substances. “Look, I work in sales,” adds Anthony. “Anybody in the sales culture knows that alcohol is central to it. The phrase, ‘we wine and dine customers’ denotes alcohol. And celebration often focuses on alcohol. I think in the business world, it's very typical and normal.“I've been navigating it for 15 plus years. To me, it's about saying no, and it's about remembering that I'm simply just trying to be healthy. Never, ever apologize or feel sorry about it. For whatever reason, there is often a massive stigma attached to saying, ‘I don't drink.’ That doesn't happen with mayonnaise or cilantro when you say no to it. People don't say, ‘What do you mean? You’re not addicted to cilantro? Are you addicted to mayonnaise?’ Nope. You just have to get comfortable in your own skin answering it.“No apology is ever needed. There is no need to ever feel bad for choosing a healthy lifestyle. Now that I've opened up about my sobriety, I hear horror stories. But I am here to say that part of my other mission is I'm going to end the stigma, but there is no need ever to apologize for being healthy.”