The Voices for Voices Podcast Episode 17 with Guest, Ashley Collins, Founder of AVO Behavioral Health and Recovery and Arika's Angels INC
Justin Alan Hayes:
Hi, this is Justin Alan Hayes, and welcome to today's podcast episode. Today, I am pleased and grateful to be joined by Ashley Collins. Ashley has a very powerful story personally as well as professionally. We talk about definitely with the House of You and Voices for Voices, with the workforce, and how things can lead to additional stress as well as how that ties into mental health, but what Ashley's going to talk about today is super important because it really spans across personal leading into professional. And so, Ashley, thank you so much for joining us today.
Ashley Collins:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm Ashley Collins, and I am a Walsh grad, and I actually was a professor of the day with Justin, and we've connected, and both on a journey to help the community so it's been great.
Ashley Collins:
I'll give you a little bit of my background and how I got to where I am today. Like I said, I'm a Walsh graduate. I got out of school, and I did pharmaceutical sales for about 12 years, and within that time, I sold in the mental health disease space, addiction disease space, and have a lot of personal experience. So, throughout my journey, about six years ago, my sister, Arika Hall went missing February 5th, and I remember getting a call from my mom and we couldn't find Arika, and Arika was in, she was in active addiction. She had substance use disorder, and she was actively using heroin and multiple other medications at the time, and I remember telling my mom, "Arika's going to kill us when she knows we went to the police," because at that time I thought that we would find her.
Ashley Collins:
Fast forward six years, she's still missing, and it's still a missing persons case, but what that did that day was change my whole mindset on life, and I started getting involved in the community. I started sharing her story to connect with other people, and I met a lot of great people along the way. I did different news interviews just to try to find my sister, and in those times, I got connected with CHC Addiction Services in Akron, Ohio, and I helped do all of their fundraising events, the Recovery Walk, and joined their board of directors, and now I'm the president of the board of directors for about four years.
Ashley Collins:
But in that journey, I got to help see hope. I got to see recovery. Touchstone over at CHC is a place for women with children. So, I got to really live out what I wish my sister would've experienced, and throughout the past six years and beyond, my brother also struggled with addiction as well. So, with both of that, I got to see what recovery looked like, and I also got to experience loss, and going around in pharmaceutical sales, I was more inquisitive than anything. I would ask doctors everything. I wanted to know about the brain. I wanted to know about medications. I wanted to know about treatment.
Ashley Collins:
I remember one year, I got laid off twice from pharmaceutical sales, and I said, "I'm not going back into pharmaceutical sales. This is way too stressful." I had two kids. I was getting my master's program from Walsh all during this time span, and that day, talk about God saying, "No, you're going to stay in this," I got an email from a recruiter and it said, "We're looking for something or someone very specific for this role. It's pharmaceutical sales, but it's a little bit different. It's in the addiction disease space. Would you be interested?" And I got on the phone and called the recruiter, and I was like, "Yes, I've been serving this community for years and this would be perfect." So, I took that opportunity to just learn about recovery. I got to speak to the best thought leaders all over Ohio, Dr. Labor, all of the different addiction places. You got to see good treatment, bad treatment, everything in between.
Ashley Collins:
And so, at that time, like I said, I was finishing my master's program and I found a presentation actually just this year that I did, and it was based on something called Arika's Angels which we'll get to that too, and it was one of those that I was probably in survival mode writing because I don't remember doing it, but it was a whole business plan about how I wanted to have treatment that I wish my sister would've had, and weird, because I'll get into how that all ties in, but I was at the beach with all my family and family friends and everything, and we were talking about treatment, and I said, "I wish I could put something in Stark County in my backyard that I wish my sister would have had, that maybe she could still be here today or at least have the chance to be here." And a family friend was like, "Let's do it," and I thought, "Yeah, right." People always say that.
Ashley Collins:
But six months later, we started talking. I wrote up business plans, and then within a year, we were seeing clients. So, I left pharmaceutical sales June of 2019, actually 2020, June of 2020, and we were certified to see clients by OMHAS by August of 2020. So, we rolled pretty quick into it. But my whole program, my business is called AVO Behavioral Health. AVO stands for amor vincit omnia which means love conquers all in Latin, and that's truly what I believe. When people walk into my doors, I want them to feel love. I want them to feel family. I want them to know that it's a safe place, and from the very moment that I started this vision, that's what I created and hope that people experience.
Ashley Collins:
Throughout learning, I realized that mental health and addiction are both connected. You usually don't have addiction without underlying mental health diseases, and sometimes substance use disorder can also lead to other mental health. So, all of my providers are actually psychiatric nurse practitioners or psychiatrists because we believe in dual diagnosis. I learned this actually from Dr. Oros, my brother's doctor. He taught me what dual diagnosis meant. I asked, "What did you do different for my brother that no one else did? No other facility, everywhere from Texas to Florida to California, what did you do different for my brother in an outpatient setting?" And he simply said, "No one ever treated his PTSD which didn't allow him to heal and stop substances," and that really clicked in my brain, and it made me feel like why didn't we do this before. Why was it so separate?
Ashley Collins:
So, ours is all together. We do dual diagnosis. We also do mental health treatment, but we believe in different treatment. It's all evidence-based. All of my clinicians are trauma-informed. They go to specialized training, and we believe in treating the mind, body, and spirit all together because if one is missing, the pieces aren't going to fit together properly. So, it's been quite the journey.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah, and so beautifully said of being able to tie personal experience of things that you've gone through and you're still going through and how you tied that back into making change, making positive change, and making it happen. So often I think individuals come up with ideas, we're at the beach or wherever, and we come up with ideas and they sound great. And again, we get some of that validation, like, "Yeah, that sounds great, go ahead, give it a shot," and things don't come to fruition.
Just want to let you know about our upcoming Voices for Voices, A Brand New Day event, which is our annual gala event. It's on October 12th at 7:30. For those that are in the Northeast Ohio area, it's going to be held at the Canton Cultural Center and tickets are $20 and all the proceeds go towards the Voices for Voices organization, which is also a 501(c)(3). Dr. Jessica Hoefler is going to be one of the ... I call it the blockbuster speakers, but one of the three individuals that's really going to talk a lot about what she's talked about here with us today and really just that thought of A Brand New Day, kind of like with Piper's Key, of unlocking and setting her free, that's with Voices for Voices and with the brand new day event specifically.
You'll want to share experiences of real everyday people, not celebrities, just people that are going through and have gone through some traumatic things, whether that is mental health related, whether that is anything really traumatic. So it doesn't have to be mental health related. That's how I started the organization, but obviously as I'm learning and want to have a broader reach, that individuals with mental health challenges aren't the only individuals that have gone through traumatic experiences. So again, Dr. Jessica Hoefler will be one of the blockbuster speakers. We're also going to have Brian Laughlin, who is a lieutenant at the Twinsburg Fire Department. Then one of my actual former students, James Warnken, he is an online specialist with expertise and search engine optimization and data analytics and he's actually legally color blind. So he goes through certain software packages to be able to do the work for his businesses now. Even when he was my student at Walsh University, there were some I guess, accommodations, accessibility, things that he was able to do.
So really not only from a spectrum of age range, but from first responder to somebody in education, traumatic, male, female, that we are all going through and have gone through things and I really want with A Brand New Day is to talk about not just some of the tough times, but how the message of a particular mission and vision is living on and how it's touching and reaching and helping more people. So again, you can find out more about A Brand New Day at voicesforvoices.org, or you can go to Eventbrite, which is the official event platform to put events together, and you can search A Brand New Day and then you'll find the event tickets there. Then you can join us in person. We'd really love to have you and bring a friend, a family member, somebody that would like to be uplifted.
So it’s not just the speakers, we're also going to have a special needs band, RockAbility, going to be playing. So some real rock music. So some of these individuals are going to be playing real live instruments with some mentor musicians and everything from the music. It's all going to be played live, in person. We're not going to use auto tune like some of the music today, and even the singers, the vocals, are going to be done. So it's going to be a lot of fun. We hope you'll make plans to join us and you'll see more on this coming up on our social media pages, the Voices for Voices on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever you consume content, as well as future podcasts.
Justin Alan Hayes:
I think it's very powerful that you are able to not only just have that vision but be able to execute against that, and I think that that's key for really anybody, whether they're going through anything mental health addiction related or not, Just if you have an idea and think big, think outside the box. I'm sure years ago you wouldn't have thought you'd be where you're at now or where you're heading in that direction, but it all started with that thought, and then that drive that you took from being a sales rep with pharmaceutical sales and taking that knowledge and being inquisitive, and I just love how you tied all that together. Do you want to get into maybe Arika's Angels?
Ashley Collins:
Yeah. Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about Arika's Angels, and my sister Chloe actually started Arika's Angels when she was in college because she felt that educating college students on substance use was a really big deal that not a lot of people are doing. So, she came to me and she said, "I want to start a nonprofit." And so, it was actually at OU and Akron University, and so when AVO came about, Arika's Angels was on the back burner a little bit because we weren't sure exactly of what we needed. We knew we needed services for clients, but there's a lot more needs that come with substance use disorder and mental health. So, as we were building AVO, I realized through my clinicians and through interacting with each and every one of my clients what their needs were.
Ashley Collins:
So, now we have a nonprofit called Arika's Angels. Arika's Angels does all of the necessities of life. So, we have a hygiene closet that clients can go in and they can shop in because oftentimes, they don't have the money to go buy personal hygiene. We do usually name brand so they feel human. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, face wash, these are all things that are so important. We do a drive-thru Santa event. This was our second one in December, and our first one was so amazing. We had Santa there, all the elves, and to see people's face to get a blanket, hats, gloves, snacks, all of the things that sometimes I think we take for granted in a day, to see the kids' face to meet Santa and have that personal touch really opened my eyes to how much more I needed to do.
Ashley Collins:
Building Arika's Angels, we've been able to do a lot of stuff to really help our clients sustain a normal life. We have clients that struggle with some bills while they're in treatment. They can't really work, or they're not mentally ready to go to work. So, Arika's Angels is built to where we can help our clients, help them prepare for interviews, be sure they have clothing. All of the things that someone would need on a day-to-day basis, we want to make sure our clients have because they're human, and we just want to give back and make sure that they have services along with essential items.
Justin Alan Hayes:
So, some of our audience, some of our listeners might be wondering how you don't get overstressed or where you get the energy from to do what you're doing because it's all so amazing, but as you know, there's just so many hoops and so much paperwork has to be filled out to do certain things. So, where does that energy come from?
Ashley Collins:
I think any day that I feel down or tired, which is a lot of days, I feel tired a lot, I think I just remember the struggle that my sister had, the fight that she had to give every day, and that to me is enough to get me up and going every day. We have multiple pictures of her in our office, but I just think of her struggle and that my struggle's nowhere near that, and so it's my purpose on earth to keep living out her mission because she was put on this earth for a very specific purpose and so was I. So, I need to keep living out her purpose in order to make AVO successful and keep going. I always want to be better.
Ashley Collins:
So, another huge, huge piece of my success is my support system. I have the best friends. I have the best support system, great family. Even my kids are my biggest fans. Throughout building this business, I worked long hours, and I'll never forget my son the one day, I didn't know whether to be proud or cry, but he said, "Mommy," and he's 10. He said, "Mommy, I've been watching YouTube videos on how to open a business because I wanted to understand what you were doing every day and how you were so busy." And it was so eye-opening that our kids do watch everything that we do, and I probably should do better and set a better example of time management because obviously I was spending a lot of time. But they were with me every step of the way, and I lean on... I keep my circle very small, but they're such an impact on my life that I can call them and be sure that I'm staying in check as well.
Ashley Collins:
I have a mental health counselor myself. It's so important. I want all my employees, I want everyone that lives life to be able to have a counselor and someone to just go talk to about really hard stuff because if I didn't have a counselor, I wouldn't be where I was today by any means. So, practice what you preach. The times that I put off going to counseling are usually times where I realize I need to go back to counseling. So, really just taking care of your mental health, and then something that I let fall through the cracks while opening AVO was my physical health. I used to love to work out. I couldn't find time to do it, and I was busy which are all excuses. So, I built it back in to my routine and it helps tremendously. So, I think the energy comes from drive, but also purpose, and knowing that people out there need you to get it together and go.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Sure, definitely, and to really dovetail off of that, when you have that purpose, you have that feeling of just as your sister was put on earth for a certain purpose, so are you, so are I, and so when we find that in however many years, and I talk with my students and others and other platforms, it took me 40 years to kind of figure out where I wanted to get to and what really is important. Not that other things weren't important, but something that you wake up and you do, and you don't feel like it's as much work as it is working towards that mission. So, you get that extra energy.
Justin Alan Hayes:
And to second that point about the mental health counseling, especially for me, of going through five days and then inpatient and having alcohol abuse and different things in my past of being able to just accept, okay, here's where I'm at, and if I want to continue living on earth, basically, I need to do these things, and I noticed the same thing with the counselor. Actually, the counselor I had for four years went out on medical leave and he just came back, and so luckily, through networking, I was able to find somebody to bridge that gap. But just as you mentioned, your body knows when you need to share and talk about something, even if it's just, "Here's what I did... done for the last four weeks," just to get it off the chest and to move on, that it's not dwelled up inside.
Ashley Collins:
Yeah, absolutely. I admire your story and you sharing that as well because it just shows that we are all human. We all have flaws. We all make mistakes. We all have genetic predispositions to life. We don't know when we're going to be triggered, but to have that support system was, and probably for you too, the most important thing that I could have ever had and still continue to have. And also, like you were saying, if you would've asked me even three years ago would I be sitting in this position, there's no way. I mean, I remember I stayed up for days before I left pharmaceuticals to open a business because of fear.
Ashley Collins:
I was just talking to our adolescent IOP the other day about goal setting. They were like, "Did you have a goal of having your own..." I'm like, "Maybe subconsciously." I said, "But as I started growing," I said, "what if..." Because someone talked about fear in the class and they said, "I'm not ready to go back to school yet because I'm scared." I said, "We're going to be scared about a lot of things in life, but if we let fear hold us back, none of us are going to accomplish anything." And sometimes your greatest learning moments are in your failures. That's where you grow the most. That's when you are challenged to the core. That's when you have to figure out how to get back up. Like you said, I need to do this, this, and this to stay on this earth, and that's really with anything in life. I mean, we all get knocked down, and some people stay knocked down, and there's that pity, but there's so much room for opportunity in those moments where we feel broken and alone because that's when you put the pieces back together and become stronger.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah, the team approach. The instead of me, it's we. People you can reach out to, whether it's the counselor, the psychiatrist, a friend, a colleague, anybody that's in your circle that you can reach out to that you're not shouldering all that by yourself, that you're able to say, "Okay, I need help and I have a question, let me reach out here, because either I don't know the answer or I just want to validate what I'm thinking versus I'm going to go at it alone and google and let's go that route."
Ashley Collins:
Yeah, and that's actually a really good point about leaning on as we're talking about your support circle, another way AVO is built is everything is intertwined. So, we have medication management through my psychiatrist and clinical team. I have my counselors who do mental health and substance use, and I also have a substance use counselor, two of them now. We also have an occupational therapist. So, when you look at all of the things, you have every tool that you need when you walk into one door.
Ashley Collins:
The other thing about that too is if someone is struggling, my counselors can go to the psychiatrist and say, "Hey, ever since we changed this medication, I'm noticing X, Y, and Z." They talk weekly, sometimes daily, depending on how busy they are or if there's a crisis, but that was really important to me too because I think of myself, if I have to go to three different places to treat one thing that's not including everything else I have to go do, I'm probably going to miss some of my appointments. But if I have one safe place to go, if I'm struggling, I know that I can call someone at that office and walk in there, even if it's for five minutes, into my safe place, and that to me is family. I want my clients to come in and know who I am and give me a hug and thank me, or come to me and say, "I really messed up. I don't know what to do." And we figure it out together because I don't ever want anyone to be alone.
Ashley Collins:
I felt like my education around substance use disorder when my sister was struggling was slim to none, and when you're dealing with a family member that's struggling, it's a whole other level. I don't know if I knew what I know now if Arika would be here, but I'd like to think so. And so, there's a part of that passion that comes with I never want to see anyone struggle like she did or feel like she did, and that's super important to have all of those things in one place because it's needed.
Justin Alan Hayes:
It is, and one thing that I've seen recently, and maybe it's been out there, are these articles about serving different communities, and certain individuals, certain demographics, and while I agree that those demographics need to be served, I think that as we talk about, just as a human that it shouldn't matter what the demographics are, where you're from, how much money you or your family makes, or what position you've been in. I really even felt that with my struggle in ending up in the hospital was there wasn't one place that I could go where everything was there. I would go to the family physician because, well, that's just where I went for physicals and that was who I reached out to, and they had limited knowledge about behavioral health in that specialty.
Justin Alan Hayes:
So, those individuals were doing the best they can, and so looking back, there's a little bit of why didn't they help me more, or why didn't they just besides hand me a sheet of paper and say, "Reach out to these places." And then there's the economic side of things of, okay, once you find that place that you can go to, are you going to be able to get in within a month or two months or three months. I remember at my worst, I was reaching out and I would call and the response would be, "Oh, well we can get you in next week." I'm like, "I don't know if I'm going to make it to next week. I don't have any plans, suicidal plans, but just the way I'm feeling, I don't know if I'm going to make it."
Justin Alan Hayes:
And so, somebody on the other line is making the decision of, oh, it's not life or death right now, whereas the individual feels that way. And so, I'm in probably in a demographic that people might consider, "Oh, well, they got it made. They can reach out to people and no worries." And that's one thing that I think just as a human being that we should have that access, and that's why I feel passionately about what you're doing is having all those services together in one place and not worrying so much about the demographics. When they walk in the building, they feel the love and they have the help.
Justin Alan Hayes:
The professionals, they have the opportunity to talk amongst themselves instead of, okay, well, the psychiatrist is here and the counselor is here and this other individual is there, and you don't know if they talk, maybe they do, and so there's all this extra stuff going on in your mind, whereas, as you mentioned, when they walk in your door, they have that feeling of knowing that if the conversation needs to be had, it will be had, and the responses, the feedback, the guidance will be a holistic approach.
Ashley Collins:
Yeah. To your point, we opened in the middle of a pandemic and the mental health crisis is worse than it's ever been, but especially with substance use, what is on the street right now is, I mean, it's just not safe. So, if someone calls in and they're struggling, we do try to get them in that day, at least for a simple addiction medicine level of care, at least have our hands on them for a moment. If they need medication, we'll squeeze them in to get them a day until they can come back, and that's really important to me too because I remember my sister, it was when everyone had to go through detox even if you didn't need it in order to get placed anywhere. And they'd be like, "Oh, we don't have any beds." So, 12 days, I'm like, "What is someone going to do for 12 days?" They're usually homeless.
Ashley Collins:
So, that to me is a huge passion, and we'll get in a little bit to the future of AVO and Arika's Angels and how it all ties into place. But yeah, it's been a really amazing road, and I have learned to express and live out Arika's purpose in ways that I didn't think I could because that internally takes strength, and there were times where I had to pause and I couldn't talk about it because I had to internally process.
Ashley Collins:
Now, it actually brings me happiness every day when I see my clients coming in and when they walk down the hall, there's a picture of her and they all know her just through that. My employees come in, they say, Sydney, my counselor, she says, "Right before I teach IOP, I think, "Will this make Ashley proud and Arika better?" And I'm like, "That's a really good way of thinking," not making me proud, but would this make her vision and our mission as AVO help someone. Is it going to be what someone needs, and if not, how do we adjust it? Because individualized treatment is so important. What works for you may not work for me, and so we need to figure that out as a team too. ,
Justin Alan Hayes:
And you've touched on a lot, but just getting into the emotions of how does it... You mentioned brings you happiness. How does it make you feel when you're able to help that person or persons that comes in, and like you said, just to get your hands on them for a few minutes, just to see somebody so they know that they have somewhere to go and they can come back the next day, as opposed to in 12 days, and when you speak to groups, how does how's that make you feel just on a human level?
Ashley Collins:
Yeah. I mean, it makes me feel really good because, I mean, it's not just me. The team of people I have, it makes me so proud that people were drawn to my energy and live out what I thought was good, and they're agreeing with it. When I have someone come to me with their vision and say, "I want to work for you, these are my ideas," that to me makes me feel so good about the decisions I've made and the work that I've put in because, I mean, as a human, you want to be accepted, but it goes way beyond that, and it makes me so proud that I did learn. I mean, I was in some really dark times that people may not even know about, and in those times I had to learn how to stand up on my feet.
Ashley Collins:
So, when I see it come to life, it makes a whole... It helps you manage those emotions a little bit better, but it just makes me happy because people deserve that. I see my clients come in and the shame on their face if something happened, or just going through early stages of recovery, there's a lot of shame and guilt that humans carry, and knowing that it's a judgment-free zone. I'm going to hug you in your lowest moment and in your highest moment. I want to be that person, and that makes me happy when clients come in, and usually, if they had a relapse or anything because they'll usually come in and ask for me, and that makes me feel really good because I'm like, "At least they're not scared," and they know there's not going to be any judgment. We're going to come up with something. So, long-winded, but it makes me feel really happy that I didn't live on fear and emotion and really took that what I felt God gave me as my purpose and lived it out.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Absolutely, and I talk about a little bit kind of the legacy of what we're on earth to do and finding that purpose and then, okay, we're in the span of years of the world and the planet being around that we're around for a very small part of that. And so, the legacy of when we're not here, are we going to be able to share things with others, and that's another reason why I love what you're doing because not to get too far into the future, but at that point where neither of us are here, there's certain things that we hope that are going to continue. So, as your sister's on front of mind, as you'll be on front of mind with AVO, and having that team of individuals of seeing that drive and that passion, knowing that they work with you, for you, alongside with you and saying, "Yeah, I want to continue this."
Justin Alan Hayes:
And so, that's something that I've learned along that acceptance of, okay, well, why am I here? What, what else can I do? I got the education. I've done these things had these accomplishments, but what's all that? That's self-centeredness and that the ego comes in. And so, I've found this personally of being able to touch other people's lives in little things, like you said, just giving a hug or having that five minutes or having that individual come to you as opposed to not coming to you and talking, that each one of those individuals is one less individual that is in a different place. And so, I love the longevity of what your organization is going to continue to be. And so, with that, do you want to share where you're at today and where you're going?
Ashley Collins:
Yeah, absolutely. So, like I said before, August 2020, we started seeing clients, and at that time I had Melissa Gelsomino who just graduated from her psychiatric nurse practitioner, I had a clinical director, John Gill, and I had Sydney who's my CDCA, and we would sit there and we would celebrate if we saw two clients in a day. I joke now with Melissa, I'm like, "I really miss my golfing buddy," because she would see her two clients and we'd go golfing.
Ashley Collins:
Now, that we're in almost March of 2022, I have a psychiatrist, three psychiatric nurse practitioners, two CDCAs, seven counselors, and an occupational therapist, amongst my front office, my coordinator, my sister, Chloe who does all of my community connect which is for all of the family court. We have a family court contract that we do all of the juveniles. So, my sister provides a certain level of case management for them, is sure that they have transportation to and from. So, we grew a lot, and with that growth, there's been a lot of growing pains. I think I made everyone move offices about a hundred times. I think if I tell them they have to move offices one more time, they're going to lose it, but good problems to have.
Ashley Collins:
So, we actually outgrew our current building. Our hub of main services are still going to be at our main office, and then across the street, there's a pretty large building, and all of our group, our intensive outpatient is actually going to be ran over there. The construction's going on right now, and this has been so important to me because like I said, as I was growing this, I was listening to our clients, I was watching, I was visualizing how everything was happening, and when you have everything in one space, it's fantastic. But also, clients are there for three hours a day, three days a week, plus their individual counseling. If they're doing mental health counseling, med management, they're they're with you anywhere from 15 to 20 hours a week, and what I found in IOP, during breaks, as we grew, they weren't really allowed to roam because there were other people being seen.
Ashley Collins:
So, across the street is just going to be for group therapy, and when you walk in, there's going to be a check-in desk, but it's going to be a concession style. So, they're going to always have either pizza, or tacos, or chips, snacks, cookies. If they want to get a drink, pop, milk, water, you name it. They're going to be able to order, get their snack, do whatever they need, and go into their group room. The space will allow them to be able to walk around during breaks. We're going to have an outdoor space where they can go sit in the summer, have picnic tables, be able to do yoga outside in the yard, just a really safe place for our group to be ran.
Ashley Collins:
We also over there are going to have I call it a safe sensory room. Oftentimes, during group therapy, trauma, trauma can be very triggering. When you're digging up a lot of deep emotions and you're in a very intense setting, a small pause in that and a reenter or grounding is really important, and that's one thing I found. So, in this room, it will be able to be dark with different sensory items in there. There'll be different stress balls, different places that they can sit, whether it's a bean bag, a firm chair, just anything that is going to ground them. They're going to be able to have stones, energy stones and stuff like that. That makes it different because they're able to have a disconnect spot that they still feel safe instead of disrupting group or having a counselor have to step out.
Ashley Collins:
We do adolescent intensive outpatient right now, and I didn't think I liked kids in general. Just kidding. But it's been one of my favorites because when I look at these kids that have either been in some trouble or are just struggling, to watch someone at that age walk through my doors and want to be there, initially they may not, and grow, that to me has been amazing. So, we started thinking, forward thinking, and summer's coming. How many kids get in trouble in the summer because there's no structure? Parents still have to work, even if the kids aren't. So, we are opening up and running multiple adolescent intensive outpatient programs in the summer so kids can still have structure. Within those, they get to do art therapy, yoga therapy, music, all of the different things that teach healthy coping mechanisms.
Ashley Collins:
So, for that, as you're seeing our vision, those are our current goals and our next step. Taking it a step further, for about the past year, I have been looking for housing, sober living that offer patients to be able to be on medication-assisted treatment while they're living in these sober living houses. So, that is my long-term goal which is also fairly short-term. I would like to have it up and going hopefully within a year. We see that as the biggest barrier. So, I think watching this vision, hearing our clients, I am so excited about our space across the street, and only more to come with that, but I'm really excited about that.
Ashley Collins:
And another thing that I want AVO to be better at, and you talked about it too, about different demographics, so I'm the chair of Ohio ASAM's diversity inclusion equity board, and I'm actually presenting at the National ASAM Conference on this because it's so important, and I've learned so much of verbiage and to not offend someone when we don't even mean to. And so, I really want to have in the near future, a diversity team to be sure all of our intakes, everything, all of our verbiage that we're using is not stigmatizing, even if you don't mean to be. So, in a corporate level, that is my goal to be sure we're streamlined, but I couldn't be more excited for my IOP group rooms and adolescent IOPS and our substance use ones.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely incredible, and over relatively short amount of time during times where the world's kind of gone through some crazy times to be able to really have that vision and that thought and that idea on the beach, and then to be sitting here today and have all those ideas come into fruition with the construction of even just being able to see things being done. It's like, "Oh my gosh, this is actually happening." Absolutely amazing. How can people and listeners and their friends and the family, how can they learn more about you? Where can they learn about AVO and what you do?
Ashley Collins:
Yeah. So, we have a Facebook, it's AVO Recovery. We have Instagram, I believe it's AVO Recovery as well. I'd have to look at that. And then our website is avorecovery.com. Our phone number is 330-331-7506, and that can also receive text messages. So, you're able to text any questions or anything like that. On our website, you're able to submit a request, and that actually comes right to my email, and I sift through all of them, and forward them to the proper people.
Justin Alan Hayes:
Yeah. So, yeah, this conversation, as I like to think all the conversations through the podcast is very powerful, even just to me as to being the host or the moderator, and I know that our audience or listeners or followers are going to find at least a piece that they're going to resonate with. I'm just so, again, grateful to, again, looking at how different pieces come together of me teaching, and having professor for a day, and teaching a marketing course, and having you be the professor for a day, and going through your story, and thinking about how things are relating and going, "Oh my gosh."
Justin Alan Hayes:
So, you have these thoughts and your ideas in your head, and some things might not happen right away, but when you meet somebody or learn something, oh my god, yeah, I'm going to jump, I'm going to talk to them and see how we can partner, and at least help each other from just getting the word out because a lot of times, just having that information and knowing somebody you can reach out to and knowing that there's people and organizations that really are truly in it for the client, in it for the patient, that yes, a business is a business, but at the end of the day, we're all human, and getting back to how you provide that holistic care for those everyday necessities of shampoo and razors and all those things. As somebody who's had and continues to battle major depression on some days worse than others, there's sometimes where you don't really feel like getting in the shower. You don't feel like doing certain things, and not having those products would just make that even worse.
Justin Alan Hayes:
So, that's awesome that you're able to really tie all that. As a human being, what do we need throughout the day, and getting to you're going to provide food when they come in and like, "Okay, yeah, we're human beings. We should probably eat something. Okay, if we need shampoo or we need something, we can go to the closet and find it, and okay, we need to tweak the medication or talk about some changes," and having those individuals who are able to talk to each other and have those people, again, coming back to your mission about feeling loved as they walk in the doors. I just so grateful that you're able to join us today and share. I feel like the conversation could go on.
Justin Alan Hayes:
What you're doing is just nothing short of amazing, and really, for anybody out there that has dreamed and has thoughts of what they'd like to do and thought, "Well, I can't do this or I can't get to here," and I think that you're a perfect example of taking a dream, a vision that at the beginning, it's like, "Okay, well, I'd love to do it, I don't know if it can happen," to making it happen, and taking those small steps. There are going to be pitfalls and roadblocks, and just continuing in that direction and knowing that, okay, we're going to get through this piece, and then we're going to get to this piece, and then we're going to talk to this person, and then we're going to get the financing, and all these different pieces that some are hurdles, and then they're overcome, and some take longer and shorter.
Justin Alan Hayes:
But just to look at especially your son to the fact that he looked at YouTube to look at how businesses are started and all the different pieces really just goes to show that obviously our children are watching us, but to really have him understand that, okay, it's not just Mommy going away and doing these things and up late hours and what is she doing, what is she doing? And, and to have that aspect and just have that ability, I think from that next generation to learn just from that family perspective, and then I'm sure he'll be an advocate at some level as he continues to grow because he has that knowledge of, yeah, my mom did this and she went through these steps. That just has to make you just proud as a parent.
Ashley Collins:
Yeah. No, it definitely does make me proud, and actually just one more thought on that, speaking of the kids. A lot of times, people who suffer from mental health or substance use have a vision of how people view them. I always explain to my kids exactly what substance use disorder was. They would go and they would be at the residential with me and they would see clients in withdrawal, and I would explain to them, "They're just sick. It's no different than walking through the hospital." We were at our walk, because we do a recovery walk every year, and one of our clients was there, and my daughter ran up and gave him a high five, and he's like, "Did you see that?" I said, "I don't know whether it be terrified or so proud," but in a joking way, because I don't want my kids to ever think anyone's different because we're not.
Justin Alan Hayes:
That's right.
Ashley Collins:
But thank you for having me on, and I think our story of how we met is so important, maybe more important than the whole thing of you never know who you're going to meet, and sometimes we don't want to go do things, or sometimes we don't want to be social, or sometimes people may rub us the wrong way, but if you go and you attempt something, you never know who you're going to meet, and you never know what their story is. So, that's why you should never be judgemental. You never know what that person's going through that day, and how we met and how everything aligned just proves that, and it continues to so many times in my life.
Ashley Collins:
There are times where I can reach back to people from Walsh a long time ago, and they would still know who... Because if you are nice to people, you are going to have a solid foundation of anyone that you can call if you need them, or if you just, if they need you, and it should always be a two-way. But I think it was just so amazing how everything came out. Love your story and your passion and what you're doing, and so excited to be on today, and I look forward to doing more, giving back, and just educating on what this looks like, how we can do better in the community, and I'm excited for the future. This is just the beginning.
Justin Alan Hayes:
It is, and then just to leave our listeners, I remember after you were finished speaking in class and we were chitchatting, and I forget what we said, and you're like, "Oh yeah, that's connected. There's a reason or this." And it was just like, "Oh my." You obviously get it, and you see and understand that those pieces, and I'm at that phase of starting to just realize that, okay, yeah, there are pieces, and there are going to be people that you have a chance to meet, and what's the worst thing to happen that you're back at that same place. The best thing that happens is you never know.
Ashley Collins:
Yeah, absolutely. For sure. Take any chance or opportunity you get because every day is a stepping stone to the next goal, whatever that may be.
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