IT WAS barely 8.30 on a recent Monday morning and Justin Carroll already had a full caseload.
A 23 year-old from a wealthy family in San Francisco was hooked on crystal meth and working as a male prostitute. Could Justin track him down and bring him in for treatment? He needed to do the same for a 21 year-old heroin addict, living somewhere in Skid Row, who just happened to be the daughter of a prominent Westside attorney. Not forgetting the president of a certain Fortune 500 company who was spending most weekends hitting the crack pipe before putting in an 60 hour workweek from Monday to Friday and was finding it hard to schedule going into rehab. Then there was the rock star with a laundry list of addictions who was desperate to enter recovery, but couldn’t do so until his current tour had wrapped up
Just another day at the office for Justin, Chief Evangelist (nothing to do with religion, he stresses) at the One80Center, one of the nation’s premier detox and recovery facilities.
I recently visited the Center, nestled amid a glorious setting in Beverly Hills, for a chat with this gregarious, fortysomething Brit, a former Harrow public schoolboy, soap opera star and Hollywood man-about-town who struggled with addiction for years before using the lessons he learned in his own sobriety to help others.
The One80Center is headquartered in the sprawling former home of Elizabeth Taylor which she shared with her then-husband, British actor Michael Wilding. The center offers its (mostly) well-heeled clients treatments for almost every addiction imaginable, from alcoholism to addiction to cocaine and crack, crystal meth, heroin, marijuana, psychedelics or even inhalants. Non substance-based issues are also treated here, including anxiety, depression, bipolar and eating disorders. Among the services on offer are sober living, detox, remote detox, residential, outpatient, group therapy, exercise and physical care, mental health services, extended care, family support, intervention, wellness, acupuncture and the Rubenstein Method, a rapid recovery therapy that uses small and precise resistance motions called Kinetic Sequencing to essentially establish new patterns in the brain.
Varied portfolio
For the uninitiated it’s astonishing how comprehensive the services on offer can be. And the center doesn’t just offer intervention and detox. It’s not unusual for clients to be flown by private jet from across the world and delivered by limo to the center, where they’ll receive an individualized program ‘integrating the latest advancements in neuroscience and mental health’. And yes, you can even bring your dog with you via their archly named No Pet Left Behind program.
Justin has what is best described as a varied portfolio at the 180Center – thus the vague job title. Some of his work is hair-raising, such as interventions involving bringing clients out of crystal meth labs, which can involve bulletproof vests and getaway cars. Other times he has more mundane briefs like working with a local body shop to get a client’s high-end wheels fixed after the latest episode involving DUI and an inconveniently placed tree.
“Dealing with addicts is often like dealing with children,” Justin told me. “The fact is we addicts suffer from what I call ‘Baby Brain’. Babies want everything NOW and they don’t think past that. Our job is to help them mature their mental process – essentially help them catch up with themselves in an adult world, since when we are on drugs everything gets put on hold.
“We aim to work with them, either one on one with specialist therapy, or as part of an outpatient group to help them rebuild themselves, often from the ground up. We take away the drugs, slowly ease them off the physical addiction then help them build or rebuild esteem and self-value, reducing the shame.
“Why do I know this? I was just like them, so I have a lot of compassion for the condition. And it’s a slow road…and we addicts hate anything slow!
“Addicts are always trying to avoid feeling. The key is to help them in a non-threatening way and recognize their tricks, justifications, escape mechanisms and counteract them without provoking fight or flight.
“And we have to monitor them every moment they are here. Getting them off their drugs is just the beginning. We use a lot of cutting edge tools and systems incorporating the latest in science, which has made some very useful strides in understanding the workings of the addicted mind. We work to provide a holistic approach that includes encompasses mind, body, nutrition, counseling, and all sorts of activities to keep them busy and productive but most of all, lots of old fashioned love and support.”
Supportive environment
Justin is very proud of the work he does, and of his team. “The key to a successful recovery center is its people,” he added. “In choosing our staff we pride ourselves in choosing the warmest, most loving people who are passionate about recovery. That passion infects the clients and gives them the best possible chance of moving through recovery and onto rebuilding their lives. And in creating a warm, supportive environment we are able to give our clients a place that they will want to come to AFTER recovery, which is vital. You have to keep them engaged through the first year if you want to recovery to stick.”
Finally, Justin stresses, recovery is not all about work. One of his favorite mantras is “I didn’t get sober to not have a lot of FUN!” To that end to that Justin offers his clients a whole range of healthy and exciting outdoor activities, including waterskiing, jetskiing, paddleboarding (all on a private beach in Malibu), racecar driving and go-carting.
“I wouldn’t expect anyone to get through early recovery without a little faith that there is so much wonder in this world….so many fun , sober things to do,” Justin adds.
The duo behind the center is the husband and wife team of Alex Shohet and Bernadine Fried. Alex is a serial entrepreneur with several successful tech start-ups under his belt and Bernadine is one of city’s leading Marriage Family Therapists. They employ over 100 recovering addicts at the center, providing education, job training and above market salaries. And knowing that life after recovery can be desperately precarious, they founded 12 Angels, providing ‘investment capital, consultation and mentorship’ to support sustainable businesses that hire recovering addicts, giving them a chance to enjoy productive and healthy lives and thus break the cycle of failure that can be so costly to a recovering addict.
Individualized programs
And Justin is not the only Brit on staff. In fact almost the entire admission team are UK expats, something Justin explains with a twinkle in his eye: “I honestly believe it is easier for clients to talk to Brits. We are a warm, sociable people, good communicators with an irreverent sense of humor. That really helps put people at their ease and open up to us.”
Justin introduces me to Carol, the unofficial den mother of the center. A warm, chatty Yorkshire woman, Carol is famed for her ability to keep track of every single birthday (both the birth and sobriety versions) of her clients, to whom she sends out over 500 handwritten cards to every year. “And she’s always ready with a cup of tea and some digestives,” says Justin.
During my tour of the facility, Justin more than lived up to his title as chief evangelist, explaining to me what sets the One80 center apart from its competitors.
“Every recovery center talks about individualized programs for clients but because they always have an eye on the bottom line they don’t always deliver. Sometimes it’s just the same slop in a different bowl. A fifty year-old high-functioning executive needs a completely different program than a 22 year-old who’s been an addict for ten years and who can’t even make his bed.
“We have over 100 staff taking care of just 26 clients so we really tailor everything – right down to diet and exercise – to our clients’ needs. Sometimes building individualized programs around each client is what keeps that little spark of hope alive in them and makes the difference between ongoing sobriety and relapse. We also feel a responsibility to keep current with the latest recovery science and techniques, so that’s where we spend most of our resources. It cuts down our profits but it’s worth it because we want to do recovery really well and that’s how you keep the best staff.
“And we also believe passionately about reintegration when they leave us. Rehab gets them back from the brink but then but then you’ve got to support them as they go back into life and provide them with some passion and purpose. I know from my own life that this is what makes a huge difference in long-term recovery.”
Justin knows whereof he speaks. Parental strife, divorce and English boarding school at seven resulted in two decades of addiction as an adult. Moving to Los Angeles in his late teens and pursuing an acting career put him at ground zero for every temptation in the book. His good looks and charm got him plenty of acting work in the late 1980s and 1990s,he joined the cast of Showtime’s Beggars and Choosers series, followed by a regular role on the former daytime soap opera Passions, a gig he threw away by rear-ending a LAPD patrol car on Sunset Boulevard with a pile of cocaine on his front seat.
‘Passion and purpose’
“I’ve always been addicted to something,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Over a twenty year period I did 13 rehabs and had a total 86 relapses. The sad thing is, I always wanted to be sober. I was horrified and disgusted at myself.
“The upside is that now when it comes to dealing with addicts I know every little trick, every little maneuver. Once they hear a little of my story and because I’m completely non-judgmental, they realize perhaps I can be of service to them. And if I save someone’s life, save someone wasting the two decades of their lives that I wasted, then it makes the sting of all those squandered years a little less sharp.
“The key is to use your knowledge and experience but never be judgmental, just supportive in a productive way. I always tell my clients ‘we’re all just a bunch of bozos on the bus and we’ll get through this together.’ That way they don’t shut down. Rather they warm up and start to address the issues they need to.
“If there is one upside to my own addiction it’s that it has given me a knack for helping other people. This is just the way my life has turned out, I certainly didn’t plan it! I’m often asked by frantic parents to track down their children who are off somewhere on drug binges. I’ve found I’m good at tracking them down and persuading them to at least try detox and recovery. It’s what gives me a passion and purpose to leap out of bed in the morning.”
In addition to the former Elizabeth Taylor property the One80Center also leases the Houdini Estate as a transitional living facility, providing a peaceful and contemplative retreat for residential clients entering the next phase of their recovery. Nestled in Laurel Canyon and minutes from Beverly Hills, this historic five-acre hillside estate and private park was the legendary home of magician Harry Houdini. It offers shaded and terraced gardens, waterfalls and pools, as well as private and semi-private accommodations, which are limited to five residents at a time.
And a third facility in the Hills has just come online, a frankly bizarre structure formerly known as the Lookout Mountain Air Force Station – the military ran its secret nuclear bomb film unit out of the joint in the years between World War II and 1963. The Station is a huge, rambling Frankenstein of a place, combining institutional cold war architecture grafted onto a basement that could have been lifted straight from some 1940s ocean liner – the bowels of the place feature huge pipes, turbines, heating and electrical systems that would not have been out of place on the SS Normandie. Piled on top of this is the living space, featuring gracious rooms with gorgeous views, austere but elegant bedrooms and ornately tiled bathrooms displaying a panoply of Moorish influences. Yet when Justin tells me breathlessly that when it’s finished “this place will be awesome”, I don’t doubt him for a moment. He’s building recording studios, postproduction studios and a radio room. The art dept has will have pottery wheels and other fun things to do. He plans to teach and engage clients with stimulating creativity.
“The worst thing for someone in early recovery, is to get bored,” he says with a broad grin. “Besides, finding something to be passionate about, some purpose, is always the key. If they can learn a skill set, it helps so very much in them rejoining back into society.”
The One80Center is located in Beverly Hills. Call (888) 588-4180 or visit www.one80center.com.
