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A Unique Center with Extraordinary Results Serenity Treatment
My name is Cherie Guidry. I am the Clinical Director at the Weymouth location. What is unique about our process is one, the passion. The counselors at Serenity Center go above and beyond. We have transportation available to where people have the availability to come to treatment. If they don’t have a driver’s license, or they need a reprint of it, we’ll bring them to go get that. We make sure that our clients get the help that they need.
We are a family, a real family. As a result of that, our clients get the best of that world because we all work together. We’re all passionate about this one thing, and that is to help. Our facility provides detox. It provides residential inpatient. It provides intensive outpatient.
The difference between just going into AA and treatment is that in treatment you get a break. You get a break from the world to clear your head, to really understand. Our facility, we have a sponsorship program where people from the AA community actually come in, do AA meetings. They come sponsor them so that way our clients have already worked steps and are ready for that next phase of their recovery, that transition into AA.
After residential, it prepares them for that next phase. We recommend a lot of sober living. We work with a lot of sober living in the community. A lot of our clients go from inpatient into sober living and then attend our three day a week IOP program where they have a counselor still to where they can transition back into the real-world learning how to use the tools that were taught inpatient.
We help. We don’t stop. I love that about this, seeing how on fire everybody is. It’s not just a hey, come in and get treatment. It’s a we really want to set you up for life, for success.
Have questions about our center, our philosophy, or our process? Not sure that rehab is for you? Watch these videos before you decide.
The No-Excuse Treatment Designed for Everyone Serenity Treat
My name is Danny Scarborough. I am the administrator of Serenity Treatment Center. We serve male and female population 18 and older. We have the capacity now with 87 beds and four IOP classes that there’s literally no waiting, we’ll get you in. We have three vans, and we transport clients not only to the intensive outpatient on a daily basis, but we transport them to treatment if they’re unable to get a ride. I use Uber. I put people on buses. I put people on planes. We’ll get you here. I’m in recovery myself. That’s how I got started. I think just about everyone is in recovery with the exception of the medical team and some of the counselors. I think that gives us advantage because our staff knows what it’s like to be on the other side. It gives them the ability to have compassion and empathy and to help them along and train them better.
We really strive to make sure that they get it, that they understand what alcohol and addiction is all about, that you can recover. It’s not just the AA program, but it’s a way of living. Not just staying off on drugs and alcohol, but how to participate in society. In our rec therapy here, we help them learn how to fill out a resume, learn how to dress, some social media tips. We help them with a court system. We assist them with getting IDs. We really care and we take the time to work with each individual. They start at the beginning of our program and work through the end of the IOP, the Intense Outpatient. You have walked all the steps. We recommend you go to sober Living. You get a real fresh start and we’re going to follow you the whole way. Even after that, we reach out and we have an alumni call system where we call and check on you to make sure that you’re okay. I’ve seen lives just completely transform. It’s very exciting.
Recovery Dynamics A Better Path to Sobriety Serenity Treatme
Devan Castille: My job entails specializing in the 12 Step model of addiction and recovery dynamics.
Carren Comeaux: I was forced into AA, and I could read the 12 Steps without even looking at them on a piece of paper for years, but I never understood them.
Dionese Gerbrecht: We teach them about the physical side, that they possess a physical allergy.
Devan Castille: When your body does not metabolize alcohol or drugs at a certain rate, and this craving is produced, you’re powerless over that.
Rebecca Carpenter: It was no longer this just I’m different and I don’t fit in. I actually fit in to a whole group of people.
Dionese Gerbrecht: We also teach them about the mental side of the – once you are detoxed and free of the substance, why do you keep putting it back in?
Carren Comeaux: While they’re in group therapy, they’re going to learn how to deal with their anxiety, PTSD, all that stuff, in a healthy fashion.
Chet Lavigne: It helped me understand why I’m an alcoholic.
Rebecca Carpenter: It was scary. At the same time, it was extremely relieving.
Bonnie Pritchard: Why did I not know that I don’t have to put a substance in my bod to cope with what’s going on around me.
Dionese Gerbrecht: We call it clear the wreckage of your past.
Devan Castille: I put my head on a chopping block. If you follow the directions that I teach in my class, I will cut my head off if you can’t stay sober.
Facing Treatment Fears Serenity Treatment Center of Louisian
My name is Bonnie Pritchard. I’m the admissions coordinator at the Weymouth facility. Treatment, a lot of people don’t know exactly what it is, what it entails. Family members are like, what is this about? My family and I, we didn’t know anything about it either. I had never been to treatment before. I was court ordered and scared because in my mind, I saw a psych ward. That’s one thing that I get a lot with patients. They’re afraid of what it’s about to be and what it’s about to look like. I’ll get a call in my office and they’re like, well, the admit is here but they’re refusing to get out of the car. I go out there and I say, I know where you’re at right now, I’ve sat in that car and I’ve cried my heart out saying, please don’t make me do this, please. I said, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. That’s what I pride myself in and say, it’s going to be okay, let’s talk about your questions, let’s talk about your concerns or your fears.
We are genuinely here to help. We’ve sat in that seat, we know what it feels like, and I respond all the time with people. I’m like, if you just give me a call, I will walk you through the process, I will hold your hand through the whole way and I’ll tell you exactly what you need to do, because I want you to get help and I want you to be safe. That’s what it’s all about.
What to Bring Serenity Treatment Center of Louisiana
One year ago, yesterday, I took a few days off, and family and I, we rented a house on the beach. We were in the pool and we were floating around. My phone kept ringing and I kept answering the phone. It was this lady who lived out around Thibodaux and she had questions, can I bring my cellphone and clothes? Do I have to bring enough for 28 days? I’m like, no, we have washer and dryers. It doesn’t take coins. You don’t even need the pods. You can wash while you’re here. Just bring like five to seven changes of clothes, hygiene products, things they’re comfortable with, but it can’t be anything that has alcohol in it, sealed stuff, packed, unopened. I always tell them too, bring your own blanket and pillow because it’ll make you feel more comfortable while you’re here.
My family were like, why did you decide to answer all that? I said, but those questions come up as she’s thinking, as she’s packing. Yesterday she posted on Facebook, 365 days sober. Even though she needed guidance and she needed soothing and she needed it’s going to be okay, that’s what it’s about. 365 days later, she’s clean and sober and she has a new life and new hope. I thought that’s what it’s about being an admissions person to always be there, to encourage, to answer those silly little questions of, can I bring my electric toothbrush?
Hope for Co-Occurring Mental Health Challenges Serenity Trea
We’re a dual diagnosed facility, so psyche, mental health stuff, and drug addiction, alcoholism, they kind of go together. While they’re in group therapy, they’re going to learn how to deal with their anxiety, PTSD, all that stuff, in a healthy fashion. One thing that sets Serenity aside, the therapists. Almost every single one of them are in recovery themselves. I watch them with the clients. They treat the clients like family.
I can remember myself being a client and going into treatment. One of the worst feelings is whenever you’re sitting across from your therapist feeling like you’re lower than them, I have to look up to them. Here, at Serenity, the staff, they don’t make you feel that way. Almost every single person here, they’re in recovery. They can relate to the clients. The best part of my job is watching people come in completely broken, lost kids, husbands and wives, jobs. I watch them blossom into these beautiful flowers, get their jobs back, get their lives back, get the wife, their babies. It’s a beautiful thing to experience.
New Renovations For Improved Client Care Serenity Treatment
I went to the 28-day program, and went to the intensive outpatient program, and then I went onto sober living. They offered me a full-time position as a maintenance technician. I accepted.
We’ve done a lot of renovations, new flooring, fresh paint, brighter colors, completely renovated the bathrooms, tile showers, new fixtures, the granite countertops. We put an exercise room downstairs. The rooms have been reconstructed for more space. The recovery’s still the same, but the facility itself has been completely upgraded. It’s awesome to be a part of.
Call Serenity. We have a number, day or night. You can call and reach out. Someone will answer that phone and get you the help that you need.
Rebecca C. Full Interview
My name is Rebecca Carpenter, and I have been in recovery since November 12th, 2021. I never wanted to get sober. Even when things were so terrible with my family, what made sense to me is I was trying to figure out how I could keep drugs in my life forever, because I thought that, that made me better. I thought it made sense to marry into the cartel. I was going to try and meet these people who were making these big drug runs and everything, and I tried to do that. That made more sense to me than coming to a place to try to get sober. I was in fear of what people thought of me from a very young age. I isolated myself because I was so fear driven by what I thought people thought about me or not being good enough.
The first time that I did any kind of substance, I felt free. I wasn’t afraid. I got along with people. I could go anywhere. I could do anything. When I would do something, I would do a lot of it. Whereas other people may simply have a drink, I would drink a bottle. I may not do it again for a week, but the next time I did something, it would be somebody’s going to take one ecstasy pill, I’m going to take four ecstasy pills. Consequences of using maybe, but just life choices in general made me feel less than. Drugs made me feel more than until I had to have more and more drugs. It became a lifestyle that led to losing a lot.
When I was 19, I lost a child. I had probably only drunk and used marijuana up to that point, but after that, I made some really poor choices, taking justice into my own hands for the reasons that I lost my child. I didn’t believe that there was any way other than fixing it myself, so I thought I did. Really the consequences of the things that I did, stayed with me from there on. I drunk more to cover up the way that I behaved in that situation to meeting my future husband and losing his mother, and heroin was our best friend. It took over in a matter of weeks. We started out smoking it, sniffing it to intravenously shooting it up. Then that wasn’t enough, so we were doing Coc. Then that wasn’t enough and ripping off things, just it was a lot. Fast forward to 2001, I went to treatment with my husband. We were addicted to crack and heroin still. He recovered, and I was okay if he was okay. Then in 2009, he died unexpectedly. He had a heart attack. It took me two weeks from the moment that he died until I was shooting up meth.
The weeks leading up to coming to Serenity, I was living in a trap house. The people in the trap house wanted me out because I was too crazy and too much of a – I was just too much. I was a lot. I was a lot to handle and I was going harder than everybody there, and they were afraid I was going to draw attention or I was going to die. The people in the trap house who are also trapping, drugging just as much as me, oh, I thought just as much, called my children and they were like, you have to do something with her. My oldest daughter told me if I didn’t do something, that she would never speak to me again. I was like, yeah, okay, whatever. Then my son, who hadn’t spoke to me for three years, through her said he will indefinitely never speak to me again. Then my daughter, who at that time was 16, just told me I want to be able to love you, but I can no longer allow you to hurt me.
When I got here, it was simply to get somebody to speak to me, get the people in my life to deal with me again, to get a job, and then I would figure out how I would maintain my life using drugs. That’s what I thought that I was going to do. When I got into education with Jeff Simmons and he started teaching me that there was an obsession of the mind and an allergy of the body, it took a few weeks, honestly, before I really was clearheaded enough to understand what he was talking about. The way that he put it, that it was just I had no choice. Once I put a drug in me, the choice was no longer mine, and that if I wanted the obsession to stop that I had to replace it with something. When I learned that there was a way to live and I didn’t have to depend on anything or anybody except for my higher power, it was scary, at the same time, it was extremely relieving because it was all – he just kept saying everything that I need is inside of me, everything that I need to do everything that needs to be done is already with me, I don’t have to get it from anywhere else. I just have to do the next right thing, and that resonated.
The benefits and the reward has been more than anything that I could have ever imagined. The peace of mind that I have, I don’t have to lie to people. For a person like me, not having to remember a bunch of lies to try to get people to do what I want, it frees up a lot of time in my life that I didn’t even realize I was occupying. I just get up and I do what it is that I’m supposed to do next, and I don’t have to worry about the big, immense, huge, looming the rest of my life. I work at it one step at a time, and it’s working. I speak to all of my children. I have grandchildren. I have a sponsor. I come back to Serenity and sponsor every opportunity that I get because it helps me to remember what it was like.
It’s given me a life that I always wanted. I wanted people to like me, and I was so worried about what they thought about me. Through this program, I learned that I don’t need to be concerned with what other people think. Then I’ve been rewarded with people who tell me how they feel about me and what they think. I have people in my life that I’ve been trying to make be in my life, and now they just are and I don’t have to try. I tell my sponsees all the time, living in what was comfortably miserable was easier for me than to take a step and walk through something I had no idea was going to happen. Sometimes the firing squad is what you know, and freedom is what you don’t know.
Do you doubt that you could ever change? Do you think maybe the status quo is better than an unknown future? Many of our graduates who felt the same. But Serenity’s program changed their lives so profoundly, that they’ve chosen to share their stories with you.
Chet L Full Testimonial Serenity Treatment Center of Louisia
My name is Chet Levine. I’m an alcoholic, and I have been in recovery for almost 18 months. I always thought that I would end up doing long sentences in jail or end up dying. I never ever dreamed that a sober life was ever possible for me. I started drinking and using drugs at a young age. Just always wanted to be doing things that I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be responsible or anything like that. I was just wanting to pretty much get high and have fun. That eventually led me to other harder drugs. I started to use cocaine and I was also taking prescription medication. It took control of my body, my mind, and my spirit. It’s been hard drugs for the past 15 years, especially opiates, pain pills, and heroin.
I’ve been in and out of jail my entire young adult life. All of these things I feel like were, because of my drug addiction. I was homeless at one point. No matter how bad my life was, every day my goal was to just get high. It caused me to lose relationships, lose jobs, going to prison. Even that couldn’t stop me from doing drugs because I was still using drugs when I was locked up. I overdosed six times. Three of those times were three days in a row. I didn’t care about my life or anyone else’s. Nothing was going to stop me. I went to jail one last time and when I got out, I called my mom and she said, well, the best thing you can do is go knock on the door and I ask them if you can come back in because that’s the best place for you. Hearing that from my mother, it just made me realize the route that I’ve taken in life is only going to lead to that or death. My mom told me that the only way she would come get me is if I went to treatment. I said, you know what? I think it’s time to give treatment a shot.
When I first came to Serenity, I weighed 145 pounds. It completely changed me in every way. It helped me understand why I am an alcoholic. It helped me understand the solution. Emotionally, it’s helped me tremendously because before, I’ve always had problems with anger and depression. It’s given me the tools that I needed to recover from that state of mind. It’s taught me love and tolerance. It’s taught me patience. It’s taught me kindness. One of the best things that I can say that I’ve gotten from recovery is just the peace; the peace of not having to struggle to look for your next meal, to wonder where you’re going to sleep at night, to wonder if you’re going to go to jail at any minute for any number of things that you’ve done, just absolute peace and ease.
Whenever I graduated Serenity, I gave Sober Living a shot. It’s a program for drug addicts or alcoholics, and it offers you housing under the condition that you remain sober, go to meetings, work with your sponsor. At the same time, it’s taught me responsibilities and things that I never knew in life; how to pay rent on time, how to pay bills, just normal living things that people do every day that I had never learned. It also gives me a chance to work with a lot of other guys in recovery. I love the fellowship and I love working with other alcoholics. I have a lot of friends, real friends that are sober and are in the program. I’m self-employed now. I’m trying to start my own business, so I’m really excited about that. I’m getting all the things that I wanted out of life, but never knew how to get. I couldn’t get it because I had something blocking me off from my higher power, and that was addiction.
For anyone who struggles with finding your own conception of God, I feel like that was something that was difficult for me. I had a lot of resentments towards God in the beginning. Losing my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, all three unexpected in a close period of time. I had turned my back on God. This program really brought me back to seeking God every day. If anyone out there feels the same way, God’s always there. If you’re willing and you seek him, great things can happen.
Bonnie P. Testimonial Serenity Treatment Center of Louisiana
I was in St. Tammany Parish Jail. I had never been in trouble before. I used to be a kindergarten teacher. My bond to get out of jail at the time was $480,000. My family was like, there’s no way we can get you out. They offered the treatment bond and they said, no, you’ll have to go to a treatment center and you’ll have to stay there the whole time. I mean, I’m not crazy. I grabbed at it and I said, okay, I’m going to do whatever you need me to do. I’m going to tell you I was crying the whole time. I was there about two days and I said, you know what? I don’t like this. I don’t think I’m going to do this. My counselor, who is now our clinical director, sat me down and she said, okay, well, let’s talk to your legal people. They called them and they said, here’s your choices. When it was laid out for me, I said, well, I choose to stay here and I’m going to be really happy about it now.
She said, I don’t know what the future holds, but we’re doing everything we can as long as you’re doing your part. That’s one thing that we’re really good at these days, is working with legal people and helping that process and saying, okay, here’s your choices. We get their court information and it’s tracked through. We send updates, we send admission letters, we send information on what’s going to happen when they graduate, where they’re going to go, where they’re going to be living, what they’re going to do. That’s a huge passion for me because of the way I started. If you come in here open-minded and willing, let us help you with the magic.
Devan C. Testimonial Serenity Treatment Center of Louisiana
My name is Devan Castille, and I’m the Program Director at The Serenity Treatment Center of Louisiana. I was raised up in poverty, gravitated to the streets and drugs, been shot twice in the head, been shot twice in the chest, been to prison five times. I knew that when I ingested drugs and alcohol, that I didn’t act like normal people act. Even people who would use drugs with me, they would go home on day two or three. Ten days later, I would still be out there savaging.
When I came in, they explained the disease concept. They told me that I had a physical allergy to alcohol and drugs, that when I ingested a craving was produced. Not only did I have a craving, they told me that I had something called a mental obsession. A mental obsession is a thought that overrides all logical thinking. They told me that I was powerless over this. Then they said that there was a power that was greater than me that can give me the power I needed to recover from this. There was too much me blocking me off from this power.
The love for my kids, the love for my parents, that would not keep me sober in these blind spots, in this mental obsession, these mental blank spots. Once I inventoried myself, and I can see where I was being blocked off, then I could ask whoever this power is to help me remove it. I got relationships back with my kids. I was estranged from my kids. I went back to school, and I got a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice with Human Service.
I’m a Program Director at the same treatment center I graduated from. I’m in a master’s degree program with half of my credits to graduate. Serenity not – it didn’t give me my life back because I never had a life. It gave me my life. That’s the first step, admitting you’re powerless. You don’t have to believe me, look at the evidence of your life. If the evidence of your life says that you’re powerless, and that your life is unmanageable, pick up the phone. We love you. We want you to recover. We’ve got a way out.
If you or someone that you know needs treatment for addiction, make a call to Serenity Treatment Center to start the recovery process.
Contact a member of our team by calling us at (225) 361-0899 or filling out our online form.
Start your road to healing. Call us at (225) 361-0899 or contact us online
