Kevin Riordan: Now sober, Gloucester Twp. couple help addicts

Mark and Helena Guarnere learned about the addiction treatment business the hard way: As patients.

"We know how it feels to sit in a chair during group therapy, trying to stay sober," says Mark, 45, who, like his wife, is a recovering alcoholic.

"I was in a different treatment program six years ago, and it was very impersonal. I felt that I was just a number," Helena, 42, says.

"So we rolled up our sleeves," Mark adds.

The result is Lakeside Recovery Center, an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), in Sicklerville. He's the CEO and she's the vice president.

"Our vision," says chief operating officer John Gillespie, "is to provide an opportunity for recovery to every individual who needs it."

Mark and Helena, who live in Gloucester Township, got sober in 2010 and 2007, respectively. Family members had had enough of the duplicity and dysfunction that define addiction.

"My sister called me a junkie," Mark recalls.

Sobriety has enabled the Guarneres to resume successful lives. Mark, who grew up in Blackwood, owns a paper distribution company with offices near Lakeside. And Helena, a Philadelphia native, is studying for an addictions counseling certification at Camden County College - and interning at Lakeside.

"We're using all our experience here," she says.

The couple, married for 13 years, have two young children, but Lakeside is very much their baby, too.

"The blueprint came right from their hearts," says Gillespie, noting that while it is expected that clients will pay something, Lakeside will attempt to accommodate people who lack insurance.

One of 270 IOP providers statewide, Lakeside is not an inpatient rehab, detox or methadone clinic. It does not dispense medication.

Rather, it is licensed by the New Jersey Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services to offer group and individual therapy to people over 18.

Clients, including walk-ins and individuals referred from inpatient or other programs, attend three-hour counseling sessions three times a week for four months.

Groups are limited to a dozen people. Clients are required to remain abstinent from alcohol and drugs - checked by random urine screenings - and to regularly attend meetings of 12-step recovery groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

"You can't do it by yourself," counselor Larena Wilde says. "You need other people. You need basic human connection, and building some of that in here can get clients into the rooms of AA and NA."

"We're giving people the tools," Gillespie says. "It's almost like a school."

Lakeside declined my request to interview clients but did make available Wilde, as well as Harold Williams, director of clinical services.

"Our goal is to take everybody, but the reality is we can't," Williams says, adding that clients "need to be motivated."

Sadly, even highly motivated alcoholics and addicts relapse, particularly in the beginning; perhaps 10 percent of those in treatment will stay sober on their initial attempt, Mark notes.

He and his wife know the reality of relapse all too well.

"Neither of us are first-time winners," Helena says, using the 12-step slang for a person whose initial attempt at sobriety endures.

The key is willingness to change.

"I realized I couldn't keep hanging around with the same old people I used to run with," Mark says.

"The odds can be very discouraging," Wilde says. "I hear that in group. But we tell them, 'You can be the person who makes it. Don't count yourself out.' "