Since its opening, Longmont Recovery Café has served over 12,000 cups of coffee to its members and guests.
The Longmont branch of the Recovery Café Network opened in May 2019. Despite closing twice due to the pandemic, as of last month, they have served a total of 782 unique individuals as members and guests.
“We do have people checking us out every day, whether or not they’re comfortable or ready to become members,” said Lisa Searchinger, executive director of the Longmont Recovery Café.
The café aims to be a community of refuge and healing for people in recovery from addiction, mental health issues, and other life challenges, offering a variety of classes and support groups along with coffee and community meals. Accountability is what sets the model apart from others, with members required to be drug and alcohol free for 24 hours, meet weekly in a Recovery Circle, and help out at the center in some way.
Along with the rest of the world, the café shut down in March 2020, offering virtual services that saw limited success, since the model for the cafe relies so heavily on community and many people didn’t have consistent access to technology. The center reopened in July with strict health protocols, closing again in November before reopening most recently in February 2021.
Before the pandemic, the Recovery Café had built up 31 active members and saw several hundred guest visits in its first year. Searchinger estimated that only roughly 10-20% of pre-COVID members returned immediately, but they’re now up to pre-pandemic levels of use.
With suicide rates on the rise and Boulder County seeing record numbers of drug overdoses, Searchinger said she has seen a growing need for their type of services.
“In this extremely anxiety-riddled time — I want to say I don’t want to overstate this, but I think it’s an extraordinary time for pessimism,” she said. “We’ve seen a lot of overdoses and sucicide rates are up … Folks are really struggling.”
There are a myriad of factors behind why that might be, but Becky Milanski, peer support specialist and volunteer coordinator at Recovery Café, thinks a lot of people are still recovering from the isolation of the pandemic when many lost their support structures. Recovery Café offers a place to find community again.
“They feel comfortable and they feel heard and seen, where in COVID people were not seen, you know?” Milanski said. “Just offering that support here has made a difference. I think there is a great need for what we do, definitely, and I think it got so much worse over the last two years just because of the isolation. We can’t recover alone.”
The café has been intentional with its outreach, from collaborating with agencies, attending community events and getting referrals from a number of partners in Longmont and Boulder County.
A big focus with their work is providing a variety of ways for people to recover. They offer space for peer-led recovery groups, including AA and Recovery Dharma, and offer classes, activities and more because recovery can look different from person to person.
One newer program that has seen a lot of success is the Open Mic Night, which takes place on the first Friday of each month. Members, friends, family and those from the community can perform or share their story, explained Chris Poma, a peer support specialist who helped get the event started.
“It’s been a great way of getting people into the cafe who might not think they need to be here or want to be here,” he said.
Letting people know that these services exist, even if they’re not ready to utilize them, is also an important part of the work at Recovery Café. That’s why they also emphasize harm reduction, providing Narcan, a nasal spray that can treat narcotic overdoses, and fentanyl test strips to their members and volunteers.
“You never know when somebody is ready for recovery,” Searchinger said. “So we encourage folks to explore the concept of recovery while making sure that they are alive and safe.”
Looking toward the future, the Recovery Café is seeking a permanent location. They’re currently located in the basement of CENTRALongmont Presbyterian Church, though it is a separate entity.
Searchinger said they are searching carefully for a permanent location, which ideally would include a kitchen and space for a barista station to offer job skills training. Expanding outreach into Longmont’s sizable Spanish speaking community is also a big goal for the Recovery Café.
The café is hoping to increase awareness about the services they provide and attend more community events.
“We meet people where they’re at and some people might not be ready, but you plant that seed,” Milanski said.
Even in the last month, she said they’ve seen a few people who left the Recovery Café before the pandemic return, ready to give recovery a try. Learn more about the organization at recoverycafelongmont.org.
