NORWAY — Since its opening in early 2023, The HILLS Recover Center has quickly become a safe place for people in the area with substance use disorder approaching or working through recovery to turn for support and tools to help them take their own steps forward.

The HILLS Recovery Center in Norway now offers support meetings for family and friends of people with addictions. The SMART Recovery Family & Friends Group meets Mondays at 6 p.m. Supplied photo

This year, the center has begun delving into other aspects of recovery: creating a corner where loved ones and friends of people with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) can learn ways to stay steady and understand what that person is working through for their sobriety.

WMARI volunteer Alicia Cram has first-hand, albeit vicarious, experience with trauma related to SUD.

In Cram’s situation, she was pulled into the legal consequences of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with a person she loved. It created a spiral where she temporarily lost her home, her relationship, even her ability to earn a livelihood.

During that period she was fortunate enough to have her own family support and the chance for her to reset and take care of herself.

Since then, Cram has earned a bachelor’s degree in the field of mental health and human resources. She also learned about Western Maine Addiction Recovery Initiative, volunteering for the last few years on its annual September recovery rally.

When Cram was looking for internship and independent study opportunities while attending the University of Maine Augusta she began working at The HILLS, first for college credit and then as a volunteer.

Her journey in recovery is not of her own addiction. Self-care is a tenet that many with SUD have never learned, but the same is true for those who love them. Cram represents the part of the community that also struggles with shame and stigma of SUD.

“It’s a big thing, knowing and learning how to deal with the ups and downs, the back and forth, that comes with recovery,” Cram said. “It’s important to understand why there may be relapses, how to support your person without your behavior enabling theirs.”

Cram’s experience volunteering with WMARI and The HILLS inspired her to establish a new outlet for the recovery community – for people like her who have been touched by others’ addictions.

“The idea came last fall,” Cram said. “Through conversations with Kari [Taylor, WMARI/The HILLS’ executive director], she asked if I would be interested in running such a group.”

After wrapping up her school commitments Cram began attending a series of Self-Management & Recovery Training (SMART) support groups at The HILLS, and going through training to manage a recovery group on her own.

By June Cram was ready to launch the SMART Recovery Family & Friends Group. It meets every Monday at The HILLS at 15 Tannery Street in Norway, starting at 6 p.m.

The Family & Friends Group operates in similar fashion to Al-Anon but with broader intrapersonal tools. Foremost for a person in an SUD home relationship, Cram explained, it’s important they do not get lost in their own guilt or shame.

So far, the group is fairly small, which Cram says helps her to learn as she and the program grow within the WMARI community.

“There are a couple of people who quickly became regulars,” she said. “Others attend more sporadically. The meeting is open and free to anyone wishing to participate.”

Cram noted that at one session a person in SUD recovery sat in. They had come to the HILLS in need of a group meeting. Since Cram’s was the next one available, they joined in and got the support they needed at that moment.

“I had a parent to turn to” when the weight of addiction threatened to crush Cram, she said. “Imagine if I had no support, or parent available to me.”

With Cram’s initiative, people around Oxford Hills now have a new level of support for families learning and recovering from SUD.