The Basics
Medication Assisted Recovery Services (MARS) is a program of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Einstein Division of Substance Abuse. MARS has been in operation in the College’s Port Morris Wellness Center in the Bronx, New York for 11 years. The facility hosts peer support recovery meetings and psycho-education groups for residents who are receiving Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) to manage opioid addiction. Enrolled clients can receive methadone or Suboxone at the Port Morris Wellness Center and attend on-site recovery sessions at MARS at no cost.
The founders of MARS, Joyce Sue Woods (CMA) and Walter Ginter (CMA) who are in recovery themselves created MARS to help those in recovery to thrive, to erase the stigma of MAT and to develop recovery support services that enhance other substance abuse treatment programs.
Treatment and Staff
Most MARS clients receive their medication at the affiliated Wellness Center of Port Morris and then attend psycho-education classes and peer recovery groups at MARS. Classes and groups include relapse prevention, goal setting, sober socializing and addiction education. MARS offers seventeen groups each week with as many as three sessions scheduled per day.
Clients can attend treatment at MARS for as long as they wish—and many participate in group meetings for years. Others may use the program to facilitate achieving goals—such as finding stable employment—and then leave once that goal has been achieved. The program has an open-door policy, encouraging clients to return whenever they need support.
To help clients cultivate a spiritual and peer-supportive component to their treatment, MARS has developed its own 12-step format; the “MARS Spiritual Recovery Meeting. It also offers a class on how work the 12 steps.
Clients with dual diagnosis receive therapy and mental health medication in the Behavioral Health department of The Wellness Center at Port Morris. Clinicians there use CBT and Motivational Interviewing (MI) to help clients manage chemical dependency.
Extras
MARS organizes recreational trips to the beach, bowling and local parks so that clients can learn how to create a social life in recovery. MARS has created The REC Room (MARS Regional Electronic Community) for clients to access peer support online and the online Peer Recovery Network Portal, which enables those in recovery to organize and advocate more effectively.
Additionally, MARS has also trained peer recovery leaders in 17 programs across the country in its recovery coaching program. Recently, the facility received a grant to implement a family plan to educate the families of opiate addicts and plans to launch this program in the summer of 2016.
In Summary
For eleven years MARS has been offering those receiving MAT an important peer recovery network to help them create new behaviors and set goals for a life in recovery. Since it is affiliated with the Albert Einstein Medical College, it has the ability to offer clients other behavioral health services including therapy and mental health medication. By creating a strong peer support community alongside therapeutic services, MARS provides an unusually comprehensive long-term treatment environment for those suffering from opioid addiction.
Medication Assisted Recovery Services
The Wellness Center at Port Morris
804 E. 138th St.
Bronx, NY 10454
Medication Assisted Recovery Services Cost: Free of Charge, services funded by public and private grants. Reach Medication Assisted Recovery Services at (718) 742-7804. Find Medication Assisted Recovery Services on Facebook and Twitter
Do you have a complaint or review of Medication Assisted Recovery Services? Use the comments area below to add to your review of Medication Assisted Recovery Services.
Photo courtesy of Gryffindor (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons (resized and cropped)
Sponsored DISCLAIMER: This is a paid advertisement for California Behavioral Health, LLC, a CA licensed substance abuse treatment provider and not a service provided by The Fix. Calls to this number are answered by CBH, free and without obligation to the consumer. No one who answers the call receives a fee based upon the consumer’s choice to enter treatment. For additional info on other treatment providers and options visit www.samhsa.gov.
