While growing up in Long Island, New York, drug use was not only highly prevalent, but easily accessible. The lucky ones experimented, but came out relatively unscathed by the epidemic. My older brother and I were not so lucky. We were able to seek out treatment and were successful by most people’s standards, completing university education and starting on the road to successful careers. We were both able to regain the trust of our family members, become influencers in our respective social circles, and establish ourselves as role models for what true recovery looks like.

Always the business entrepreneur at heart, I chose to advance my education to better understand the business side of the healthcare industry.

In the spring of 2019, I was on the verge of completing my Masters degree in Health Administration at the University of Scranton, and finally reuniting in New York with the brother I so looked up to, for his discipline and his desire to be successful. In April 2019, I received that dreaded phone call. Just days after the end of tax season, my brother suddenly and unexpectedly succumbed to a drug overdose after 6 years of complete sobriety.

I have experienced the death of more close friends, acquaintances, and sponsees than anyone my age should see in multiple lifetimes. Yet, the loss of my only sibling and my best friend, along with the devastation that it enacted on my family, became my greatest career motivator. I pursued an administrative residency position with Recovery Health Solutions, IPA, which had received state funding as a Behavioral Health Care Collaborative. In that role, I was able to work alongside experienced professionals on state projects to financially and clinically integrate 52 mental health and substance abuse facilities, with over 400 locations, touching nearly 100,000 patient lives. I am most proud of my contribution to a telepsychiatry project to link patient management across the continuum of care.

As the Covid epidemic took hold, and created job loss, financial hardships, emotional and physical isolation, and interruption of traditional medical care, many of my friends, with hard-earned years of sobriety, relapsed. I knew it was time to harness both my passion and my grief, and launch a new type of addiction service, as a legacy to my brother and to all those I have lost and watched struggle along my own recovery journey. InnerBloom Recovery Services was borne out of my sense of personal loss and gratitude. Through a combined holistic and 12 step model approach, long term recovery is achievable.