The Ranch – Nunnelly, Tennessee

Addiction is a strange and far from fully understood condition, and the further I travel the more variety I find in its treatment. Not only do the ‘experts’ fail to agree about whether it is a disease and whether it is genetically inherited or environmentally developed, but they also interpret and define recovery in different ways. And the different ways have been starkly illustrated to me in my small journey around central Tennessee.

The clinical environment at Cumberland Heights,  the homely recovery houses of YANA,  the detention centre of DC4 and the therapeutic retreat at Onsite are all differing responses, within 50 miles of each other, to the same condition of addiction in its many guises; and my trip to The Ranch gave me yet another perspective.

Crossing the Carolina to California 2500 mile Interstate Highway (I 40), with its evocative signposts to Nashville and Memphis, I crossed from a hilly, forested and old mining region into a more agricultural belt of cattle pastures and rolling hills; and there beside the Piney River lies the 2,000-acre working horse and cattle ranch that is The Ranch, Alcohol and Drug Rehab.

Pulling off the country road and into the dusty parking area I saw the first cows I had seen in America. They were big! I thought I was in the right place, but wasn’t entirely sure because there was no sign or name plate and work teams were on the roofs making the place look a little like a building site, or a rehab in recovery itself! I asked a ‘new age’ old lady who was getting out of her big black shiny 4x4 whether I was at the Ranch and she confirmed I was and offered to take me to the Director, Cheryl Brown, who has 30 years of experience in the field of recovery; much of it in Sierra Tucson and Cottonwood, two treatment centres on my itinerary in Arizona.

Cheryl explained the work going on as being the result of the Great Tennessee Flood of May 2010, (which I heard variously described as a once in a 100, 500 or 1000 year occurrence), and she told a horrible tale of being stranded in California unable to fly into Nashville, and being kept up to date by phone on the devastation being done to her rehab. As it turned out, only one of the four residential houses had to be evacuated, but the uninsured losses to the Ranch were significant. Not only were the central admin and therapy buildings swamped by a 12-foot deluge, deleting at a stroke all the sensitive and confidential paperwork and computer files a medical facility must maintain, but all the kitchens, stores, vehicles and livestock facilities were ruined. Cheryl described how a nephew of hers opened up the stables and animal sheds to allow the animals to escape, which the horses and cows did. The 300 goats however refused to leave the shelter of their home and suffered the ultimate consequence.

The treatment emphasis at The Ranch is on healing: physical, emotional, mental and especially spiritual. The range of disorders treated is impressive. Trauma/PTSD, Eating Disorders, Codependency, Personality Disorders, Substance Abuse/Dependency, Mood Disorders, Love and Sex Addiction, Depression, and Anxiety are all approached through a normally three-month, occasionally six month, programme. That is an ambitious schedule and it interesting to see how ‘simple’ drug and alcohol recovery has expanded in its scope as more and more conditions are discovered to lie behind the obvious symptoms of uncontrolled alcohol and drug use.

The Ranch has a strong spiritual basis that has evolved from the 12 Step Programme and now incorporates shamanic wisdom from the Toltec civilisation that followed the Aztec Empire in central America a thousand years ago. Cheryl gave me a book called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, a ’nagual (shaman) from the Eagle Knight lineage, on which various recovery practices here are based. The agreements are: be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions and always do your best. A tall order.

But through practice, prayer, awareness of the wisdom of the Great Spirit, meditation, structured ceremony in a therapeutic sweat lodge and contemplative and reflective use of a medicine wheel, the labyrinth and a 12-Step walk through the trees, The Ranch develops something it calls Spiritual Recovery. Here in the lovely Tennessee countryside, flood damaged or not, it is easy to believe that people can “experience themselves beyond the programmed limitations of belief, as aspirational beings who are free to love, free to live, free to be happy.”

At $15,000 a month, that must sound attractive to a lot of addicts.