Active Recovery

About Active Recovery

Active Recovery is an intensive outpatient drug and alcohol treatment program in Minden, Louisiana, and one of three locations alongside Shreveport and Bossier City. Licensed counselor Terri Schaffner founded them in 2012, and they deliberately step away from the traditional 12-step model. Instead, they build recovery around ten core concepts, including empathy, integrity, gratitude, and responsibility, supported by gratitude journaling and a nonjudgmental focus on changing how clients think. Outpatient care runs in up to three phases over as long as a year, and they also operate The Retreat for Women, a 28-day residential program on Lake Bistineau in Ringgold for women dealing with substance use, trauma, domestic violence, and mental health challenges.

Counseling draws on cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, rational emotive behavior therapy, motivational interviewing, brief intervention, and trauma-focused work, with dedicated support for survivors of sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. For opioid and alcohol use, they prescribe naltrexone and Vivitrol, can refer clients to a short medical detox in Springhill, and accept outside Suboxone or Subutex prescriptions while encouraging a move toward Vivitrol or Sublocade. They also serve court-involved clients through DWI first-offender classes, anger management, a 26-week batterers intervention program, the Nurturing Parenting Program, and later-phase relapse prevention groups, and transportation assistance is available. At the women’s retreat, a small four-bed lakehouse offers twice-daily group therapy, yoga and meditation, arts workshops, kayaking, gardening, and life skills training, with onsite nursing and medication management from a psychiatric nurse practitioner.