The 13th Step - 1: The Shadow

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

What is “the 13th step,” and why does it matter? It all starts with understanding what it’s like to be in the earliest days of recovery. We meet two women who say they were harassed during early recovery. And we meet the man who allegedly harassed them – the founder of New Hampshire’s largest addiction treatment network. The 13th Step is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio’s Document team. More at 13thsteppodcast.org.

So, so you get there, what do you remember? Green Mountain is a completely different vibe that I'm used to. Like, it didn't feel like treatment. But I remember I had my first like real God moment there because the view is incredible. Actually it was really cool. One time somebody was having a really tough time. And so we all had the idea, like hey Marikake, we go down to the helicopter landing bed and watch the sunset. And she brought us down, we all screamed from the mountain and it felt so good. It was like a movie.

Like we just sat there and screamed. It was really cool. That was really cool. And I remember that moment I was like, if there, if I didn't believe in God before watching the sunset and this view, I do now. It was like that. Like it hit me. You don't even mean because it's like, I didn't make that. I didn't make the sun. I don't you know water the trees every day like Again that spirituality is just like finding anything that's bigger than me and it was very easy to see something larger than me in front of me there You know Did you like like thinking about all this stuff again? Yeah? No, it is. It's good because I you know For the last few years that you have great mountain. It's very difficult to not think of Eric

Talking about that allows me to like almost see it without him. It's almost like a shadow It's like his shadow isn't there like while I'm thinking about it right now, which is nice about it right now, which is nice. That's Elizabeth. Well, that's what I'm going to call her. She was scared to reveal her identity, for reasons that will become clear to you later. So she and I settled on calling her by her middle name, Elizabeth, and she allowed me to record her voice. In order to get Elizabeth on the phone, I had to call her late at night.

She leads a very full life. She's a 12 step sponsor, an active member of her church. She has young kids. The first time we got on the phone, Elizabeth was really nervous. I'm sorry, but I'm one exhausted from having a toddler and two. And going to be a little flustered. This isn't something I've ever done. Elizabeth was about to tell me a story, a painful one, about something that happened to her a few years ago. And for me, her story was just the beginning of a wild reporting journey. My name is Lauren Chuljin.

I'm a public radio reporter in New Hampshire. And this journey began more than two years ago. I published a few stories about an addiction treatment company. It's actually the largest one in New Hampshire. They had a COVID outbreak at one of their residential rehab centers. And then, in December of 2020, I got an email. It essentially said, you think that's bad? The email was from a clinician at the company's flagship treatment facility called

Green Mountain Treatment Center. And this clinician made a huge allegation. She said that the guy who founded and ran that treatment center, he was sexually abusing female clients and employees. So I started calling around. And one of the first women who agreed to talk to me was Elizabeth. Elizabeth has no problem sharing her experience of addiction. That's easy. Like most people in recovery, she's done it a million times.

She calls it her fast forward story. You know, I drank when I was 12. That one drink ended up years later of me homeless and Boston on heroin. I sought treatment seriously, like actually trying to get sober when I was 21. They've gained sobri deal for about four years. And then at age 25, she relapsed. She knew she had to get help. I didn't really want to be doing what I was doing.

I wanted to get back to not lying to everyone I loved and not being a complete slave to a bag of powder. It's so pathetic when you say, wow, right, it's just a a bag of powder. It's like so pathetic when you say, wow, right? Like it's just the pathetic way of life, you know, that unfortunately is so easy to fall victim to. Elizabeth needed treatment ASAP. And lucky for her, Elizabeth's best friend had a lot of connections in the recovery community in New England. Let's just call him John, okay. community in New England. Let's just call him John, okay? So John goes, I have a bed for you, you know, at Green Mountain, Eric is holding it. Are you ready to go now? Eric was Eric Spoffert. He was the founder and CEO of a big addiction

treatment network in New Hampshire. Turns out not only did Eric say he had room, he promised to give Elizabeth a scholarship. She'd get a month of inpatient treatment at Green Mountain Treatment Center for free. Elizabeth says Eric even called her a few times to tell her about Green Mountain. And can I just say, this is such a rare opportunity. Hardly anyone is lucky enough to have a bed open and waiting for them when they need it. Never mind a free one. This was 2017. There weren't a lot of beds available in New Hampshire. The state was constantly in the national news. On two lists, you don't want to be on. Highest overdose deaths per capita

and smallest amount of money spent on treatment. So Elizabeth had basically hit the treatment jackpot. So Elizabeth had basically hit the treatment jackpot. She remembers the day the company van came to pick her up. Well, kind of. I just got into van incredibly high and they almost didn't drive me and then I was in New Hampshire next thing I know. The first few days are hazy. The van drops her off. She goes through detox for a few days, nurses help her get through withdrawal symptoms. But as her mind starts to clear, she starts going to group therapy and other programming.

And she realizes green mountain is a totally different vibe than the treatment center she's been through before. You know, I'm, I'm usually like a very much like an institution, whereas green mountain was like really nice, right? Like I felt like I was at summer camp almost. Green Mountain Treatment Center is in a gorgeous part of New Hampshire. I've never been inside, but I've driven up to the front gates, and I totally get what she means by summer camp. It's a big campus with apple trees in the front, clients even sleep in cabins, and it's up on this big hill.

You can see the white mountains in the distance. And Elizabeth says the summer camp vibe continued inside too. She felt really welcomed. It didn't feel like treatment in the way of like, all right, put your bags, we have to search you. It was like, yeah, we have to do these things, but like, we're your friends.

And it was like, it was nice. I don't know, it was just like a nice feeling to feel like not look down upon, but rather like they were actually reaching their hand out to help me. Elizabeth really, really loved the staff. They made the biggest impact on her. Many of them were in recovery too. And every once in a while, Eric's bothered the CEO would visit.

He wasn't there all the time, obviously. I mean, he doesn't work, you know, he's the CEO. He's not there all the time. Apart from when he'd fly in on a telecopter, which I never understood, I tried. Whatever. Not my business, right? By 2017, Eric had made a name for himself. He owned a company called Granite Recovery Centers. It was a network of addiction treatment

facilities and sober homes all over New Hampshire. Green Mountain was their biggest treatment center. Like his clients, Eric had struggled with addiction, and he made his personal story the backbone of the company. I can imagine him coming off that helicopter. He could be mistaken for an MMA fighter. Thick arms covered in tattoos, a buzz cut, not a suit and tie kind of guy. It almost seems as if like he just owns the recovery community in New Hampshire in Maine. You know like he says like big headhunt show that everyone knows, everyone respects, everyone looks up to. Elizabeth says Eric would occasionally check in with her when he was at Green Mountain.

One time he asked her to have lunch with him in the treatment center cafeteria. If it seemed weird as a client to eat lunch with the CEO, Elizabeth didn't make much of it. She figured it was because they had that friend in common, John. And some other staff members came along to lunch too, so whatever. Besides, she had other things to focus on. It was her last day in treatment. She would be leaving this place soon, back on her own, and she felt better than she had in a while, humbled, grounded. Elizabeth was all set to go to a sober house in Portland, Maine the next day.

The next step in her transition back to reality. But this is where the shadow creeps in. So yeah, I went out to Portland and I want to say it was within day two. One, it might have been in day one actually. I was receiving text from Eric. This is where I need to tell you. This podcast may be upsetting to listen to. Substance use disorder is already a hard topic. You'll also be hearing about trauma and sexual misconduct. And there will be some swearing. It's kind of unavoidable. Okay, back to Elizabeth.

It's my first day in this news overhouse. I just got my phone back right because in treatment, I don't have my phone. And it was, I mean, I don't remember any normal conversation to it, there might have been a hey, how are you? How's the house? But I have no idea. But I know that he was already planning to come to see me, wanted to take me out, wanted to do explicit things with sending me pictures, dick pictures. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, the language was that of a, you know, 50 shades of gray.

The CEO of the treatment center, she just just left was sending her pictures of his penis and soliciting her for sex. Just 30 days ago, Elizabeth arrived at Eric's treatment center, high on opioids. He paid for her to go there. And now this, Elizabeth fell into a complicated mental spiral. I knew in my core it wasn't right because I know that a CEO of a treatment center, I left 24 hours ago, should not be sending me pictures of his dick. He shouldn't be sending me pictures of his dick even a year later. That's just integrity 101, right?

But at the same time, what could she really do about it? She says she'd respond with neutral messages, like, don't you have a girlfriend or I'm busy She worried about how connected Eric was in the recovery community if she told them to knock it off or something Maybe he would retaliate in some way Like he was either gonna get me kicked out of the house or he was gonna set up a rumor about me to like ruin my time there or Whatever or just like make me out to be like a crazy in my time there or whatever or just like make me out to be like a crazy bitch if you will. I just I didn't I didn't want any of it. I wanted a roof over my head and food in my tummy like I wanted to feel safe. So I knew not to share it. I knew it was a you know I knew it was wrong but like

shooting heroin is not right either right? So it felt good in that really, really low vulnerable state. I'm a month sober. I'm still not well. I'm still really delusional and I'm really, really, really vulnerable. A girl who's month sober does not love herself yet, does not even know who she is, does not feel any validation from anything within herself, right?

So I felt special, if you want. I felt like this man that has presented himself with all this power and prestige and money, which has been shoved in my face for 30 days, wants me. So I must be good enough. That's kind of like, if I'm being honest, it's really embarrassing to admit, but that's kind of where my head naturally went to.

Until this moment, I didn't understand the vulnerability of new sobriety. I remember listening to Elizabeth so hard through the phone, not just about the messages, but the particular complexities around early recovery. We hear about sexual misconduct in so many places, so many industries, but there is a unique danger here. Like, I was the lowest I've ever been because I had no different, like, right? Like heroin heroin, um, best way to describe it is like the worst solution, but my only one when I'm using right, like it blocks whatever void I'm trying to fill.

It blocks all that shit. So the most vulnerable and addict can be is a new new society because all those emotions and vulnerabilities and weaknesses they have and they've been numbing with drugs and alcohol for years, it's now stripped away so now they're just, it's like a, you know, in the army somebody went out with no protection. A soldier with no protection. The feelings Elizabeth is describing, there is a lot of science out there that backs them up, just with different language, words like profound dopamine deficit state.

Addiction can cause problems with important brain functions, like focus, impulse control, decision-making, and judgment. And when someone stops using, the brain is out of whack, even for weeks afterwards. One psychiatrist I talked to described early recovery as a brain attack. Elizabeth says she never agreed to meet up with Eric, even as his messages continued. She told me Eric used Snapchat to send the pictures and explicit messages. And the thing about Snapchat is that the messages disappear once the recipient views them.

Elizabeth didn't take screenshots of any of these messages, but the way Snapchat works is if Elizabeth had taken screenshots, the app would have notified Eric, so he'd know if she made copies. All this to say, I have not seen these messages. And it's really important as a journalist that I only report allegations like these if they can be corroborated. But there were other ways I could corroborate Elizabeth's story.

Because Elizabeth told two friends what was happening with Eric. And she says she told them while it was happening. The first was a guy named Justin Downey. She told me that this happened to her and I was like, so just, I'm just fucking disgusted with this guy. Justin Downey is from Boston. He's also in recovery from years of heroin use. That's how he and Elizabeth met. I was in a sober house in Maine.

She was in a sober house in Maine, a female sober house. And I just met her out and about in the recovery community. Like, AA mean to something like that. We just got the talking. And she opened up to me and we just became very very close fast friends. Justin says he and Elizabeth were hanging out in Portland just chatting and Green Mountain Treatment Center came up and that's when Elizabeth mentioned the snapchats she was getting from Eric. I thought this

guy the fucking maggot what makes this guy think that this type of behavior is okay with a girl, this vulnerable, right? And let me tell you something, here I am at this moment in my life, right? I just got out of fucking prison and took a needle out of my arm, right? I have never, at this point, heard telling me this, I have never done any type of recovery work, a spiritual work upon myself. And even then, I still knew that this wasn't fucking okay to do, right?

If you're a fucking rehab owner, why are you in contact with the clientele after they leave there? You're supposed to have boundaries. Justin Downey, I should add, is his real name. He didn't hesitate for even a second to speak to me about this. And in doing so, my hope is that it actually restores other people's integrity in this fucking field

because it's sadly losing a lot of integrity. The second friend Elizabeth told was another woman in recovery in Portland. It was a similar conversation to the one Elizabeth had with Justin. Elizabeth remembered she was sitting in the living room of her sober house. And a notification popped up on her phone. It was a Snapchat, a Primeric, and this friend was sitting right next to her.

Elizabeth says her friend wanted to do something about it. They talked about telling someone that works with Eric. But a few months later, her friend died of an overdose. And Elizabeth says it was too much to keep pursuing on her own. Later I was able to talk to this friend's 12-step sponsor. Her name is Maureen Doyle. She wrote me an email about what she remembered. Years ago Maureen wrote, her sponsor had told her about Elizabeth's experience. Maureen then reported Eric's behavior to management of the Treatment Center, but from what she

could tell, nobody did anything about it. Here's another bit of Maureen's email. Quote, Although we are all responsible for our own recovery, I think it is important to recognize the impact leaders in the recovery community have on those they claim to be helping. After I heard Elizabeth's story, so this was 2022, I tried to interview Erick's bofford, but he declined through his lawyer. So I emailed many questions, and his lawyer sent back a statement that didn't answer any of my specific questions. The statement said that Erick vehemently denies any alleged misconduct.

His lawyer also wrote that sometimes people in recovery quote, relapse and revert to the lies that go hand in hand with addiction. It is sad, his lawyer added, that a reporter chose to aid and abet that deceptive behavior. For every 10 people who could benefit from addiction treatment, only one will get it. One out of 10 people. Elizabeth was that one. It's not news to anyone in the recovery industry, that there is not enough treatment to go around. And yet, it was the CEO of a treatment center.

The person who gave Elizabeth this rare and free opportunity, who allegedly harassed her. It definitely...definitely. Like 100% set me back. in my recovery. It's almost like it brought me right back to the real world. A few weeks after Eric started messaging her, Elizabeth says she relapsed. Relapses are common for people with substance use disorder. It's part of the disease. But Elizabeth says, who would know better about the unique fragility of early recovery than Eric? Eric is in recovery from opioid addiction. Eric started a treatment company. I mean not only is the anatomy works with addicts, right? Like that's his job.

Like he sees it on a daily basis. I don't doubt my mind for a second he didn't know what kind of emotional and vulnerable state owes him. Elizabeth says Eric's messages continued every so often for about two years. Then finally in 2019 they stopped. About a year ago, another woman reached out to me. I'm going to call her Andrea, that's not her real name. She really wanted to tell me her story about Erick's Pofford, but as she put it, using her real name would open up a door to the past that she's worked really hard to seal up. So, Andrea, she also let me record our interview. Andrea wasn't a

client of one of Eric's treatment centers. In fact, when she met him, he didn't own any treatment facilities. It was 2009, eight years before Elizabeth. So I was going to alcoholics and on a mismeeting. And then I had a relationship that I was in, and that relationship ended really badly. And I really spiraled down. And was drinking again.

Had incredibly low self-esteem. And I wanted to avoid seeing this person and seeing any relevant people to that past relationship. So, I actually ended up going to cocaine anonymous meetings, which even though I never have taken cocaine, it's open to anyone that's struggling with addiction problems. So Andrea starts going to this new meeting, getting to know other people there. And one of the guys she meets is Eric Spofford.

And I remember, you know, he spoke at a meeting. And just to give you a little bit of insight into him, When he spoke, he was incredibly powerful. He really could nail it and you listen to every word and you were like, wow, what an amazing story. What a journey he's had. How incredible. How can I get that? I hear this a lot from people in recovery. Then in the early recovery days, people with more years of sobriety under their belt, they're awe-inspiring. You desperately want what they have. And Eric has an especially compelling way of talking about substance use disorder and recovery.

You know, some people can go to college and get an education in, you know, the treatment of drug addiction and alcoholism, but until you sit in an alleyway in Lawrence and shoot a bag of heroin with puddle water, you don't know where I'm coming from. As Eric tells it, he started using heroin at 15. Dropped out of high school, sold drugs, overdosed five times. He's been to jail several times. And then in 2006, at 21 years old, he stopped using for good. And now here he was, two years later, sober and giving back.

He was an AA sponsor. And that year, Eric was opening his first sober house for men. He was just starting to build what would later become his empire. Recovery was his everything. At that point, he was becoming powerful. In the sense that all the new teenagers or young 20-year-olds that came in really looked up to him and he took all those boys and young men under his wing.

And it's kind of like looking back now, you can almost think of like an evangelist or something like that that can get people in raptured with what they're saying. When it was Andrea's turn to speak in these meetings, she did not feel like an evangelist or powerful at all. Andrea was falling apart. Even though I was saying, and this is really hard because this is a lot of honesty, but at the time, even though I was saying, oh, I'm sober, I'm sober,

I was still drinking quietly at home. And I had lost, I felt like I had no real friends. I just, it was probably, you know, I had tried to commit suicide in the fall of 2008. And it was probably the scariest, you know, time and life parents were worried about me and things were just really bad. Just briefly, there's a new number you can call for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline if you need it. It's three digits, 988, back to Andrea. But so what happened was anytime any attention was given to me by like a mail, I just fell right into it. One day Andrea was at home. She had this old computer and she was online checking Facebook.

And what happened was he friended me and I thought, oh, that's so cool. By he, she means Eric. Because let me tell you what he ended up up being like was the supreme commander of recovery, like God of recovery. And to have God send me a friend request was like, that's so cool. So Andrea accepts Eric's friend request. He started to instant message me. So he started to instant message me. So he was smart.

He didn't send me messages that you could have a copy of. It was like those instant chats. I totally forgot about this. But back in 2008, Facebook had just introduced Facebook chat, where you could instant message anyone you were friends with. And the way it worked then was your chat history didn't save. So Andrea says she gets an instant message from Eric and it says,

Hey, how are you doing? I'm like, ooh, he's talking to me. I mean, I, you know, and then what happened was he started to ask me for pictures of my private areas. He said, hey, you know, can can you want to send me some of the picture of your blog? I remember being shocked. I was like, but you know what? And the thing is, I'll say this is like right now, in 2022, I am a completely different person.

My whole life has completely turned around and I'm in a wonderful loving, respectful relationship and I have respect for myself and if anybody ever even tried to do anything like that to me again, it would be a whole different story but at that moment, I obliged him and I think I was probably drinking at the time. And you know, the thing was all he said was like, oh, that's nice or something like that. And then that was it. But here's the thing. It was like the very next day.

I go to this meeting and he's there and he didn't even look at me. He didn't even acknowledge my presence and I was shocked. I just, after what, and I felt like awful. I just felt awful. I felt like, here it is, he's like supposed to be someone that is so important in recovery and has dedicated his life to help help people. It's struggling with the things that he went through. And you know, it was at that point in time, I'm like, who do I trust?

So many of us have this impulse. Now that we've heard so many stories of sexual misconduct to rank them, from questionable to terrible as if there's a scale. And maybe you're doing that now. Andrea acknowledges by sending the pictures she technically consented. But what does consent really mean for someone in early recovery? That's so tricky that consent. I talked about consent in early sobriety with Jasmine Grace Marino. She's laughing because this is like the thing she constantly runs into with her advocacy work.

Jasmine is in recovery. She's also a survivor of sex trafficking. She now tries to help women in similar situations in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. And she often finds herself strongly suggesting that maybe let's not get into a relationship so early in sobriety, especially with a partner who is also newly sober. Like, how can I say like two dead batteries don't start a cop? Like he's sick, he's not well, right? She's's sick he's not well right she's sick she's not well and then you put them together and it's like it's like a just a breeding ground for dysfunction and unhealthy relationships and manipulation. It's not impossible for people in early recovery to form healthy

relationships in fact I have multiple family members who met that way and are still married. But Jasmine has seen it go wrong so many times. In those early weeks and months of sobriety, you hardly even know who you are. You don't even know what your favorite color is. You don't even know how you like your coffee, like because you haven't been making decisions for you,

either your trafficker has or the person who's been exploiting you has, or your drugs. Like, and so you, even in early recovery, like they have to teach you, like this is how you make an executive decision. Like this is how you make decisions. You are the executive over your own life. So consent is tricky.

How do you consent when you can't even fully process what's happening. That's what happened with Andrea. Andrea says she definitely was not fully processing what was happening. She did tell someone who she was close with. I've spoken with that person and they said I remember it very clearly because Andrea was very upset. I emailed Erick's father about Andrea's story and asked if he was willing to comment. There was some back and forth which we will get into later in this series, but Erick never answered the specific question.

Andrea believes Erick took advantage of her obvious lack of self-esteem. I fell right into it, right into it. It's like you're so vulnerable. You're so unwell. And the things that drive people to addiction are because you have such chips on your shoulder. You're so insecure. You feel like you're just maladjusted to life. And all you want to do is just be a normal person and fill this gaping hole that you feel

like is inside of you. And if it's not through the drugs or the alcohol, sometimes it's through the attention of the opposite sex. And that's why they have a lot of these unwritten rules where they say no dating within the first year of your recovery. And they have this girls and boys with boys. They tell you don't be hanging out with the others. It's because it's so notorious and it's so bad.

There's the thing called the 12 Steps. What they do, they made a joke about being a 13-stepper. And, you know, it's been a while, but I think the 13-stepper is like, when you take advantage of a newcomer or something like that, like they joke like, don't be a 13-stepper or something. So it's like, it's very prevalent, but he really had it down to a science. 13th Stepper. I'd never heard that before. By the time I hung up with Andrea and walked back to my desk, she'd already emailed me in articles she found online about 13th Stepping being a colloquial term in AA circles.

I started asking everyone I interviewed if they've heard of the 13th step. 13th step. 13th step was a bad word. Like men did not want to be called that. I mean I've been cleaned for 15 years. You know, that's something you learn right away when you go to AA. Yeah, it's just wicked comment. You'll be told if you're in a co-ed meeting, you know.

Be careful of Bob, he always looks for the newcomers. 13th stepping that's been around since I think the beginning of time. I can't believe that you, the 13th step, you heard about that in the 70s? Yeah. The fact that we have a name for it is just disgusting, right? Once I heard about the 13th step, all the tips and allegations I'd been gathering, it's like they fit into a bigger picture. This podcast will tell you a story about the addiction treatment industry, but it's just as much a story about the unfinished business of the Me Too movement.

I certainly didn't know that he was going to turn out to be like Harvey Weinstein. Did you want that to happen? No. But I also didn't know how to tell him. No. But I also didn't know how to tell him, no. There's so much more to tell you about Eric's pofford. Because the experience I had reporting on him, it says a lot about the state of the treatment industry.

There's not a lot of fences around them. I mean, that's the bottom line. They just aren't a lot of fences around them. There's only so many times you can get beaten over the head and you just stop complaining. So somebody, you know, somebody needs to be their advocate. I got sued for this reporting. We'll get to that. We'll also get to the other terrifying things that have happened since this project began. Where is it say that? Can you tell me that to me one more time? It's just the beginning under the window? That is so fucked up.

That's all coming up on the 13th step. The 13th step is reported and produced by me, Lauren Chuljian. Jason Moon contributed reporting. He also wrote the music you hear in this show and mixed all the episodes. Allison McAddom is our editor. We also had lots of editing help from senior editor Katie Culinary and our news director, Dan Barich. Daniel Sulemon is our fact checker. Sarah Plurid created our artwork

and our website, 13steppodcast.org. That's the number 13. Our lawyer is Sigmund Schutz. NHPR's director of podcast is Rebecca LaVoy and special thanks for this episode. Go to Casey McDermott, Taylor Quimbee, Ariana Lake, Max Green, Ilya Maritz, Anilemke, and Johanna Miyaki,

and also two Monica Richardson who made a whole documentary on the topic of the 13th Step. The 13th Step is a production of the document team at New Hampshire Public Radio. you.