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Mindy, a graduate of Hope Academy, Fairbanks recovery-focused high school, learned an important lesson during her stay — the importance of being honest.

“I learned I had to be honest with myself,” Mindy says. “I had been lying to myself.”

Mindy immediately clicked with the staff, but the expectations were different than what she was used to.

“They weren’t just focused on your grades. They were focused on your sobriety, too.”

Mindy graduated from Hope Academy on May 28th, 2010, and has enrolled at IVY Tech Community College. After she finishes at IVY Tech she wants to earn a degree in mortuary sciences, but is committed to taking life one day at a time.

“I live by that,” she says with a smile.
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Cindy came to Fairbanks with the desire to put her drug-using lifestyle behind her.

Now, she is an active volunteer through Fairbanks’ alumni services.

She helps greet individuals and families as they take their first step in seeking treatment at Fairbanks. She helps ease their anxiety by sharing her story. Cindy describes her life as active and full of opportunities to succeed and assist others. She feels that her future, without drugs and alcohol, has a lot in store for her.

“During my use, I described myself as living on the dark side of the moon, but now I am on a brighter side. On this side I feel like I am supposed to help others who are struggling. So I keep reaching out to them, which also keeps me sober.”
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Seth spent 30 days at Fairbanks before moving into La Verna Lodge Family Program, a 12-step, long-term treatment setting for men created to unite residents and their families in recovery.

“I had to get away from my daily habits and also focus on my recovery,” he says. “But I also needed a safe place to manage my anxiety about life, and a place where I could be held accountable to behave in the appropriate way.”

“After coming to Fairbanks, I realized everything kept on happening without me, that I wasn’t the cause for every effect. For somebody who was terminally self-important, that was the biggest lesson I could ever get.”
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