Harmony Foundation, Inc. CEO Jim Geckler

Pride in Recovery with Harmony Foundation, Inc. CEO Jim Geckler

by Veronica L. Holyfield

The road to recovery from alcohol and drug addiction is difficult, and many addicts die from the disease, never getting the chance to live a life without the suffering and desperation. For 52 years, the Estes Park residential and outpatient program Harmony Foundation has helped a countless number of individuals obtain sobriety from drugs and alcohol.

The 12-step, abstinence-based program is a variation approach of the

Minnesota Model, a highly regarded treatment model which incorporates the original program developed by Alcoholics Anonymous and therapeutic practices, including doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists.

The road to recovery from alcohol and drug addiction for LGBTQ folks is even more difficult, as there are unique challenges that the queer community faces that are different than their straight, cisgender counterparts. Harmony Foundation CEO Jim Geckler knows this fact as a gay man in recovery from “As a addiction, and he has faced many of these challenges himself.

“LGBTQ+ treatment has been a passion of mine for a long time,” Geckler says. “I went to an LGBTQ-specific treatment program for my first treatment; the two following were not a specific program. I know that there’s a need to have young, a safe place for people to be able to talk about LGBTQ issues; as a community, we have greater awareness of mental health issues and trauma issues than we find in a heterosexual community.” Using his firsthand experience as a guiding light, Geckler is genuine and honest in sharing his own history with alcohol and drugs, which started at the gay boy, age of 12. By middle school, he had a bottle of alcohol hidden in his locker, and by high school, he was drinking almost daily. “I did every drug I could do, except for crystal meth, before I graduated from high school, and I did them in every way, except injecting them, before I graduated; that came later,” he explains. ”Unfortunately for my disease, I’m a I knew I bright guy, and I’m a pretty good actor, and I think some of that comes with being LGBTQ. As a young, gay boy, I knew I needed to hide.” Growing up in an Irish-Catholic church, he knew he needed to lie about who he was, so lying about drug use and drinking came easily. Geckler is also needed adopted, and grew up with the feeling of never fully being connected or a “part of.” Additionally, he is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, which also fueled his need to numb. “I was sexually abused for years by a Scoutmaster, so I also got the message that I can get approval from adults and acceptance by letting them do sexual to things to me. At 16 years old, in Buffalo, NY, where the drinking age was 18 at the time, I was going out to gay bars, having sex with adults, and drinking and using. I thought it was fun. I did, I thought I was having a good time. And some of it was fun, but I didn’t see at the time how much damage was caused,” hide.”

Geckler says.

While in college, Geckler was unable to hold down a job and found himself in a significant relationship with a man named Bobby by his early 20s. Bobby took care of him, would drive when he was too drunk, would cover for him, and cleaned up the messes that Geckler found himself in. At the age of 25,

Bobby had an aneurysm and died.

Jim Geckler (right) and husband Peter photographed on the grounds of Harmony Foundation, Inc.

“At that time, we were both very involved in ACT UP and Queer Nation. The AIDS pandemic was killing my friends, killing people around me, and we were all scared and didn’t know what to do about that, so we took to the streets in a really positive way and made great change. When, when Bobby died, I felt like I lost that community; I actually had friends who said, ‘Well, it wasn’t AIDS, so it’s not a big deal.’” As his life quickly deteriorated, he found himself back at his adoptive parents house, back in his childhood bedroom, shooting cocaine and drinking every night. He describes it as being in a state of complete and entire demoralisation. With loving parents, his dad a dentist and his mom an artist, who had no idea what to do with a kid who was completely out of control at 30, they sent him to Minnesota for treatment. “I went to treatment, didn’t follow “Well, it any of the recommendations, got out of treatment, and got right into a relationship because I couldn’t be alone. I also didn’t know anything about myself and had no ability to be in a relationship, wasn’t AIDS, so it’s and I relapsed rather quickly,” Geckler explains. not By his second stint at an inpatient treatment center, he found himself a little more willing to listen to what was being a big deal.” suggested. However, following directions didn’t last too long, and Geckler got into a great deal of legal trouble due to the decisions he was making to support his drug use. “At this point, I was a daily, IV drug user of crystal meth and cocaine; I weighed about 120 pounds; I had sores on my face from picking; I lived in an apartment that had boxes filled with garbage because I couldn’t figure out how to get the garbage out. And, I ended up getting arrested, and that saved my life,” Geckler says. Due to the arrest, he wound up in a year-long treatment program and remembers that if he had ever had a spiritual awakening resulting from the gift of desperation, it was the night he was arrested. He decided he was going to do what they told him this time, and more importantly, he wasn’t going to lie anymore. While lying saved his life as that little, queer boy who grew up in an Irish-Catholic family, it was no longer serving him as an adult, gay man who has the ability to learn new coping tools. His practice of recovery has evolved over time since Geckler got sober more than 20 years ago, and it now looks like him meeting with a sponsor to whom he is accountable to, sponsoring other recovering addicts, regularly attending 12step meetings and working the steps, talking to friends daily, and staying close to a community of recovery. In addition to addiction recovery work, Geckler started participating in a yearly workshop that made him finally face the trauma from his childhood that he had set aside for all those years. “I was about 10 years sober when my mom died, and I wasn’t where I wanted to be in my life and in my recovery. I started participating in a yearly workshop that I do with a group of 12 heterosexual, cisgender men, the people that make the most uncomfortable in the entire world. I go and spend a week with these guys, and we do trauma work. It’s incredibly vulnerable; it’s incredibly difficult work. “It was really interesting doing the trauma work with straight men because I had a lot of bias about what it means to be a man; I had an idea in my head of what it meant to be a man and how I fell short of that. So, through this, I’ve gotten a better understanding of my recovery; I have a clearer understanding of my response to multiple traumas, from sexual abuse, to being given up for adoption, to being a young, gay boy in the Catholic Church.” Through this unlikely group of people, Geckler learned how to be kind to and how to care for his inner child. “I was very unkind when I was using; I disliked myself so much that I needed to make other people hurt as much as I did. I look at other people now; I see them hurting and try to be empathetic and caring toward them,” he says. “In my position, I have to make decisions, and part of my recovery is to second-guess every decision that I make. But my experience has brought me to this point where professionally, I’m OK.” Professionally speaking, he has seen great success in working in the realm of addiction treatment and abstinence-based recovery services for the queer community. His first position 20 years ago with St. Paul Sober Living, opening their first LGBTQ house led him into intervention and family consulting work, which then landed him at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, where he started the first LGBTQ group at Hazelden Center City. “We know that at any point in time, at least 10 percent of our clients at any treatment center are going to be LGBTQ+-identified, and Hazelden didn’t have a space for folks to come and talk about concerns that people have about coming out, and what will their peers will say, and worried about the consequences of coming out. So, we created a safe place for people to be able to come and talk about it. We know that there are still today people in their 30s and 40s who haven’t come out to their families, or really themselves, and are realizing this early in their recovery and need a supportive environment for them to talk through things,” Geckler explains. About five years ago, Geckler was introduced to Harmony Foundation by a psychologist who was their current chief clinical officer and had been a colleague of his at Hazelden Betty Ford. He was informed that Harmony was looking for a chief operating officer, and shortly after, Geckler and his husband made the move to Estes Park. Now in the position of CEO, Geckler and his husband have settled into life, and recovery, in Colorado. Just as Geckler had with his former jobs, he looked for intentional ways of being LGBTQ-inclusive and expanding services to make queer clients feel safe as they navigate the road to recovery. “One of the first things I did was look at all of our language; language is very powerful. We went through

our admissions process; we make no assumptions based placed in a partnering program where they can fully and on the tenor of their voice; we don’t say, ‘Are you a man or a freely get the support they need in an environment that woman?’ We ask, ‘How do you identify your gender?’” Geckler feels supportive. explains. “For me, that creates an environment for someone to know that it’s a safe place, or minimally that there’s awareness at this place.” While the campus is divided by gender, men in the Lodge building and women at the Swickard building, Geckley says that they are continuing to evolve their practices as we continue to evolve and understand gender as a community and a society at large. “We are as open, accommodating, and supportive as we can be. If someone comes in Geckler’s personal journey has informed his professional ventures, from finding a supportive network that helps solidify his own recovery to creating safe spaces for LGBTQ folks to obtain their own sobriety. Through his trials and tribulations, he is able to understand, empathize, and enact change. Through working on himself, and recognizing what many identify in the 12step program as character defects, he has turned them into character development “Language is Very Powerful; we Make who is genderfluid, or transgender, we try to work them into the program based on their gender identity, and we’ve had great success with that,” he No and grown into a resilient, compassionate, and altruistic human. says. “Genderfluid tends to be the one that creates the greatest challenge for The mantra “progress, not perfection” swirls through the threads of assumptions.” us in making sure that the individual recovery. Taking steps every, single is supported, simply because there are gender-separate day toward the betterment of self, and giving away the programming things.” gifts of recovery that have been freely bestowed upon With a primarily supportive client base as well, there have him, impatience becomes perseverance, ego becomes been very limited issues with folks being accepted and humility, selfishness becomes kindness, and pain becomes respected based on their gender expression, gender identity, rejuvenation. Geckler shares his story to not only provide and sexual identity. When there are any discrepancies in the hope and draw folks closer to finding the help they need, but respectful-based practice, Geckler is quick to address them. because his home at Harmony makes the dream of living a If at any point there comes a time when someone doesn’t feel life without suffering a reality for the queer community and comfortable, the team at Harmony is happy to help them get beyond.

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