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Recovery in the News
Coffee Shop a Refuge for Those Fleeing Addiction
Mark McCormick
The Wichita Eagle
August 27, 2008
Walk into the Recovery Coffee Shop and one of the first signs you see prepares you. "Shortly, you'll hear a bell!!!" reads the sign in the side panel of the glass doorway. "This is the sound of sobriety, for every person who enters this door. If you are not sober, please leave now!!!"
That message lives comfortably here, where the customer base measures success in the passing hours, days, weeks and months of sobriety. The shop marks its third birthday this month.
Kim Rogers manages the shop through her work with the nonprofitParallax Program Inc., a 30-year-old alcohol and drug treatment program. It is funded by the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, the behavioral health care company Value Options and sorely needed private donations of furniture, clothing and cash.
The shop allows patrons to socialize without jeopardizing their recovery.
"Weekends are often the most difficult times for people in recovery," Rogers said. "While we mostly have people in recovery frequent the coffee shop, the public is more than welcome. The only requirement is that you lead a clean and sober lifestyle."
The shop on South Hillside is open from 7 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Wednesday and 24 hours the rest of the week. The prices are reasonable, and "Wonderful Wanda" Knight, who manages the kitchen, sometimes plays the role of cook, counselor or friend, Rogers said.
Knight may represent the shop's most important feature, considering how time flies for some people holding addiction at bay and how it crawls for others hanging onto recovery second by second.
Inside, away from the windows letting a bit of noon sunlight in, the black tile ceiling and bright track lighting over the counter make it look the way it would at 3 a.m.
That's typically when addiction decides to call. Answer, and find yourself conversing with your demons.
So you can come to the coffee shop. Play some shuffleboard. Swat a pingpong ball. Twist in your seat playing an Xbox 360.
You can stay long enough for time to return to normal speed. Long enough to escape addiction's incessant call. Long enough to reach the next day of your "one day at a time" journey.
And when you pass through those front doors, you hear the bells that the sign promises, sort of like how Clarence the Angel got his wings in the Christmas classic "It's A Wonderful Life."
You do find angels there. Fallen ones.
Social drinkers who later found themselves drowning in isolation. Depressed people deadening almost constant pain. Worried workers and business professionals who couldn't sleep and began the nightly ritual of taking "a little something" to help them sleep. Overwhelmed people who climbed into a bottle or pipe to hide.
And like so many people touched by the scourge of addiction, they found that no matter how long or how fast they ran, when they collapsed, addiction stood over them, fresh as a daisy.
They learn that they can't outrun it. They have to face it.
So they come here, to this little shop, to sit with people who remind them how recovery is all about what happens, in time.
If you go
THREE YEARS OF RECOVERY COFFEE
What: The Recovery Coffee Shop's third anniversary party
Where: 830 S. Hillside
When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 19, in conjunction with National Alcohol and Drug Recovery Month
For more information: Call Kim Rogers at 316-689-6813.