Addiction can spread quietly through communities, fueled by peer pressure and loss of hope, but many emerge from it stronger than before and determined to help others who are struggling.
HardBeauty is one of those support groups, covering Colorado’s Eastern Slope and now expanding to the Western Slope, serving communities from Garfield County to Mesa County under the direction of Vanessa Lane, director of the western slope region and Rise and Restore program, and joined HardBeauty in July 2023.
Lane hands out backpacks full of supplies to unhoused people in the Roaring Fork Valley, this time working with a larger group with more support for the help she wants to give through HardBeauty.
“HardBeauty began almost seven years ago on Jan. 12, and it used to be all virtual, because it was around COVID,” Lane said. “Racquel Garcia started it on the eastern slope, but it has come over the mountains to Garfield County now.”
HardBeauty helps people struggling in addiction in medical facilities, homeless shelters, and in prisons and jails. Locally, that has included the Garfield County Jail, Eagle County Jail, Rifle Correctional Facility, and Delta Correctional Facility.
“We start by recovery coaching in those places and if they want to continue it outside of the facility they are, we help them get into it,” Lane said. “We also hold Welcome Home Days for people who have been on the inside (of prison) and need help, maybe with a driver’s license or getting a birth certificate, or hygiene, we do those every second and fourth Fridays of the month.”
Recovery coaches change everything, Lane said, and there’s a great need for them.
“They change everything, but you also have to change everything,” she said. “You have to go to group (therapy), you have to be willing to get into a new community, find support, to do the work, and in rural communities like the Roaring Fork Valley, it can be difficult to do that.”
One of the biggest problems HardBeauty faces is funding.
“HardBeauty is well known on the eastern slope, but not so much here,” Lane said. “We’re trying to get the word out because we do a lot of great work, but we can’t hire great coaches without it.”
The organization offers multiple recovery programs, including the 12 Weeks of Unbroken Women, Gladiators with Racquel, Rise and Restore Rifle with Lane, Parenting in Recovery, and more. One of the programs is for women who are pregnant or had a child and are struggling with recovery.
“We can’t do what we do without our community partners,” Lane said. “There are amazing programs we have in helping recovery.”
Children also need support when a parent is in recovery, and HardBeauty provides youth services to make themselves available to children who need some help.
“It’s not just the abstinence of substances, we do transformations from the inside out,” Lane said. “It’s about digging deep and reaching into the issues behind the addiction.”
Counseling and therapy is available at HardBeauty through Paragon Behavioral Health Services, and HardBeauty employs 30 recovery coaches, including Matthew Curry and Susann Plenus.
“The coaches that we have at HardBeauty, they specialize in mamas, have experience with incarceration, mental health struggles, life coaching,” Lane said. “Whatever it is, see the need, fill the need.”
Racquel Garcia has teamed up HardBeauty with Lift the Label to provide the Recovery Cards Project from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 17.
The Recovery Cards Project began last March at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, where every inmate received a card of encouraging words signed by community members.
Addiction affects around two-thirds of inmates, according to Attorney General Phil Weiser in 2024. It affects everyone regardless of socioeconomic background and includes substance use disorder and alcoholic use disorder.
Risk factors include genetics, adolescence, mental health disorders, environmental conditions such as unstable homes, parental drug use and attitude towards drugs, peer influences, community attitude towards drugs, and poor academic achievement.
“We want to help,” Lane said. “We can’t do it alone and we don’t want to.”
For more information on help with addiction and recovery or groups available, visit hardbeauty.life/dyr/.
