Denver’s Phoenix hopes to unite sober and sober-curious music fans with concerts, new app

Practically 108,000 folks died from drug overdoses in 2021, the Facilities for Illness Management reported this week, breaking earlier information and highlighting a public well being disaster spurred to new ranges by the COVID pandemic.

However whereas grim milestones have been in no quick provide these days, Denver nonprofit The Phoenix sees hope because it appears to increase its sober neighborhood to fulfill folks the place they’re — on this case, at concert events.

“We imagine that neighborhood is therapeutic,” stated Jacki Hillios, deputy government director of The Phoenix and a Ph.D. clinician who previously labored with households coping with psychological sickness and substance-use problems. “Health and yoga and the issues we often do appeal to a considerable amount of folks. However this (drug overdose) downside is so uncontrolled that we needed to step again and rethink.”

The 16-year-old Phoenix, with its Denver flagship location at 2223 Champa St., has historically targeted on actions equivalent to group hikes, Crossfit coaching, and different “transformational” programming that assist folks affected by alcohol and drug habit and use dysfunction, the latter being a extra up to date time period.

The associated fee to hitch any of its packages is 48 hours of sobriety, and the corporate boasts of getting served about 77,000 members throughout 36 states. Including music to its programming was a “no brainer,” Hillios stated.

Phoenix’s new program, Phoenix Music, features a partnership with the prevailing Ship Me a Buddy platform, which connects music followers and musicians nearly and in individual to strengthen connections amongst at-risk teams, Hillios stated. It even extends to music trade professionals, who can discover sober “pals” whereas touring together with the sober and sober-curious music followers at stay occasions searching for protected areas, meet-ups and assist.

This system will launch on Sunday, Could 15, with an invite-only Anders Osborne & Pals live performance at The Dirty Dove, to be adopted by extra public occasions with outstanding acts at greater native venues, based on a spokesman, a few of them arriving as early as July.

“There’s in depth literature on music being a modality for therapeutic anxiousness and melancholy and folks in restoration, however the flipside of that’s that it may be actually scary to go to a live performance,” Hillios stated. “Alcohol and medicines are massively prevalent in that tradition, so how will we make sober music cool?”

The query has gained new momentum these days as sober and sober-curious bars and eating places have opened in Denver and throughout the nation, catering to a market searching for a much less intimidating — or a minimum of simply alcohol-free — social atmosphere. Dry January has leaked into the remainder of the yr, proponents say, as folks transfer away from alcohol in favor of much less deleterious substances and traditional-party actions.

Final yr, Sunset Colorado debuted because the state’s first sober music competition, whereas multi-day occasions equivalent to Denver’s Underground Music Showcase have dedicated to “sober bars and different assets for artists who battle with substance misuse,” amongst different current initiatives.

Veteran Denver singer-songwriter Jen Korte in April launched her “Clearheads” program at Globeville’s hip Fort Greene bar, dubbing it “a booze-free hold” made doable by assist from the Denver Music Development Fund. It presents curated cocktails, espresso drinks and kombuchas, together with meals vans, native distributors, stay music and, most vital, “a protected, alcohol-free area the place you possibly can simply be … (or for) those that simply need to go to a bar (and) dance, with out alcohol,” based on a promotional video.

Phoenix Music will debut in Denver, with smaller pilot places deliberate in Milwaukee, Boston and different markets, Hillios stated. Sober music followers will have the ability to activate their cellphone’s geolocator “to search out Phoenix of us and mob up, giant or small.”

This system takes cues from area of interest sober teams devoted to single bands or genres, such because the jam-band scene’s Yellow Balloon motion, which holds 12-step conferences at concert events. However not like Alcoholics Nameless or different conventional teams, Phoenix believes there’s a couple of approach for folks to get better. Its organizers are unafraid to achieve into the communities that want them most, serving the concentrated houseless inhabitants round its Denver location.

“We’re not right here to compete with different packages, however we need to provide entry to this neighborhood extra broadly,” stated Hillios, who this week gave the keynote speech on the A number of Pathways of Restoration Convention in Colorado Springs. “There’s an ethical obligation.”

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