For years, Susan Stader helped men with alcohol addiction. Now, she's opened two new facilities for women.

by John Clausen   .   photo by Brent Fleury

Susan Stader runs what you might call a tragically successful operation. Since 2006, she’s been operating Next Step Recovery, a Montford recovery house for men suffering from alcohol and drug addiction. (Of the 14 million alcoholics in the U.S., roughly ten million are men). The program has been so successful that she’s developed a waiting list. “That’s a positive and a negative,” she says. “It’s positive because people are staying longer and getting better. It’s negative because there are people out there who want our services and I don’t have room for them.”

And, of course, she could only help men. But that changed last July when Stader and her staff opened a six-bed facility on Main Street in Weaverville to help women with addiction recovery. In January she opened an even larger Weaverville facility across the street, a 17-bed building that was once the Secret Garden Spa. The historic main house has a Zen-like atmosphere (and was once the home of the city’s first mayor). Residents, who currently range in age from their late teens to mid-40s, have access to nearly an acre of Japanese gardens, a waterfall and a teahouse. A three-person staff helps them through an addiction recovery plan that’s similar to other 12-step programs, along with life-skills training and relapse-prevention classes. “There was definitely a need in the community for men and women to have continued support after treatment,” says Stader, who struggled with drug addiction as a teenager and entered a drug rehab center at 16. “A lot of folks find it very difficult to go back to the same old people, places and things…and find themselves not being successful because of that same environment.”

After she left rehab at 19, Stader started working with mentally handicapped children and then in a residential drug rehab program in Italy. She and her husband moved to Asheville in 1993.

The cost to join the new Weaverville women’s facility is $2,000 up front and $300 per week, and Stader plans to start offering scholarships later this year. “The property is beautifully conducive to women,” she says. “It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. It’s healing. It’s just beautiful.”

For more information about Next Step Recovery’s new women’s facility, call 828-545-1239 or go to www.nextsteprecovery.com.