Clay Engels has been professionally helping individuals and families connect with the best resources, and trusted, proven specialists to receive the appropriate level of care for substance abuse treatment and mental health challenges. With his professional coaching and intervention training and credentials, strengthened by 24 years of sobriety, Clay can easily navigate the land-mines which inherently exist when dealing with alcoholism, addiction, and mental health issues. He has assisted countless individuals and their families start their roads to recovery, and can often be heard saying, “Recovery is not an event: it’s a lifelong process.”
Clay began his journey upon entering his first treatment center, Aspen Recovery Unit, in 1986 at the age of 16. Between his severe dyslexia, and the unspoken issues going on in his family’s home, Clay fits the classic role of “identified patient.” His illness took him from a life of privilege in Greenwich, Connecticut to living in transient hotels in San Francisco’s Mission District, with no money to his name, and a severe heroin habit. In his fifth and final stint in rehab, Clay finally heard the message of recovery, and credits his life to IMPACT Pasadena’s staff, all of whom were recovering addicts themselves. To those who don’t have the illness of addiction, this may not seem vital—but, for someone in the throes of their drug use, one addict talking from their own experience to another, can be the difference between life and death.
Roots Collaborative, the brainchild of Family Vision Workshop in 2008, has been an evolutionary process resulting in a methodology based on Clay, Julie and Courtney’s cumulative individual and family experiences, intervention training and addictions education, and their own vision and goal-setting proprietary platform.