A Recovery-Supportive Campus

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting, the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition, and by a grant from the state of Wisconsin's Dose of Reality Real Talks reminding you that opioids are powerful drugs and that one pill can kill.

Mike: I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: As college students everywhere are returning to campus following winter break, some are struggling with substances. Others in recovery navigated the holidays, soberly and a few, like my guest today, are there to assist anyone on a college campus who is in recovery or has substance use issues.

Mike: Tim Rabolt is the program manager for recovery at Marquette, the Urban University of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has 14 years sobriety and is the proud girl dad to his daughter, Nina. Welcome, Tim.

Tim: Thanks, Mike. Glad to be here.

Mike: How old's Nina?

Tim: She's almost three and a half, but yeah, going on 13. A lot of sassy energy and knows how she wants things, but yeah, she's fun.

Mike: Yeah. She painted your nails yet? Probably not quite yet.

Tim: No. No, but I, yeah, I'm sure that's coming in a few years. Yeah..

Mike: That is coming.

Tim: Yeah.

Mike: I had a youngest daughter and two older sons, and at one point everybody had their nails painted. So there you go.

Tim: Yeah.

Mike: Hey, Tim, let's start with your introduction.

Mike: You're in recovery for 14 years. Congratulations.

Tim: Thank you. Yeah. It was got sober in high school at 18. It was just right place, right time, open to treatment and yeah, I don't know. I think it's actually easier in high school than college, but I was lucky.

Mike: That's part of where I wanted to go.

Mike: Actually, that's not unusual for you to say that I work a lot with in schools and whatnot, and I find that a lot of people slow down because they drink so early, especially where we're from in Wisconsin.

Tim: Yeah.

Mike: Can I ask when you started

Tim: It must have been eighth grade going into ninth grade.

Mike: Yep, yep.

Tim: I got kicked out of the school I was at and parents got divorced and it was just, like I remember drinking in my bedroom with some friends and I was like, oh, those feelings went away. And then I was off to the races. You just kept trying to, for me at least, control different feelings with different substances or whatever was going on.

Mike: Works great, doesn't it? (laughs)

Tim: (laughs) Yeah, for a little bit. For a little bit. It works really good. Yeah.

Mike: Which is why people do it. So how did you get involved in recovery at Marquette?

Tim: So in college I had a group of students in recovery. Like it meant a lot to me. That's how I got through it.

Tim: Like that was pivotal, like part of my college experience. And so I wanted to do that work on a bigger level. So I helped through an organization I worked with ARHE. They work with colleges around the country that have recovery programs. So I didn't even know that that there was other schools.

Tim: So I did that for a while and then I burnt out, I left there, it was like maybe four or five years ago and I wasn't doing any of the work on college campuses, but then I moved to Milwaukee and, my wife at the time she pointed out as she was searching for jobs, this like opening at Marquette and I had a lot of flexibility with my full-time job and still do.

Tim: And I was like, oh, that'd be a cool way to get the, dip the toe back in. And I always looked up to Marquette like that. That seemed like a cool it would be a cool gig. So that was, like almost 18, a little over 18 months ago. It started up. That's how it came to be.

Mike: I think it's awesome. Certainly, I'm older than you, I don't even know if this existed when I went to college. My guess is the answer is no.

Tim: The oldest is let's see. Rutgers, the first one was in the seventies. Brown.

Mike: Wow. Then maybe

Tim: Yeah. But that, it fizzled. But then Rutgers and Texas Tech weren't far behind.

Tim: Like 40 years. Like they've been around almost 40 years.

Mike: And you were past Executive Director for the Association for Recovery in Higher Education.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Mike: Off the top of your head, and I'm not holding you, do you know how many colleges have a recovery program?

Tim: Yeah, it's plateaued around like almost 200. I don't know the exact number right now. Probably 180 or 175, something like that. I would guess I think some of the funding tied to the administration actually took things in a backwards direction this year. But yeah, it's usually been in that kind of range for the last 10 years.

Tim: There was this like really big growth and that's plateaued. Because it's like, it makes a lot of sense at like really big state schools has the most programs or at those big state schools. 'Cause you have the numbers game, it's pretty easy to get 30 students in recovery at a school where you have 50, 60,000 students. But some of the smaller schools, it's, it is tough. And then at some point it's does it even make sense? Are you even gonna be able to build community when your total enrollment's like a thousand students.

Tim: To get 10 students. That's that's tough.

Mike: Yeah. Tell us about recovery at Marquette. What does it involve?

Tim: Yeah, so it's the umbrella term for different pieces related to recovery here on campus. So the anchor point is the collegiate recovery program. So that's kinda what we talk about, like with ARHE, like they're working with schools that have actual programs on campus.

Tim: Ours, students apply, like they're not forced to sign up. It's not punitive or mandatory, it's not clinical either. It's, peer support model. What happens when they sign up? There's some expectations, like they have to be committed to absence based recovery from drugs and alcohol and go to a meeting a week, have a monthly recovery check-in.

Tim: Do some other pieces like requirements that we have within our recovery center. But you know, when they progress, they can get tap access to our recovery center. So it's like a multi-room space we have where there's like coffee maker and stock it up with snacks, tv, comfy chairs, supplies. We do a lot of different events there.

Tim: So students will study there, they'll come in and out. We have different recovery meetings there throughout the week. So it's this curate this experience of being a student in recovery within the larger experience of being a student at Marquette. So we've had, maybe it's been, the program hasn't even been around a year yet 'cause we just got in this building January of 2025. So it's coming up on a year, but we've had 16 students apply. Probably a dozen pretty involved.

Mike: That's great.

Tim: Yeah. No, it's in a really good spot for the size of our school. 'Cause the average size of a school with a collegiate recovery program is two and a half times the size of Marquette.

Tim: Like we have 12,000 students in total. And like the average school is more like 30,000. It's like a lot of those big state schools. And at the end of a year, usually those schools have eight students involved. So we're really happy with things. Where things are.

Mike: Tim drinking has such a stigma among college students, both drinking and not drinking.

Mike: So it's long been considered a rite of passage in high school and college. So how do you address the stigma of both using and also not using?

Tim: Yeah, we don't get too much. I mean, I would love if we had capacity to just get into like, you know, like, 'cause we're not anti-drugs or alcohol, anything like that. We don't want to get into, just like overly punishing people for making those choices. Like they're still human, so like people who use drugs, that's like a whole, just like different conversation that we haven't really gone into. The stigma around not using, it's kinda like layered because there's, people who just choose not to drink maybe for like different, religious reasons, health reasons, stuff like that.

Tim: There's that kind of sobriety and then there's sobriety where, we had a problem, severe problems with drugs and alcohol and now we don't. So there's some things we do where we try and mix those populations together, like National Marquette Day is a really big party day at Marquette, and so we're gonna have a big student tailgate, like a sober tailgate and it's like everyone's welcome to that.

Tim: So we try and do things on campus that kinda amplify or elevate this like message of recovery and sobriety. Like we did National Recovery Day, I think was September 30th. So outside, we got like food trucks to pull up and we had like music going and like giveaways and like different people tabling inside.

Tim: And yeah, it was just like fun. We got like almost a couple hundred students to come to that. Or we'll do a lot of things in the community, like these recovery nights. Like we did one with the Brewers. Did the Milwaukee Admirals last month, and then we'll do the Bucks in March. So that gets a lot of people together.

Tim: Like with the Brewers, we had 800 people come to the game, 600 to the tailgate.

Mike: That's a lot.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. It was, for the first one, it was like, that's great. So clearly people want to do that kind of stuff. So yeah, we're just, I'm part-time. We have another part-time staff Dominique, who's a counselor here at Marquette, but there's no full-time staff, so we're still trying to work towards that and then we can, do more of this stuff to like combat stigma like you were talking about.

Mike: I would think also, and you just mentioned it without talking about it directly, staying visible I would think is really important so that your students know, oh, this is available and out there.

Tim: Yeah. One thing we did I thought I was gonna get shot down for sure, but when we started up in the spring of 2024 I wanted to purchase a coffee bike. And I saw other schools that have it. The other schools I saw that have it, it's, it looks like a, just like a bicycle, but it's kinda got like a box on it and it'll say free coffee bike, whatever.

Tim: And they'll just hand out they'll get like a big box of coffee from like Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks or I don't know, wherever they'll get it from maybe somewhere local and they'll just give out like cups of coffee and students will, they'll talk to 'em about recovery or something.

Tim: And I was thinking what if we, do that but really turn the dial all the way up. So we got a really large bike. I mean it's got like a whole canopy. It's got a huge like fridge freezer on it. It's like electric motor. I mean it's huge. It's like it won't fit through most doorways or most elevators, but it's got taps on it.

Tim: And so we get cold brew and we put it underneath and we give out cold brew on tap. And it's like one, it's something to drink from a tap that's non-alcoholic. It's cool. But people will, there's like our signage is everywhere, like on the canopy, on the bike itself, handouts and stuff.

Tim: And people have to wait a minute, they gotta get their coffee and then they go down to the end and sweeten it themselves and it it gets us a lot of visibility. We've given out like in a, in just over a year. Because we had it operational. Now it's gonna be quiet for six months, but we had it in just fall of last year, and then a little bit in the spring, summer, and into the fall again.

Tim: So like a year of operation, we give out like almost 5,000 cups.

Mike: That's awesome.

Tim: Yeah. That's a lot.

Mike: But you're telling me in the middle of a blizzard, you're not driving a coffee bicycle around campus.

Tim: No. But people will still ask, people will email us. Yeah. And they'll be like, can you bring the coffee bike to this event?

Tim: I'm like, no.

Mike: (laughs) Unless you wanna ride it.

Tim: It's in, yeah, it's in hibernation. Yeah.

Mike: Oh, that is great. Do you find in working with young people, more of them are going away from drinking? It's, the whole sober curious or just not drinking entirely is more trendy. Even the alcohol distributors talk about dips in beer consumption, alcohol consumption, especially among young people.

Mike: Are you finding that as well on a college campus?

Tim: Yeah, it's, a little bit. It's not. We get involved with too much 'cause we're really like hyperfocused generally on students that had a problem, wanna do something about it. But yeah, it seems like there's just more, lot more gravitation towards things without even naming 'em as like sober events.

Tim: Yeah, I don't, I don't drink, like it's not cool, it's not healthy or whatever. Yeah. It keeps like dropping like pretty big chunks. Like I think there was like that Gallup poll, it was like, I don't know, two years ago it was like 62% of young adults said they drank and then it was like 58%, 54%.

Tim: Like those are big. Those are huge drop downs. So yeah, I don't know.

Mike: So it, it would seem then that you have if not recovering people, you would have a lot of, for lack of a better word, allies on a college campus of people who support those who don't drink.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. That's one thing we're hoping to get going is kinda like an ally program and training type of thing.

Tim: Yeah, there's that piece. I also think just people in general though are like stress levels are maybe as high as ever. So it's yeah, even though there's less drinking there's just a lot of other variables that probably lend itself to problematic substance and alcohol use.

Mike: I was gonna ask you about that actually, because I think on a college campus, stress is a huge thing, especially around six weeks, 12 weeks finals.

Mike: And a lot of people, you hear people, oh, I'm gonna get so wasted after my task or after my project. And yet you have to have a way of. You have to have other coping mechanisms at some point. So your people who are in your program, do they just talk a little bit about how they cope?

Tim: Yeah. A total mix.

Tim: I think it's finding purpose is big. Because then you can have like bad days and still see it as something, like a process or you still feel connected. So I think that is just like a big constant that is important. Whether it's through their academics or maybe their grad student with family or, different extracurricular stuff they're involved in.

Tim: But in terms of like the media coping, they a lot I think the recovery center helps a lot. They come in there they'll check in, they a group chat, they'll catch up with folks there at the meeting. Exercise being a big one, this building is kind of state of the art where it just opened and the lobby is multi-level recreational facility where they can go play basketball or run sprints up a hill or do a spin class yoga. So there's a lot of that in the same building.

Mike: Do you ever hav people just drop into your recovery center?

Tim: Not really. Usually they, yeah. People, we've had hundreds of people, especially when it opened a year ago, just be like, what's this?

Tim: And we'll have drop-in hours and some people will poke their head in, but at this point now it's more either scheduled tours or visits from students who are thinking they wanna, they want to get involved. Or they're like highly encouraged by a friend or staff member or something.

Tim: Yeah.

Mike: Which is great. I think that's great. Support is such a huge part of recovery, right? You do group meetings and do you find sometimes people are dropping in and it becomes like a little quasi mini meeting.

Mike: I would think that if two or three people just popped into the recovery center all of a sudden it becomes a meeting,

Tim: Yeah. Yep. I yeah. I know. And that's the hard thing to explain to certain people is like, when I do try and hang out in there, it is like work when that happens, because then they're. Recovery happens just in a lot of different ways, but yeah, that totally happens where it's like someone's studying, a couple others come in, they start talk, and then it's yeah, like an impromptu meeting.

Tim: They're checking in what was going on over the weekend, or, what's really stressing 'em out. Yeah. And then you can see kinda like different, there's two grad students who work for us as well. And I'm super close with them. We'll go to meetings outside together, get coffee and, talked about starting a podcast. That kind of stuff.

Mike: Awesome. I wanna go back. You mentioned National Marquette Day, and for those of you who don't know, it's February 7th, right? So how do you have a tailgate on February 7th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin?

Tim: Inside.

Mike: (Laughs)

Tim: Yeah, I don't know how many heaters you would need, but I don't wanna find out.

Tim: Marquette plays their home games at Pfizer forum. So right in Deer District and there's event space right there at called Gather right? I forget what used to be there, but Tom's is next door and there's all these kind of like places right in the. In that complex in the big plaza in front of Pfizer.

Tim: So we already did one of the tailgates there in November for the admirals and it went great. It's a beautiful space. A lot of weddings happened there, but we did a lot of research on indoor tailgate spots. You really need a specific, you can't do it in like a hotel ballroom.

Tim: That doesn't feel like a tailgate spot. But this felt like a tailgate spot. 'Cause you have these sweeping views of Pfizer and yeah. So that's where it is. DJ and all, different entertainment and games and all that stuff. Saturday morning before, and a lot of food before the game kicks off.

Tim: It tips off at one one o'clock.

Mike: T his has happened my whole life. I love watching large groups of people who aren't drinking have a blast. It totally confuses those people who are drinking.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: Does it makes sense?

Tim: Yeah. I get more into that concept as the more I stay in recovery. Because I think it's, at some point I feel like there's gonna be some, it's gonna be labeled something like some kind of, like those moments change the brain quite a bit. And if I didn't have those early on in my recovery, I don't know what would've happened.

Tim: And I feel like you see people have those experience, like it happened with the Brewers. There's all these people that like, got so emotional to the point of crying where they're like, I never thought I could go to a Brewers game like this or anything. I could go to a sporting event and stay sober. And they have a couple weeks sober, they're in treatment or sober living.

Tim: It's just powerful. It's just, I don't know, it just it does something different than just a meeting or getting coffee with someone, it's like this, whether it's like traveling or some big event local. So I think that's gonna happen again with the Bucks event on March 17th, which is St. Patty's Day.

Mike: Oh wow! I didn't connect those.

Tim: So that one, same kind of tailgate situation beforehand. And then, we have a few hundred tickets we'll be distributing. It'll be another powerful event like that, like you were describing.

Mike: So do you try to do something almost every month to keep the visibility up?

Tim: It's a mix. With the recovery nights it's just the three, it's just Bucks, Brewers and Admirals. So those are the, and then on campus, I don't know, it depends. The summer, no, because students are gone in December, not so much. So yeah, it just depends.

Tim: But yeah, maybe a couple times a semester. Four or five things during the year.

Mike: I wanna read this, 'cause I want to get it right, on your website, which we, by the way, we link to the podcast blurb you say you offer, the quotes are campus and community resource navigation to build recovery capital.

Mike: I love the term recovery capital. What does that mean? How do students navigate a drinking environment?

Tim: Yeah. Sometimes I kind of look at it like, like a bank account like if you're gonna make the deposits and then you're gonna need to make withdrawal at some point.

Tim: If you have really good support, you have purpose and meaning you have maybe a job. Anything that like boosts your recovery essentially is recovery capital. If you have a good you're like, say, 12 steps your path. If you have all those different things like a sponsor, a home group service position, like all that kind of stuff that is just, it's all these roots, right?

Tim: So then you have this like tree standing. If it's your recovery with all these roots in all these different places, like you're gonna be more stable when storms hit, like that kinda type of thing. But yeah not, we didn't create that term. I don't know if that was William White or Recovery Research Institute, but that's been around for a bit and they have a whole recovery capital assessment online you can take.

Tim: And it's as questions to go through are you supported by your family, your friends, that kind of stuff.

Mike: I'm always amazed Tim, I don't know if you are I'm always amazed when somebody recovers with almost no recovery capital whatsoever. And then there's somebody who has a ton of it who ends up going back to using, so you can't predict, but it certainly helps to have those roots as far out as possible.

Tim: Yeah, that's what you were saying, beginning, like people were covering a lot of different ways and it 's just the whole process just looks so different for so many people.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Mike: You also offer recovery coaching?

Tim: Yep. That's kinda one of the first things we would, at least from, if it was with me, generally do as like the recovery capital assessment.

Tim: But yeah, we've had a handful of students do that. I imagine maybe more popular as time goes on, but a lot of 'em, like the group, piece, like a lot, the students that come to us generally end up joining the program and then, participating in the different events and meetings and that kind of stuff.

Mike: And being in an urban setting, you mentioned going to meetings outside, you also have links on your website to, things like smart recovery certainly AA, NA, the Phoenix, right? So it's you link them into the community as well.

Tim: That's the hope.

Tim: 'Cause we want students over time to plant their roots, not just at Marquette, right? 'Cause they're gonna graduate then what? So the more they're involved with community support or comfortable with that, wherever they might move, our thought is, that's, they're gonna set them up better for their future.

Mike: How are you funded? I see there's a link on your website to donate to the program. Are you hard moneyed?

Tim: No. It's all donations and grants right now.

Mike: Really?

Tim: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, the university gave us the space and everything, and it's still pretty new. So we're trying to explore all options, but, no, it started as just donor funds. And like the part-time counselor upstairs that has some hours down here. She's, that's not, she's not donor or grant funded, so it's not true a hundred percent, but mo like programming budget, my time, student workers, these events, it's, what we pull in from donations and grants.

Mike: Awesome. And I don't expect you to know this, but if you do, that's because there's always a vision, right? There's always a vision statement. Do you know offhand your vision of recovery at Marquette? Because I, I like that.

Tim: I know a campus culture, does it have campus culture in it?

Mike: Yeah. A recovery supportive campus. And this part I like rooted in wellness where students can pursue both their recovery and their education.

Tim: Yeah. I knew that part.

Mike: Those two are linked, right?

Tim: Yeah. We don't have to make the choice. Yeah. 'cause I think a lot of people, I, you see it like, students are like, senior year I have a problem, but I need to graduate.

Tim: I'm just gonna keep doing what I need to do. Drinking, partying, whatever, to just to get through and then I'll figure it out. So that or yeah. It's okay, I'm how could I, if I'm gonna be in recovery, I can't stay in college. Yeah, it's like trying to bridge that gap where people don't have to make that choice.

Mike: That's awesome. I hope you're successful. I uh, can the public access, the, like if I went to the Marquette Butler game on February 7th. Can you just walk into your tailgate?

Tim: Yeah. Yep. That one's just totally open to the public.

Mike: That's awesome. That's great. Be a great place to see a lot of people having a lot of fun.

Tim: Yeah, that one. The National Marquette Day one. Definitely more like student focused. But yeah, we're like, if someone's Hey I wanna check, we're not gonna necessarily turn people away, but, also not pushing it as Hey, bring your groups of 50 people, or something like that.

Tim: Yeah. But the one from March 17th with the Bucks, that one's, truly like anyone interested in that or in the recovery community.

Mike: That's great.

Mike: Tim, I'm so glad you could join us today and share this story.

Tim: Yeah. Thank you.

Mike: T here's so many colleges that are doing this now.

Tim: Yeah.

Mike: I'm just so impressed because it's way to go. T hose of you listening, there are links to recovery at Marquette attached to the podcast. For those of you listening, watching, we hope that you find hope, insight, courage, support, obviously, wherever you are. As always, thanks for listening.

Mike: Be safe and go have fun.