ROCHESTER, N.Y. — April is National Alcohol Awareness Month. Many people come to the area of East and Alexander in Rochester to grab a drink with friends. However, in the middle of several popular bars is a place trying to help people who may have turned getting a drink or three out at night into a harmful habit.

Katherine Thompson describes a tumultuous relationship with alcohol.

What You Need To Know

  • Katherin Thompson, a care manager at Huther Doyle, is a recovering alcoholic herself now helping others with their recovery

  • Joel Yager, senior director at Huther Doyle, says the pandemic increased the number of clients coming in for alcoholism tenfold

  • Thompson suggests talking to a loved one about their possible alcoholism coming from a place of care and compassion, and do not have the conversation while the person is drunk

“I felt prettier,” Thompson said. “I was smarter. I was sexier. I was more social. All the things I didn’t feel about myself it fixed until it stopped.”

She says her journey includes drinking to the point of flunking out of her first semester of college, quitting drinking and then relapsing.

"I was drinking every day within a month,” Thompson said. “And it just ramped up. And then finally I decided, or my disease decided, to quit my job so I could drink full time.”

Thompson said the people in her life started to notice she had a problem. Even though the journey hasn’t been easy, she says she has found purpose in her recovery by helping others do the same.

“I fell hard,” Thompson said. “I lost everything. And I’m grateful for that today because I get to do work that I think it authentic and meaningful and important to me in a way that is honest.”

Thompson went back to school in her 50s to become a drug and alcohol counselor, where she gets to advise others on how to fight the voice that says “just one more drink.”

“There’s a weirdness for me,” Thompson said. “Because I’m like ‘you’re listening to a drunk.’ But it’s because of that that they listen because they know that I’ve walked in their shoes.”

Now she is a care manager at Huther Doyle, a recovery center off of East Avenue.

In response to the irony of the center’s location, Huther Doyle’s senior director, Joel Yager, said the bars moved in after Huther Doyle was in the area, and it has actually worked for them.

“Because we do get people who were once a patron of the bars and later on they just remember the place,” Yager said. “This is a place they’ve seen all their college years and into their early 30s.”

Yager said the pandemic, especially when everyone was told to isolate and work from home, caused 10 times the amount of clients to start coming in who were struggling with alcohol.

“It was the recipe for everything,” Yager said, “It was being lonely, it’s no consequences, no one’s watching you, there’s no accountability.”

He said the demographic of who he typically saw needing counseling services shifted too.

“We ended up getting a huge middle-aged client, mostly professionals, people who had jobs, people who were working,” Yager said. “Prior to that, we were receiving a lot of people that were economically have difficult times, might have been on public assistance.”

However, this could also be because shifting to online counseling services made some people more comfortable with seeking help.

“We picked up a lot of people that would never come to a treatment program because they were always afraid of the stigma of walking through the front door [and] who’s going to see me coming in,” Yager said. “Now they’re at home, they feel safe, it’s like talking to their best friend.”

Yager said the hardest part of getting over alcoholism is first knowing you have a problem. He said you cannot convince people of that. Some questions he said to ask yourself: are you isolating, deciding to buy alcohol to drink by yourself more than out socializing, is alcohol affecting your job and relationships, have you gotten behind the wheel intoxicated?

Thompson said if you do notice someone you love may be an alcoholic, never talk to someone about their drinking while they are drunk.

“What didn’t work was when my friends kind of confronted me and ‘we think you’re an alcoholic’ that just kind of shut me down and I got real defensive,” Thompson said. “But I think sharing experience, caring, it’s got to be done out of unconditional love and caring.”

She is working on helping people with addiction through meditation which she says has really helped her.

"I get to do work that is authentic to me, that is meaningful and that helps other people,” Thompson said. “I wish everyone could get a slice of this piece of heaven because it's a good life."

Huther Doyle still has online counseling for those who are more comfortable with seeking help that way, but the center has brought back in-person counseling, group sessions, a mobile treatment unit, and more to help people struggling with alcoholism and other addictions.

You can check them out online. There are many other recovery centers throughout Monroe County and across the Finger Lakes.