Jereme Rose and Kenny Bogard founded Neartown in 2013 in a yellow, single-family home in Murray. Rose speaks to Tracy Ross about the facility and its growth over the past eight years.
After becoming sober in 2006, Rose felt the call to help other men battling addiction—both for others' sake and his own. Bogard worked with Rose to develop Neartown, a men's drug addiction treatment center, out of Rose's single-family home in Murray.
"We modeled Neartown after a place in Tennessee called Discovery Place," Rose explains. "There are four or five treatment centers within a 30 to 40-mile range of each other. There are all these sober living facilities. So, there's this really vibrant, really lively recovery community there. People that are in active recovery. They're doing things together, having fun, helping other people. It's contagious when you see it. That's what we wanted to try to create back [in Murray]."
"Years ago, we started our sober living program. Now, we're actually a state-licensed facility AODE: Alcohol and Other Drug Entity," he continues. "We're a licensed treatment center. We have clinical staff. [In the sober living facility], people used to come to us, and they were already sober."
"Now, we're getting them on the front end. In this area, there's probably more meth than anything. You hear about the opiate crisis, and there are a lot of people around here on opiates, but the meth epidemic is still just as rampant in this area."
When patients first arrive at Neartown, they are either sent to a facility for medical detox or immediately admitted into the Neartown program. "We provide a life skills program," Rose says. "We try to teach people how to live on a budget, how to make a budget. For the most part, you just meet people where they're at. You find out what they need, and you try to help them with it."
Since its founding, Neartown has expanded its operations to three separate facilities. "We have our state-licensed alcohol and drug treatment facility. It's a 16-bed facility in a 10,000 square foot house." The facility includes an indoor basketball court, gym, ping pong room, and a large pond for fishing.
"We try to run it like no other place around," Rose says. "When you come in, you're family. That's something that we believe sets us apart from other places. People come in, and you're not just a number. You can stick around as long as you want."
Everyone who works at the facility, with the exception of one, Rose says, is in recovery themselves. "We're people that have been there. That have walked in the same shoes and done the same thing. We're in the process of developing it into a long-term facility. But as of right now, it's short-term care."
Other Neartown facilities include the sober living facility (the original yellow house) and Hertown, a women's sober living facility. As of June 1st, 2021, all Neartown facilities accept Kentucky Medicaid and private insurance.
As Neartown continues to expand, Rose says the facility is actively looking for new team members. "When we created this, we wanted to create jobs," he explains. "That's one of the biggest things that I wanted to see. As our staff grows, we're creating more and more jobs."
"We're actively hiring people in recovery to come in and do groups and share their experience. That, in turn, helps the recovery community. It helps economically. It's a win-win situation."
"Murray is a special place," he continues. "The music scene, artists, great places to eat...all of these neat little things. It's cool to see that we've got a recovery community that, in my opinion, is second to none. Of course, you can go to big cities, and it's a little different. But [Murray] is a tight-knit, loving group. You can't walk up to a group of people around here in recovery and not get a hug, smile, and that thing that you need at that time."
Rose says that running Neartown can be a rollercoaster. "It's up and down. Some days are great; some days are not. But I can't imagine doing anything else."
For more information on Neartown, visit their website, Facebook page, or call 270-489-2594.
