As the sun rises over Taylor Made Farm in Jessamine County, several dozen men gather in a home, heads bowed, and deep in prayer. Each man is on a journey to rebuild a life shattered by drug and alcohol addiction.
Welcome to Stable Recovery, a long-term residential program focused on helping men not only become sober but find a path to a successful life that includes a meaningful career.
Taylor Made Farm, one of the world’s top sellers of thoroughbred horses, may seem like an unlikely place for a drug and alcohol recovery program. The idea of creating and running such a program on the farm was met with a lot of skepticism from three of the four owners of Taylor Made Farm.
As Frank Taylor explains it, when he first suggested the idea, his three brothers were pretty united in opposition.
“Their first reaction is, like, are you nuts? And you know, that's a good question, because I am about half nuts. But, you know, there's a lot of risk, and there are a lot of things that you could look at this and say, this is crazy to try, because you're bringing in people that have been incarcerated. You've got heroin addicts, meth addicts, alcoholics and you're bringing them in here and exposing them to high dollar horses and high net worth clients.”
Taylor had a personal understanding of addiction. He talks openly about his own battle with alcohol. For decades, his love of horses and building a successful business in the thoroughbred industry were mixed with drinking.
“My alcoholism is a little different than a lot. It didn't just take everything. I still had a family. I had five kids. I was successful in every way, you know, in the eyes and people in society, and what society thought was success. But I was really miserable. I was just very fearful, worried about going broke, and was more concerned about money than God, and I was just not living my best self, and I wasn't happy.”
Frank Taylor solved his personal battle with drinking, but that still left a larger challenge.
As Taylor Made Farm grew its reputation in the horse racing community, Frank Taylor found it harder to find dependable, sober farm workers.
Kentucky, for many years, has fought an epidemic of drug addiction. Taylor says those factors, combined with Taylor Made Farm’s core values that include caring for its team members, led to developing a recovery program.
Stable Recovery co-founder and CEO, Christian Countzler, says the program goes well beyond finding sobriety.
“We're trying to teach these guys how to stay sober so that they don't have to come back into facilities, they don't have to be incarcerated, they don't have to hurt their family anymore, you know? And I think that's a huge difference for us, which is why we're a yearlong program, because it takes time to do that. You are not going to heal the wounds that you've created over a lifetime of addiction in a few short months, it's going to take time.”
The men accepted into Stable Recovery often have no experience working with horses. For the first 90 days of the recovery program, they go to the farm’s School of Horsemanship. In addition to learning new skills, the men also find a connection to the thoroughbreds that builds something these men haven’t had much of.
Countzler, who also beat addiction, explains, “The horse has to trust the man, and the man has to trust the horse. And unfortunately, through you know, circumstances of their own doing, these men have lost the ability to be trusted. And so, when you put them in a stall with a 1000-pound animal and tell them that you've got to earn that horse's trust, they do that. And you know where human beings have failed them for a large portion of their life, these horses don't, they're there. They're waiting for them in the morning on the other side of the gate, waiting to be fed, waiting to be watered. And so, they can count on that.”
The recovery program can take up to fifty-six men who live in one of four homes on or near Taylor Made Farm. The men don’t pay anything to get into Stable Recovery, and in fact earn wages as they work.
Countzler says, “We're hoping that they're going to save, and we're teaching life skills the entire way through. We're getting on financial literacy. A lot of these guys have never had a checking account, so we're taking them to the bank and teaching them what a checking account is, and this is a debit card, and this is how you use it, and how to be responsible with it. There are four things that we teach at Stable Recovery: accountability, discipline, responsibility, and structure. Those are the four things that I found were really important to my recovery.”
For men like Lewis Germany, who works for Taylor Made Farm, the Stable Recovery program is a lifesaver. He says his addiction to pain pills and later heroin was a dead-end road.
“I would either be in the penitentiary or dead, most likely dead, because I was a needle user, and it got to the point where the last shot was coming.”
In stepped Frank Taylor and Stable Recovery. Germany says he’s never looked back and credits horses for playing an important role in his new life.
“There's a saying inside the barn. It says that what the outside of a horse could do for the inside of a man is, is indescribable. You can talk to them. You can come in here if you're having a bad day, you can. They don't care. They just want your company. And that's all I've known my whole life. And without them, I wouldn't be here.”
Frank Taylor says his brothers all support Stable Recovery, and other prominent horse farms have jumped in to hire workers who have graduated from the program.
“They're all completely bought in. And it's been amazing how well our clientele has accepted it and promoted it and actually love it and have given to Stable Recovery to help it grow. So, it's really been a win, win, win, for everybody involved.”
Looking ahead, there are plans to start a recovery program for women. Taylor says there are plenty of horses on the farm to help out.
“You know, it's like, what I say is, we got 700 horses out here, and we got 700 free therapists ready to go to work every morning. And, you know, good therapists cost you 150, 250 an hour. And these horses do it for nothing. And I think they do a better job myself.”
Go to stablerecovery.net for more information on the program and how you can donate to support the men in recovery.
