CORTLAND MATHERS-SUTER: PERSONAL STRUGGLES INSPIRE ADDICTION-RECOVERY MODEL.

• Author: Ryckman, Lisa
• Position: GOOD COMPANY

Cortland Mathers-Suter: Founder and managing director/AspenRidge Recovery

Hometown: Brookline, Massachusetts

Age: 30

Website: www.aspenridgerecovery.com

What's he reading: "Stillness Speaks," by Eckhart Tolle

His advice on how to help kids avoid drugs: Encouraging people to love themselves is the most incredible gift you can give a family member. To the addict, that's a foreign concept. It's something they so want but are incapable of creating themselves.

Cortland Mathers-Suter was 13 when he took the swig from his parents' liquor cabinet that would change his life. For the next 10 years, he drank, drugged, stole and lied, finally ending up in a behavior modification program in Arizona that traumatized him even as it got him sober.

"My own experience seeing some of the abuses that could happen when you go too far into the behavioral mod direction really got me interested in designing my own treatment center," says Mathers-Suter, who earned a master's in social work from Case Western Reserve University.

In April 2015, Mathers-Suter opened AspenRidge Recovery Center in Lakewood, and has since opened a branch in Fort Collins. The centers offer in-patient and out-patient treatment for an average of 90 days; the Affordable Care Act requires insurance coverage for drug and alcohol treatment, so it can be covered. The youngest of five in a well-to-do family, Mathers-Suter credits his father, a successful businessman himself, with helping him realize his vision for his centers.

"I stole from him, I pawned family heirlooms passed down to him, I lied," he says. "And when I started this facility, every step of the way, he was there with me. He sent me the four 'Business For Dummies' books, and said, 'If you really want to be successful, read these.' Then he'd send me four or five more.

"As we started to grow, he continued to be the guy in the back room. He's really been the person to help me, and in doing so, he's become my closest friend."

ColoradoBiz: How did you go from being a drug user yourself to running your own treatment centers?

Cortland Mathers-Suter: I went to graduate school, and while doing that, I was working in these different rehab facilities, and they were all lacking terribly in some basic things. They were looking at the insurance benefits and what they could get and then tailoring their treatments to maximize their returns from insurance companies. It made me really angry. I got heavily involved in the research for the design and...