April 29, 2026
6 steps (and resources) for getting the treatment you deserve sooner rather than later.
Door to Serenity began with personal loss and transformed into a beacon of hope. When Executive Director Lisa Teggart lost her sister to a drug overdose just one month after losing their mother, her world shifted. Being in long-term recovery herself, Lisa knew that helping others was a way of healing.
While taking meetings to a rehab facility, she discovered an obvious gap in services for those in the LGBTQ+ community and other minority populations. This discovery sparked a mission.
Beginning in 2019 as a grassroots effort with a group of friends, Door to Serenity opened its first home in April of 2020 at 103 Michael Donald Avenue in Mobile, Alabama. Lisa lived in the home and acted as house manager for the first year, providing hands-on leadership and demonstrating her commitment to the cause.
Since opening the first home, there has been steady growth, with two additional homes opening—highlighting the critical need to serve the LGBTQ+ community and other underserved populations. Today, Door to Serenity operates three sober living homes with a total capacity of 36 residents, all providing Recovery Housing Level 3.0 as defined by the National Association for Recovery Residences.
Door to Serenity offers Level 3.0 sober-living homes with live-in house managers, medication supervision, and a clear, supportive structure (recovery meetings, a sponsor, and house meetings) to help clients stabilize and rebuild. If paying for housing is a barrier, rent scholarships are available, so lack of funds doesn’t end recovery. Dental scholarships are also available to restore oral health and confidence for people recovering from opioid addiction. Homes are kept safe, furnished, and well-maintained so you can focus on your recovery.
Clients receive help with transportation, day-to-day coordination, and program support through dedicated staff (transportation coordinator, administrative assistant, program manager). The team can also assist with IDs, benefits, and re-entry needs, and encourages job training and education to help clients move toward stable employment. Door to Serenity prioritizes access for underserved groups—including LGBTQ+ individuals, veterans, seniors, people who’ve experienced homelessness, justice-involved residents, and minorities—and serves about 100 people each year across all Mobile districts.
Door to Serenity empowers individuals in recovery from Substance Use Disorder across all Mobile and Baldwin County districts, with particular focus on marginalized populations, including:
“When One Door Closes, Ours Is Open.” — Door to Serenity
6 steps (and resources) for getting the treatment you deserve sooner rather than later.
Ten Things to Know About Opioids that might save your life, or the life of someone you love.
While it may seem new, incorporating mindfulness and yoga practices into recovery has been on the rise since these ancient practices were brought to the West from India during ‘60s and ‘70s. Even the 12-step, faith-based program Alcoholics Anonymous began including spiritual reflection and contemplative practices in recovery around that time. Cut to the present day, and you’ll find a range of faith- and nondenominational-based addiction treatment and services available to individuals seeking recovery, including those that incorporate holistic care such as yoga and meditation. Additionally, there is compelling evidence to support that mind-body interventions like yoga and meditation can be powerful complements to conventional care for various substance use disorders, including opioid misuse.
According to a clinical trial published in January of this year on the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Medicine’s PubMed site, a treatment center in Bengaluru, India, found that people withdrawing from opioids recovered from acute symptoms nearly twice as fast when traditional medication was paired with structured yoga practice. Participants practicing yoga on top of standard treatment with buprenorphine (a medication used to treat opioid use disorder and pain) stabilized within five days, compared with nine days among those receiving medication alone. The yoga group also reported markedly reduced anxiety, improved sleep quality, and better autonomic regulation (a physiological marker of stress resilience).
The Journal of the American Medical Association notes that opioid use disorder is not simply a matter of physical dependence; rather, it’s a multi-system dysregulation affecting brain reward pathways, stress systems, emotional processing and behavioral habits. Standard care often combines medication-assisted treatment with counseling and support groups, an approach that has saved countless lives. But relapse rates and treatment drop-outs remain high, leaving clinicians searching for additional tools to improve long-term success. This is where yoga and meditation enter, not as alternative treatments that replace evidence-based care, but as complements to reinforce physiological balance and emotional resilience.
Yoga engages breathing, posture and awareness, elements that tap into the autonomic nervous system, which governs stress responses. The Bengaluru trial’s findings that yoga enhanced heart-rate variability (a measure of parasympathetic “rest and digest” activity) suggest that these practices may ease the intensity of withdrawal and emotional agitation. Beyond withdrawal, research suggests that yoga and similar mind-body practices can improve outcomes across substance use disorders.
A systematic review published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine found that among randomized controlled trials (some involving opioid users) yoga was associated with improvements in anxiety, pain and craving when used alongside traditional therapies.
Meditation practices, whether focused attention, breath awareness or guided imagery, are increasingly studied as tools to rewire reward circuitry disrupted by addiction. These practices bolster emotional regulation and reduce stress sensitivity, which are factors that often trigger relapse long after detoxification ends. Studies show that people receiving group mindfulness sessions (including remote or virtual varieties) alongside medication treatment reported significantly lower opioid craving compared with those receiving only standard care.
For people emerging from the acute phase of opioid withdrawal, long-term recovery hinges not just on avoiding substances but on rebuilding life with purpose, resilience and balance. Yoga and meditation do not replace medication-assisted therapies, counseling or peer support, but evidence increasingly suggests they can enhance those pillars by addressing underlying physiological stress responses and emotional triggers. As research continues to grow, clinics, therapists and recovery communities alike are watching closely: bridging neuroscience with ancient practices may offer a new frontier in healing from one of the most challenging public health crises of our time.
In Mobile County, Alabama, there is a broad range of treatment options, many of which are listed on the Project Persevere website’s Treatment Programs page. Below, find the list of a few that incorporate holistic practices with traditional therapies. Remember, recovery is not one-size-fits-all, and not every center explicitly lists yoga or meditation on its roster of services. Still, many coordinate with community partners or wellness professionals to help clients explore these practices as part of holistic aftercare or ongoing relapse prevention.
Discover how Project Persevere’s initiatives are creating real impact across treatment, prevention, recovery, and community support. Explore our programs below to see how each one contributes to lasting change in the fight against opioid addiction.
Team Wellborn Strategies + CiviConnections develops and executes a multi-platform communications and paid media campaign that reduces stigma, raises awareness of treatment options, and strives to prevent new cases of opioid use disorder. The program includes polling and audience research, creative production, strategic media placement across digital and traditional channels, public relations, grantee coordination, and real-time campaign optimization.
Waterfront Rescue Mission’s Recovery Readiness, the first of three phases in its LifeBuilder Recovery Program, addresses opioid issues in Mobile through a holistic, faith-based approach. By addressing the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of addiction, they help individuals build a strong foundation for long-term recovery and sustainable life change.