April 29, 2026
6 steps (and resources) for getting the treatment you deserve sooner rather than later.
The Lovelady Center operates a 250,000+ square foot campus that provides shelter, meals, childcare, education, workforce training, medical/dental care, and SUD services under one roof—the largest long-term recovery facility for women in the country. Most women arrive justice-involved, unemployed, and facing homelessness; many bring children. The Lovelady Center has served 18,000+ women since 2004, including 259 from Mobile County since 2011 (with 69 served so far in 2024).
The Lovelady Center provides 9–12 months of wraparound care for women with substance use disorder—safe room & board, prescriptions/healthcare, individual & group counseling (trauma-informed, relapse prevention), adult education (GED, certificates, community college), workforce readiness (job skills and 40-hour work assignments), and childcare/education (KidZone daycare, TLC Pre-K, Miracle Academy). Care continues with a structured After-Care program to support long-term sobriety and stability for mothers and children.
It started earlier than most—in elementary school, with a prescription pill given to her by her own mother. From that early introduction, the spiral was steep: selling drugs, selling herself, and surviving violence that should have ended her life.
“I’ve been cut up. I’ve been ran over on purpose,” she recalls. “I should have been dead many times.”
After a year and a half sitting in the Mobile County Metro Jail, facing a robbery charge and a history of appearing on fugitive files, she stood before a judge. Instead of a prison sentence, he offered her a lifeline: The Lovelady Center.
She was transported four and a half hours away in the back of a paddy wagon, shackled and anxious. But the moment she arrived, everything changed with a single sentence from a desk worker greeting the transporting officer.
“The desk worker looked up at the officer that brought me and was like, ‘You can take those chains off of her now. She’s ours.’”
That moment marked the beginning of a profound transformation. She went from a life of hurting others to a life of healing them. “Blood doesn’t make you family,” she says. “Love makes you family. And I found that right here.”
Today, the woman who once fled from the law now carries a business card with her own name on it. But her greatest achievement isn’t the job title—it’s the full circle moment she gets to experience every time a new woman arrives at the center.
“Now I’m bringing girls in… and telling officers, ‘Hey, you can take those cuffs off of her, cause she’s ours now.’”
[Watch the full story on YouTube]
Jeanne Sparks came from a loving, middle-class background, but addiction doesn’t discriminate. After profound grief left her unable to cope, she felt herself detaching from her own family. “Obviously, the kids ate, but I wasn’t a mother,” she says of that dark time.
A prescription for Lortab following a routine dental procedure seemed like the miracle she was looking for. “I liked doing the dishes again,” she recalls. But that illusion of normalcy sparked a devastating, decades-long spiral into IV drug use, incarceration, and prostitution.
Rock bottom found Jeanne hiding in a drainpipe, avoiding the very people who loved her. It took a heart-wrenching ultimatum from her daughter—”Mama, if you don’t do something, you will never see us or the kids again”—to finally push her toward the Lovelady Center.
Fifteen years later, Jeanne hasn’t just survived; she has thrived. She now works in development at the very center that saved her, helping others navigate the difficult journey from simply “surviving” their pain to truly living.
“Blood doesn’t make you family. Love makes you family. And I found that right here.”
“If you’d have told me five years ago that I was going to have a business card with my name on it… I’d have told you you were crazy.”
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.
Yes—on-campus and off-site (classes, childcare support, mentoring, operations, thrift stores).
Volunteers with all skillsets would be appreciated.