Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Hensley.
Hi Patrick, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
In July of 2015, I decided enough was enough and went to a substance abuse treatment center to deal with my alcoholism. After leaving treatment, I went and lived in a sober living home here in Austin. The idea behind sober living homes is that it is somewhat simple to stay sober when someone is in the protective bubble of a treatment center, but it gets a bit trickier when leaving that treatment center and life comes back at you full force. Sober living homes help people fresh out of rehab learn how to apply the tools they learned while in rehab into their everyday lives. While living in a soberliving home, I learned of the massive shortage of good soberliving facilities in the Austin area and in 2017, I opened my own soberliving home called Hensley House.
I experienced wonderful success with my venture and in late 2018, there was a span of 90 days in which I had to turn down 53 people looking to come to Hensley House on account of being full. This was quite astonishing as many soberliving homes don’t get 53 calls in a year, let alone in three months. I knew I was doing something right and I also knew I needed to expand.
I called my banker and inquired about getting the funding to purchase and open a second house. The banker took one look at my financial statements and quickly asked, “You have this much coming in and close to the same amount going out. Where is all the money going?” I responded by showing him an expense of one-thousand dollars for a day trip to Six Flags, six-hundred dollars to University of Texas Athletics for football tickets, five-hundred-and fifty dollars to Dave and Busters where I take the guys in the house when someone is celebrating a recovery birthday, four-hundred dollars to Austin Urban Axe Throwers, four-hundred-and-fifty dollars to Capitol City Trap and Skeet, along with huge bills for Top Golf, local golf courses, the K-1 go-cart racetrack, the local batting cage, a tube rental place to float the river, and grocery stores for house barbeques and game nights. The list went on and on. (It sometimes feels like I have a very large Irish-Catholic family—everywhere I go, we are always a party of thirteen, and IT’S EXPENSIVE!)
I explained to my banker that the reason Hensley House has been so successful and why I wanted to open a second house was because the men living there are re-learning how to have fun and enjoy life without drugs and alcohol which is a key factor left out in almost all areas of the recovery field and one reason for the staggering rate of relapse.
In my experience, many addicts and alcoholics believe that a future without their “crutch” will be a miserable and depressing existence. Yes, they are happy to end the cycle of addiction they were stuck in, but most have an ingrained fear that their lives will be glum without their “old buddy” alcohol or their “friend” mister pill, which they have grown so accustomed to and relied on; and if recovering people aren’t shown how to enjoy life without these substances, their worst fears come to fruition. Their lives are glum, they wind up merely existing rather than thriving, and it isn’t long before they turn back to their old habits and old ways of “feeling good.”
The experience of taking a step back and looking at the numbers with my banker helped me see the positive impact these outings and events had on the participants and their incredibly low relapse rates. It instantly became clear to me. There was a direct correlation between the fun and excitement the men at Hensley House experienced and their ability to achieve long-term sobriety. People at Hensley House were staying sober much longer and I finally figured out the why behind it. This was a huge key to the success at Hensley House and it was a large part of the reason I was getting so many calls and inquiries from people wanting to move in. People at Hensley House were staying sober longer and the events and outings we went on seemed to be the only real difference between Hensley House and most of the other sober houses in the area. The connection was made!
I instantly wanted to spread this great news and came up with the idea of starting a nonprofit to be able to have more participants outside of Hensley House join us on these fun and exciting outings. This was the birth of Not A Glum Lot. In late 2018, I formed Not A Glum Lot as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and since then we’ve taken well over 2000 newly sober participants on an array of outings and events all throughout Austin and the surrounding area.
The mission of Not A Glum Lot is to provide opportunities for growth to addicts and alcoholics who are new to recovery and to teach them that joy and happiness are possible in sobriety; thereby reducing relapse, overdose, and death by overdose.
We are teaching those in recovery how to LIVE and enjoy life in a healthy way and it requires a proactive approach. Addiction and alcoholism are formed out of a desire to change how one feels. By showing people who have removed drugs and alcohol from their lives how to feel good, how to feel happy, and offering them the chance to feel excited about their lives, the desire to use drugs and alcohol to achieve these feelings is diminished.
It’s quite a thrilling process to witness!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Considering our mission involves large groups of people, Covid-19 threw a massive wrench into our plans. How were we supposed to take our participants to concerts or football games when everyone was avoiding large groups of people? We really had to go back to the drawing board. We pivoted and found a way to continue showing people new to a live of sobriety how to have fun and enjoy their lives, just in much smaller groups. We first decided to stop intermingling different groups. Before Covid, we would gather three or four soberliving homes together and take 30 to 40 people to play paintball or to Top Golf. During Covid, we just kept it to one house at a time. This put a bit more logistical work on our plates but we were able to pull it off with flying colors. Instead of one large group event with 50 people, we had five smaller group events with ten people who were already living together. Sure we lost our concerts and other typical large gathering venues, but it led to other creative ideas such as renting out movie theaters and other smaller settings.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a fun captain! I’ve got the greatest job in the world! I constantly search the interned and local papers for fun and exciting events to invite people to. I was able to take a sizable crew to every single Longhorn football home game this season. My favorite part is hearing the participants say, “That was a blast! I’ve never been sober at one of these games and I wasn’t sure what to expect. That was so much fun! When is the next game?” I’ve had that kind of experience at dozens of local concerts. I’ve taken people to play paintball, skydiving, fishing, hunting, bowling, water skiing, wake surfing, golfing, zip lining, to comedy shows, to batting cages, etc., etc… It’s amazing to watch the faces of our participants light up when they realize that, contrary to their previous beliefs, life CAN be fun and life CAN be exciting without drugs and alcohol. That is the specialty of Not A Glum Lot. Can you imagine something more fun and exciting than that! I sure can’t. The other incredible piece of this is knowing the impact these events and outings have on the participants. Not only are they having a total blast, but it is playing a huge role in their ability to achieve long-term sobriety! Talk about a win win! When I’m not leading the charge on the paintball field or flying a hundred miles an hour through the sky with a group of skydivers who were sure they’d never feel “high” again once they got sober, I spend a big chunk of my time in the fundraising process. It seems almost everyone I come across knows someone personally who has been affected by alcoholism and addiction in some form or another and we’ve got quite the crew of supporters. Hundreds of local businesses have shown their support along with hundreds of families and individuals. We’ve really been blessed with some amazing and generous supporters.
There are quite a few nonprofits out there that help with the costs of treatment, help with mental health, housing, food, healthcare, but Not A Glum Lot is the only nonprofit out there with a sole mission to help people re-learn how to have fun and enjoy life without drugs and alcohol and we’re more than happy to fill that niche.
Pricing:
- Sponsorship level 1: $1000 – 80 people served
- Sponsorship level 2: $2,500 – 240 people served
- Sponsorship level 3: $5,000 – 480 people served
Contact Info:
- Email: pchensley@wearenotglum.org
- Website: www.wearenotglum.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notglum/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreNotGlum/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5eW3whWQaM&feature=youtu.be
