About this Recovery Home
CED Fellowship House is a men's recovery residence on Brooke Avenue in Gadsden, Alabama, the seat of Etowah County. Established in 1968, it serves adult men and combines sober living housing with counseling, clinical assessment, education and vocational services under one organization.
A Men's Recovery Residence on Brooke Avenue
The house serves adult males. Its founding purpose, written in 1968, was to build the educational, cultural and social skills of men whose lives had been disordered by excessive alcohol use, and to help them rehabilitate. The language is of its era. The work it describes is the same work recovery housing does now: a stable address, a peer community, and enough structure that a man can hold a job and an appointment at the same time. Brooke Avenue is a residential street in Gadsden.
Nearly Sixty Years of Recovery Housing in Gadsden
Founded in 1968, this house has operated in Gadsden longer than most recovery organizations in Alabama have existed. Tenure is a real signal in this field. Recovery housing turns over quickly, operators come and go with grant cycles and personal circumstances, and a house still running after five decades has survived every funding change the state has been through. For a man choosing between addresses, it means the institution will probably still be there when he needs a reference or a return.
Medication-Assisted Treatment at This Sober Living Home
The organization provides medication assisted therapy for opioid and alcohol use disorders and conducts ASAM assessments on site. That is a meaningful difference from most Alabama recovery residences, where a resident on buprenorphine or methadone has to find a prescriber somewhere else and hope the house accepts the prescription. Here the clinical service and the housing sit under one organization, which removes the transportation problem and the risk of losing a treatment plan along with a bed. Alabama's Department of Mental Health certifies substance use treatment providers in the state.
Services Beyond a Bed at This Recovery Home
The organization runs group and individual counseling, substance use education, self-help group exposure, adult education classes, transportation, residential supervision and vocational rehabilitation, along with interim services for people waiting on a treatment slot. That last one is easy to skip past and it addresses a genuine failure point. The weeks between deciding to get help and a bed opening are when most people give up, and a place to be during that gap changes outcomes.
Etowah County Recovery Housing and the Coosa Valley
Gadsden is the county seat of Etowah County and the largest city in the Coosa Valley, sitting on the river between Birmingham and Chattanooga. It holds the courthouse, the hospital, Gadsden State Community College and the county's outpatient providers. Men come here for recovery housing from Attalla, Rainbow City, Boaz and the Sand Mountain towns, because Gadsden is where the services concentrate. Recovery housing in northeast Alabama is unevenly distributed, and the Gadsden cluster is the densest between the Birmingham metro and the Tennessee line.
CED Fellowship House was established in 1968 to promote the educational, cultural, social skills of persons, primarily adult males, with physical, emotional, or mental disorders induced by excessive alcohol use.
The Board of Directors feel the corporation can accommodate, to take their place in society, by providing them a home or other shelter, food, clothing, acceptance, understanding, and assisting them in a program of rehabilitation.
