The University of Michigan Collegiate Recovery Program provides community support to students in abstinence-based recovery from substance use disorders through academic and social networks. The program facilitates peer support and guidance from facilitators with social work and addiction recovery backgrounds. A few years ago, the program began a partnership with the University Health and Counseling Addiction Clinic for participating students to receive better recovery-informed medical care.
Substance use disorders are classified as a disease presenting with harmful, recurrent and relapsing behaviors associated with substance use. Often, people with substance use disorders have pursued varying treatments in recovery, such as harm reduction methods, abstinence or prescribed medications from primary care doctors.
CRP is a supplemental resource for students experiencing recovery on a college campus. With about 50 members, the positive group culture includes group therapy and peer-to-peer guidance sessions as needed, at least once a week and sometimes more.
Program facilitator Matthew Statman has been in his position since 2012, and is a person in recovery from a substance use disorder himself. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Statman said his role focuses on supporting the intersection of recovery and being an active student.
“We sit with students through some of the hardest times in their lives and help them try to make choices around their well-being and recovery,” Statman said. “Our roles can vary from helping students plan fun activities to sitting with someone who’s having a hard time and figuring out next steps.”
Students must sign a written commitment to recovery and maintaining a positive group environment upon joining the program. Outside of that, the program has no membership or participation requirements. Statman said recovery extends beyond attending on-campus support groups and intersects with many parts of students’ lives, particularly at academically rigorous institutions like the University.
“College campuses are places where being in recovery is more challenging than some other environments, for many different reasons,” Statman said. “Not only because of substance use, but mental health, physical health, academic pressures and all the different things students often struggle with.”
In an interview with The Daily, Emily Smith, addiction consult team social worker at Michigan, said supporting college students in substance use disorder recovery, which should be recognized and treated as a disease, is something that extends beyond CRP and individual student experiences.
“There’s a lack of awareness and societal understanding of substance and alcohol use disorders,” Smith said. “We should be accommodating a college student with a substance use disorder, just like we would accommodate mental health or something medical.”
Open dialogue and advocacy surrounding substance use disorders is a step toward improving the quality of support for students in recovery. CRP has begun recent initiatives to visit classrooms and organizations on campus to encourage awareness of addiction and recovery.
Smith said reducing the stigma around substance use disorder begins with word choice, encouraging a shift to person-first language and promoting education that recovery and treatment look different for each person.
“I like to think of treatment as offering people a menu of choices,” Smith said. “How do we pair it all together to give someone the best opportunity to achieve their goals, and recognizing that not everybody’s goal is total abstinence. I see it as a change continuum, and being able to support people where they’re at.”
However, college students in recovery still participate in much of the “traditional” college experience. For example, the CRP holds regular meetings, football tailgates, dinners, study sessions and a welcome week trip to Camp Michigania.
In an interview with The Daily, LSA senior Emma Coughlin, who is in recovery and utilizes the CRP, said CRP has been crucial to her college experience and success. As a member of the panhellenic sorority Sigma Kappa, she said that she still feels connected to many of the typical college memories in addition to the CRP family.
“CRP is such a valuable tool in my recovery, because addiction is a very isolating disease,” Coughlin said. “But being around people that share a similar experience to you, are as young as you, and in the same prestigious school while going through recovery is so incredibly helpful.”
While CRP is a space that gives time for serious conversations and support services, it isn’t the only important function of the program.
“We celebrate a lot, and there’s a lot of milestones,” Statman said. “We have students ranging from traditional undergrads, a lot of nontraditional students, transfer students, master’s students and students in Ph.D. programs. We’re celebrating recovery milestones, birthdays, anniversaries and all kinds of things together. There’s a lot of celebration and gratitude.”
CRP hosts an annual spring graduation ceremony of its own, often an unforgettable memory for program facilitators and students. In an interview with The Daily, Social Work student Lillie Birnie, who graduated from LSA in May 2025, said her CRP graduation ceremony held more significance for her than her undergraduate Big House ceremony.
“One of the biggest messages I’m going to take is I’m not going to be successful in any spheres of my life if I’m not also rooted in community,” Birnie said. “Seeing the resilience of all my peers, and learning that I can be resilient, has also been an important message through my time in CRP. College is a really hard place to get sober, but it’s possible. Recovery and sobriety are possible in any environment.”
CRP is open to any enrolled student seeking recovery support and is accessible through its social media pages and Wolverine Wellness. Birnie said the stigma around addiction and recovery often creates barriers to how students reach out and ask for help.
“The way that we talk holds a lot of power,” Birnie said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, ‘You can’t be an alcoholic if you’re in college,’ because addiction is real and recovery is possible, and you don’t have to do it alone.”
As Coughlin nears graduation, she said she appreciates the importance of community learned from CRP that will carry to any place she finds herself in the future.
“(CRP) helped carry me to over a year and a half of sobriety, and I thought that was impossible,” Coughlin said. “I’m still involved in Greek Life, I still go out to bars, have so much fun and I’m still the life of the party. But I’m sober and happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
Daily News Contributor Kylie Harmala can be reached at kharmala@umich.edu.
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