Live & Local: Colorado Artists in Recovery (CAIR)

Steve Chavis: Can you tell us your story from your own recovery to founding this organization, Colorado Artists in Recovery? Just five years old and it’s moving.

Darin Valdez: I’m a person in long-term sustained recovery. I’ll celebrate 11 years on January 2nd from methamphetamines and alcohol. And when I got sober, I was living on the streets for over seven years. And by a miracle, I was able to get sober and find treatment. And my journey has been one of just finding out really truly who I am as a human being, and part of that journey was getting to reunite myself with a lost love of playing violin. When I was young, I used to play violin and I was about three years sober and I was struggling with severe depression. Even though I was in recovery, I was struggling finding community and finding a purpose. And I was going to a meeting called Artists in Recovery at this place called York Street. And I told the group, I was like, “I’m really struggling.” And this woman approached me after the meeting and she said, “I teach violin. Do you want learn?” And I said, “No, I’m too old to learn how to play violin. I’m 45 years old, I can’t afford a violin and how dare you?” She said, “I didn’t ask you that.” She said, “If you’re willing to learn, I will teach you.” And so she took me up after every meeting and she would teach me how to hold the violin again and play Mary Had a Little Lamb and it sounded like cats scratching and it was intimidating, but she said, “If you continue to practice, I’ll gift as this violin.” And it was her mother’s violin who had passed away. And so it was really important for me. I would go to the park and I would practice. And I remember one day at the park, there was a woman across the park. She walked up to me and I thought she was going to be like, “Hey, could you stop? We’re trying to have a good time here.” She said, “I really appreciate listening to you today. My father just passed away.” And I just kept getting these little messages from the universe to keep going, right? And the thing I noticed the most about the violin was it’s this circular energy of my brain to my fingers, to my heart, and it put me in a place of peace. And one of the things in recovery that is really difficult is to quiet this brain. This brain can be very, we call it “The Monkeys,” you know? And for me, the violin was this way to really reach a state of flow, where I wasn’t worried about anything. I was just kind of in the present moment.

Abi Clark : You have been doing this for five years and you said how many people have come through the doors?

DV: It’s over 7,000 people

AC: And you offer workshops and some of those people that have completed the program then come back – Can you talk about that circular motion?

DV: Absolutely. So I basically go to individuals in recovery that have used creativity as part of their path. I have poetry teachers, I have piano teachers, I have violin teachers… They’re all in recovery themselves, and they wanted to gift that back to other people in recovery. So we do violin, we do piano… The piano class is called Speaking the Language of Music, and that was our first class we ever had. And the teacher teaches them about the chords and how they make you feel and how can you tell your story with music. The violin, we do ukulele, we do a guitar, songwriting, poetry club, drum circle, and then we have a ton of art workshops as well. Not only do we teach different forms of art, but we teach ‘How can you use that in your recovery journey?’ Because people struggle with connection when you get sober, you get out of the treatment center and then they’re like, “okay, you’re on your own.” And a lot of people find a home in the meeting rooms, 12 step meeting rooms, but there’s some individuals that really struggle with the higher power concept. And there was a woman that wrote a book called The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron and I read that book and she said that artists throughout history have claimed that music comes through them, not from them. Art comes through them and they get to be this conduit for this creativity. And that’s a connection to something greater than yourself. Not only that, do you find your own personal challenges and beauty. It changes the stigma around recovery. We have art shows where they get to be an artist and not an addict. They get their families to come around them and see the beauty and color that is recovery.

SC: It is awesome because you’ve brought together what’s super important: Mental health, recovery from addictions, and music. Yeah, you’re in the right place, man… You’re at KUVO! So many jazz stories about artists that we lost too early, even today. It’s just amazing. Hey, you got an event coming up on Friday that I think is super cool in the way it brings these artists and this creativity out. You were telling me something about the way artists encounter performing and it’s different. So what happens at this open mic?

DV: So we do an open mic for them every month at a Red Rock Recovery Center in Lakewood. And the thing about this is if you are a musician or if you’re just learning to be a poet or something like that, the hardest thing is to get up in front of people and you’re shaking and you’re scared, and there’s a thing that happens when you lean into that fear and perform for people. And then you’re just met with thunderous applause and they’re just like, “That was amazing! That was amazing…” And it does something for your soul. It does something for your desire to keep going forward, right? All of a sudden you have this community of encouraging, loving people where you feel safe and part of something, and it inspires people to keep going. When I play my violin for some people, you know I’m not a professional violinist, but there’s something that happens in that connection, that human connection, when you see someone doing something so beautiful that’s so pure, and I think all musicians know that feeling. All artists know that feeling of this is me. And then when it’s met with just love and joy, it has a wonderful effect on someone’s desire to keep living.

Carlos Lando: We had a host here for years who believed that music is the healing force of the universe, and if you can with it that way as an expression of who you are, then there was hope. You could do a lot with that. Because as you know, once you get out of that protected environment and you got to go out, as they used to say, “into the real world again,” you need to get back in to refuel, to give you what you need again to go out and face the next day. One day at a time, the next week, and that kind of stuff. So my goodness, CAIR folks, you guys sound like you’re doing some amazing work.

DV: It’s a blessing. I always tell people the best part of my job is when I get to walk in one of the rooms where one of the workshops or one of the events is going on, and I can close my eyes and listen and you hear laughter and joy and community. Music and art: These things put us all in the same wavelength, and I think that’s really what the human soul needs, and it’s an honor to get to be a part of it.