Divided Sky, Phish frontman’s drug and alcohol recovery program in Ludlow, is weeks away from launch

LUDLOW — A new residential program for people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse will begin welcoming guests in the next few weeks.

The Divided Sky Foundation, a 46-bed nonprofit recovery center spearheaded by Phish frontman Trey Anastasio, will be the first abstinence-based, nonmedical residence of its kind in Vermont. 

Amid record levels of overdoses in the state, advocates have called for more addiction recovery services, including residential beds. 

The new recovery retreat’s approach —- which focuses on mindfulness education and spiritual support as well as the classic 12-step program popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous —- makes it a “unique model for this part of the country,” said Melanie Gulde, Divided Sky’s program director. The method sets the retreat apart from treatment centers elsewhere in the state, she said.  

Limiting programming in that way also keeps the retreat clear of the Green Mountain Care Board’s “certificate of need” process, as long as no clinical or medical services are offered on site.

The Divided Sky Foundation is a charitable nonprofit founded by Anastasio; it purchased the Ludlow location to create a substance-use disorder treatment center back in 2021. 

Anastasio, Phish’s lead guitarist and vocalist, has dealt publicly with his own drug and alcohol use and later sobriety, a journey that brought him under the supervision of drug court in Washington County, New York, in the mid-2000s.

There, he met Gulde, who worked in the court system at the time, and the two have stayed friends since. 

Together, Gulde and Anastasio used their personal experiences with treatment facilities to implement a vision for the Ludlow space, she said.  

Divided Sky features shared rooms across two floors, each equipped with two beds and a bathroom. The building, most recently a women’s healthy eating retreat and before that an inn and restaurant, retained much of the design and furniture already in place through its renovation. 

Expansive rooms with high ceilings and post-and-beam construction glow from large windows overlooking the Black River valley and Okemo Mountain. 

A cafeteria-style dining room will provide three buffet-style meals a day. Guests and staff alike can utilize treadmills, ellipticals and a ping-pong table in the retreat’s gym.

Residents will arrive for 30-day stays, which run a flat fee of $8,500, Gulde said. Crucial to the foundation’s mission, scholarships are available, she noted, and individual donors have made donations to support specific groups, such as women in early recovery.

While Divided Sky will welcome residents from around the country, the organization has worked to build relationships within Vermont, collaborating with Turning Point recovery centers to its east and west in Springfield and Rutland, respectively. Those local experts will help refer people to Divided Sky and also work with local residents ready to transition out of the residential program. 

Ascension Recovery Services, which has set up similar facilities across the country, will handle day-to-day operations. 

Unlike rehab facilities in Vermont like Valley Vista and Serenity House, Divided Sky will not offer on-site medical services and its guests will not utilize medication-assisted treatment for addiction. People may, however, go through detox at an inpatient residence in the state before transitioning to Divided Sky, Gulde explained. 

The foundation landed on that decision in part to escape regulatory hurdles. 

The program pursued a certificate of need from the Green Mountain Care Board in 2020, but withdrew its application in April 2022. 

Neighbors in nearby townhouses threatened to appeal any permitting processes the foundation undertook, Gulde said, leading the nonprofit to nix plans for on-site medical care. 

Instead, Divided Sky will collaborate with nearby Mount Ascutney Hospital. Without need for medical-related approvals, the nonprofit could open up without additional permitting, she said. (The board has no record of the foundation more recently seeking a jurisdictional opinion, which would provide confirmation that no certificate of need is required.) 

“I think this is the best fit for us,” Gulde said. 

Gulde found another ideal fit in Divided Sky’s program manager, Ross Brillhart.

When Brillhart was a Ph.D. student at Indiana University, his research in ethnomusicology focused on music and healing. In recovery himself, he spent time for his dissertation following Phish and studying the Phellowship, a group of Phish fans who stay sober at shows and meet during the band’s set breaks. 

“It’s kinda weird,” Brillhart said of how life brought him to Anastasio’s nonprofit. “The whole arc of that thing, it was certainly fortuitous.”

After years of conversation with Gulde, Brillhart finally came on board this summer.

“I told her dead serious, ‘I want to be your director of doing stuff,’” Brillhart said. 

That “stuff,” he imagines, will include music therapy, local crafts, gardening, hiking, and hopefully on-snow activities at nearby Okemo Mountain. 

“In active addiction, people become unactivated. They kind of turn off. They turn themselves off,” Brillhart said. “Doing stuff is how we are people. Profoundly simple statement, but we are who we are through the stuff that we do. And we tend to make our most lasting friendships and find our communities through doing stuff.”

Weeks away from launch, Brillhart said the excitement among the staff, an estimated 85% of whom are in recovery themselves, is palpable. Once the center is in full operation it will employ about 25 people.

“There’s just a lot of gratitude rolling around.”

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