The 13th Step - The Glam Room

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Since Lauren began reporting, Eric Spofford sold his New Hampshire company for millions of dollars and filed a defamation lawsuit in response to NHPR’s coverage. We catch you up on everything that��s happened. And we introduce you to a sober living community where addressing women’s sexual trauma is a priority. The 13th Step is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio’s Document team. More at 13thsteppodcast.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a little bit of all the above, right? It's certainly my new place to live in Miami for when I'm here, but I still travel around. I travel between here and the northeast. I want to catch you up to speed on what Eric Spofford has been up to lately. And so it'll be home-based while I'm here. This whole podcast started with Eric. And while we've tackled much bigger ideas over the past few episodes,

it's worth checking in. Because what Eric's been up to, it says a lot, about him and the addiction treatment industry. Now, an interview with Eric never happened. I have more to tell you about that in a bit. But anyone with Internet access can get a pretty clear picture of the parts of Eric's life that he wants people to see. Eric has posted hundreds of videos on his YouTube and Instagram accounts.

The titles of the videos alone paint a picture, like how my yacht makes me money, and squeezing every last drop out of this life. There's also fuck how you feel. One I want to tell you about, though, is called I bought my dream house in Miami, full tour. Most of Eric's content is similar in vibe. Loud hip-hop music, lots of footage of Eric exiting or entering expensive modes of transportation. And in this Dreamhouse video, he climbs out of a black Rolls-Royce, locks it,

and then the camera follows him as he struts into this super modern waterfront house in Miami. Welcome to my house, Miami, Phoenician. I told you in the second episode of this podcast that Eric sold Granite Recovery Centers in December of 2021. He says he made hundreds of millions of dollars on the sale. A few months after that, he bought this house for $21 million. In this video from March of 2022, he tells interested viewers about his seven bedrooms, his pool, that overlooks Biscayne Bay and his heated toilet seats. It's got the heated seat, bro.

Do you know how warm that is? Do you know how comfortable it is? You put your ass cheeks on that thing, man? Damn. Eventually, the full tour of the Dreamhouse comes to a close. Eric sits down at the bottom of his floating staircase. The camera is now focused just on him. Because Eric wants to talk about why he moved to Miami.

As I'm sitting here about to record, video to talk about why Miami, this is the type of stuff that I get. Eric holds up his phone to the camera, and you can kind of make out what looks to be a long direct message from someone on Instagram. He turns his phone back around to himself and reads the message out loud. And this gentleman says, how much you profiting off of others' pain, you're a fraud. I probably have all the junkies lined up. And, you know, it's just, you know, just, I'm a liar, I'm a thief with no integrity and I have no balls. Eric says this kind of drama, as he calls it, is a big reason why he moved.

Haders were attacking him. New Hampshire largely became a very inhabitable place for me to live. I think he means uninhabitable. New Hampshire, although I get a huge amount of love, right? A huge amount of love. It's 95% love for what we do. did there. We created a recovery movement. We created one of the largest providers of addiction, treatment, and recovery services on the Northeast. But I got a lot of attention inadvertently in the beginning. And I got it from a lot of people that are not very well, right? I joke around that I'm the

most well-known drug addict in New England. I think that's either true or close to true. And that came with some consequences like this message, right? It just became uncomfortable. Looking at Eric, sitting at the bottom of these fancy stairs, wearing a diamond chain around his neck with his company logo on it, it does not compute for me that this is a man who is uncomfortable. What consequences? This man is facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct

from women who worked at and attended his last treatment center. But Eric is still in it. He's still in the addiction treatment business. He started a new company, and he just opened its first residential facility in Ohio. And Eric says he plans to make a ton of money. This is the 13th step. I'm Lauren Chulgin. What's up?

Just landed in, what the fuck all me? Just landed in Columbus, Ohio. Opening day of a new business, white light, behavioral. health. This is another one of Eric's many YouTube videos. This one is called Recovered Drug Addict Entrepreneur Starts Addiction Treatment Program. It's December 2022. Eric is sitting on his private jet. He announces to the camera that he started a new business called Treatment X. The plan is that Treatment X will run facilities in multiple states. White Light Behavioral Health in Columbus, Ohio is the first one. Eric took his private jet to staff orientation.

He and his team get off the plane and into a black SUV. His video guy starts to ask him some questions. I think it's kind of crazy, though, that you just sold the business and now you're doing this. All within, what, 12 months? When did you sell it? A woman sitting next to Eric says, yeah, it was a year ago last week. Two months from buying this building to dual accreditation, licensure opening. Dual accreditation, licensure, that's the oversight stuff I told you about in episode four.

In one year, Eric was able to sell Granite Recovery Centers, find a building in Ohio, clean it out, hire staff, and get the required state approval needed to open a residential addiction treatment center. Though Eric left his face and name off both websites for Treatment X and the Ohio facility, even though he's clearly involved. His name and signature are on the official state paperwork that registers both businesses. And in the opening day video I've been telling you about, Eric is portrayed as a big part of orientation. He shakes hands with the new treatment staff. He gives what seems to be a keynote speech. It's one you've heard him give before. Eric's recovery story.

My name is Eric Spofford. I'm in recovery 16 years. I celebrated that. Thank you. I grew up in a town called Salem, New Hampshire. It's right on the Massachusetts line. It's about 30, 40. So this is what Eric's been up to, living mostly in Miami, running a company called Spofford Enterprises,

which calls itself a real estate and venture capital company. He's opened a new treatment center, and Eric is also trying to teach anyone who is interested how to succeed like he has. He offers online coaching sessions, including one class called Learn How to Start Your Own Addiction Treatment Center. The website features a little ad-style video of Eric. Above the video player, it says learn from a guy who sold his last treatment facility for nine figures in 2021. In this course, I'm going to teach you absolutely everything you need to know to start, grow, scale, and operate an addiction treatment business. For the price of $7,497, you gain access to 14 modules, things like patient acquisition strategy, potential problems to consider, and licensing and accreditation. If this course is anything like the snippets of advice Eric posts on social media,

his potential students can expect a lot of emphasis on turning a profit. I'm going to build 1,800 treatment beds. I have 116 active today. For example, this video called Stay focused on the mission and know your numbers. At 1,800 beds, at 80% occupancy, is 1,500 patients being served daily. At an average blended reimbursement rate of $550, The editing is really choppy, so this video is hard to follow, until he makes his final point. And then it's clear.

And market trends show that that'll trade somewhere between a 16 and a 19x multiple. It's a billion-dollar deal. And so that's what my day-to-day, my first day-to-day job is we're building a business in a quality, meaningful way. We're building it as if we'll own it forever. But we plan on selling it and transacting at $300 million of top-line revenue for a billion-dollar valuation in the next five-to-year. seven years. There is, of course, nothing wrong with entrepreneurship, but watching Eric's social media reinforce two ideas, that it's still relatively easy to start an addiction treatment center. And apparently, there is a ton of money to be made. Of course, this isn't all Eric Spofford has been

up to. For a lot of the time I've been working on this podcast, I've also been facing the lawsuit Eric filed against me, my newsroom, and three of the sources in this story. It's for defamation. Eric is claiming that the story I published about him last year is entirely false, and he's claiming that I knew it was false. Eric's lawyers claim that because of my story, Eric has experienced, quote, significant setbacks in growing his investment portfolio and expanding his business ventures. Our lawyers responded to Eric's lawsuit by filing a motion to dismiss, basically asking the judge to throw this thing out. In January, there was a hearing on our motion in the New Hampshire courtroom. I have audio, though. It's not the best. But I want to give you a glimpse of what this was like.

The hearing took place on a Tuesday morning, in front of state court, Judge Daniel St. Hilaire. Both sides' lawyers were in the courtroom, of course. Eric also made the trip up from Miami to be there in person. He wore a well-tailored Navy suit, no tie. Good morning, Your Honor. Howard Cooper for Eric's offer. A lawyer named Howard Cooper, argued Eric's case. Let's start with the Snapchat photographs, where they were from years before, there had never been any mention of any like this happening. There was no civil lawsuit. There was no criminal lawsuit. The woman who told Ms. Trulgian that she'd received over two years pictures from Mr. Spofford of his penis, a so-called deck pick, just so this could be the most sensationalized story they could possibly publish.

She said, Cooper talked for about an hour, pretty much at this same level of outrage, while Eric sat a few feet away from him, listening to this discussion. about his penis and a so-called dick pick. What the New Hampshire Public Radio Defendants published, I said this respectfully, is an addicted woman's allegation under the cloak of anonymity, and it is irrelevant to the Eric knew who she was.

Despite Cooper's respectfully, it's stunning to hear him use such stigmatizing language, especially since he's representing someone who is in recovery. Stunning, but not surprising. You might remember that Eric's initial response to my reporting included a line that suggested some people with substance use disorder shouldn't be trusted. No responsible journalist would ever have published that. The hearing took about two hours total.

The judge didn't ask many questions, so we couldn't get a great read on what he was thinking. Everyone packed up their stuff and left the courtroom. And then we waited. The judge said he'd rule in the next few months, an incredibly vague and anxiety-inducing measure of time. My biggest concern has always been that Eric would gain access to my reporting materials, my notes, details about my sources, not because I have anything to hide, but because this is the kind of lawsuit that First Amendment advocates worry about.

These kinds of lawsuits can have a chilling effect. they can deter people from talking to journalists, which means stories like this one would not exist. Finally, three months later, so April 2023, we got an email, a ruling from the judge. Judge St. Hilaire dismissed Eric's lawsuit. We put a link to the decision on our website if you want to read it. But in short, Judge St. Hilaire said that Eric didn't present any facts that show NHPR acted with what's known as actual malice. In legal terms, that means Eric failed to convince the judge that we knowingly or recklessly published falsehoods about him. Soon after that, Eric asked the court again for access to my reporting

materials. So all this to say, this legal battle is far from over. A few hours after the judge granted our motion to dismiss, Eric posted this to his Instagram story. A little report from Costa Rica, it's beautiful here. It's actually a lot less humid. He's talking into the camera while sitting poolside at the four seasons in Costa Rica. Just thinking about all the adversities and challenges that we face in business, right? We have to go to war sometimes. There's some things about war that there are to know. One, prepare for peace, prepare for war. Make sure you have a good skill set ready, that you're sort of sharper than the other guy. Make sure you have sufficient resources to survive a war. And the ultimate thing that wins wars is make sure you're willing to take it

further than your opponent. I sent Eric a final request for comment before we published this podcast. I emailed him a list of questions. And a few days later, Eric wrote back. He said he was surprised I reached out, but glad I did. He said he'd be open to an interview. But there were conditions. He wanted to bring his own camera crew and record the interview, and he wanted it to be what he called a discussion, where he could also ask me questions. Those were conditions we could not accept. He was welcome to record audio, just like I would be, but not video. As for interviewing me, under these circumstances, that was not appropriate. It's unusual for any journalist to agree to be interviewed by a source, and he's in the middle of suing me, so that was a no.

He wrote back, offering a different condition. He wanted me to promise, in advance, that I would publish the complete unedited version of our interview in this podcast. That was also a hard no. News organizations don't give the subjects of their reporting editorial control over what they publish. Besides, if I did that for everyone I interviewed, this point. podcast would be hundreds of hours long. By the way, you can see our whole email exchange on our

website. I told Eric multiple times that I would call him. I asked for his number. I gave him a time we could talk. But ultimately, Eric sent a statement. Here's the whole thing. Quote, I offered to do a sit-down, tell-all interview under one condition. NHPR publish the entire interview. But NHPR and Lauren are not interested in fair, unbiased ethical journalism. They refused my interview because they want to censor me to fit their narrative. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. Such a cute space.

On an extremely warm day last August, I drove to Worcester, Massachusetts. Oh my God, it's so hot. I know. I left my AC on all weekend because I was like... There's no other way. I'm sitting down with Nikki Bell in her office on two comfy floral print chairs. The air conditioner is blaring. I might scoge this a little closer to that.

I'm here to learn about an organization called Lyft. It's short for living in freedom together. Nicky is the founder and her story helps explain what Lyft is trying to do. I bounced in and out of treatment programs, jail, shelters, you name it, for almost my entire adult life. And one of the things that was never addressed in any of

spaces was safety, the trauma I experienced, and exploitation. Nikki was sex trafficked when she was 16 years old by her first boyfriend. Opioids entered the picture not too long after. For more than a decade, Nikki was prostituted to support her drug addiction. It's almost like this component of being a woman with substance use disorder. The reality is, more often than not, you have had to exchange sex for drugs. money, a place to stay, but nobody talks about it. And so it was something that was really preventing me from actually, like, finding recovery, sustaining recovery. Nobody talks about it.

This is why I'm here. Lyft is trying to create safe spaces for women, supportive spaces that are honest about the reality of women's experiences of prostitution and addiction. Lyft's overall goal is to end the sex trade. And a quick language note for you. Some groups use the term sex worker, but at Lyft, they say prostituted person. Lyft believes most people end up in prostitution because they don't have a choice. So it's not work, it's sexual violence. So for this episode, I'm going to use their vocab too.

Nikki started Lyft as a support group for any woman who had experienced prostitution. And so often, addiction is a big part of that experience. So is sexual abuse and harassment. Nikki told me she experienced both in nearly all the spaces that were supposed to be built to help her. Shelters, food pantries, treatment centers. It's almost acceptable. Like, it's normal to be sexually harassed in those places. It's normal to, like, walk into those places.

And the guy checking you in at the counter is somebody that's paid to access your body. And even like when they're coming in for commitments, right? It's normal to have those guys that are speaking about recovery and what a great life it is to be perpetrators, right? And so it's so hard to like find safety anywhere. Paid to access your body means paid for sex, meaning you've walked into a place looking for help and run right smack into your trauma, a life you're trying to leave behind. It's like treatment is hard. It's hard work. You're trying to build skills to deal with, like, your trauma and every day to have to see a person that, you know, has violated you.

And perpetrated violence against you makes it that much harder to stay. I mean, I know so many women that have run just because of that. Since 2014, Lyft has expanded significantly. They own and run an emergency drop-in shelter. They work with the local DA's office on a diversion program. But I was really curious about a house they call Jana's Place. It's a residential recovery facility, and it's specifically designed for women who have experienced prostitution and substance use and mental health disorders. It opened in 2019 on a residential street in Worcester, Massachusetts.

You'd never know it was a treatment center if you walk by, which was intentional. Jana's Place can take 16 women at a time, and there's often a wait list. Nikki told me she'd take me over there, show me how they do things differently. And before we headed out, Nikki told me she actually played my original story for the women at John's Place, the story about Elizabeth, employee A, and employee B. We listened to your story together as a group, and then I said, you know, I said that you would be coming over, and I said, how many of you have experienced exploitation in a treatment center and every single person in the room raise their hand, every single one.

So again, it's kind of so common that it's like almost expected, which is really gross and sad. I love glitter. You're going to be in the glam room. That's what we're going to meet. And it's like purple suede couches. We just really had a lot of fun with it. Jana's place is inside a renovated old apartment.

It's bright, clean, and colorful. Nikki says all their programs are focused. around a connection to joy, hence the glam room. When I visited, 16 women lived here. Three of them wanted to talk with me, but they asked to use pseudonyms to protect their identities. Hey, I'm going to... Hi, Nikki, I got the job.

You what? A woman I'll call Kelsey walks in. Sees Nikki and doesn't just say hi. She says, Nikki, I got the job. Oh, my goodness. And they get me a management position. Oh, my God, that's so exciting. Congratulations.

You went so hard to that. I did. Thanks to lift. Thanks to you. You did all that, girl. I know. But without the help of this program, I got a fucking house.

Oh, you were so happy. The smile on your face is amazing. Like, man, coming to Worcester was the best thing I could have done, Nikki. I know you haven't got there. I appreciate this program like so much. Kelsey starts to cry. Nikki walks over to her and gives her a big hug. We all sit down on the purple suede couches.

I start giving my spiel, who I am, what the podcast is about, and a woman I'll call Maggie interrupts me. Like, okay, we get it, girl, we're ready to talk. But Maggie, what were you just, you were just saying? I was just, the first thing that came to mind was, I was going into a halfway house in 2017, and this guy did my admissions. The stories come pouring out.

Maggie tells a story of how she relapsed and how the guy who admitted her to that halfway house solicited her. Paid her $180 bucks for sex. And of course I did it. It was 20 minutes and I had $180 bucks, you know. These stories resonate a little differently in the glam room than they might in other places. At Jana's place, no one is judging you. Kelsey and other Lyft staff who have joined,

they nod along with Maggie. Like, yeah, totally understandable that you did that with that guy. I remember one time I asked him if he could send me money, but I wouldn't be able to meet with him. I just needed a little money because I was sick. And he told me no. And I was like, are you kidding me? Like, you give me all this money.

You can't send me $20 one time. And I'm, you know, doing whatever. I don't know if that was my fault, like a bad thing I did or not. But, like, I was pissed about it. Everyone in the room is nodding again, as if to say, no, Maggie. This is not your fault. A woman, I'll call Emma, chimes in. She tells me about a time she was solicited by the person who was driving her to a detox center.

It was my first time going to treatment ever. That was my first time ever experiencing going to detox anything. So I was like expecting to be like a doctor, getting at a car with a doctor. And here I am with a guy like, yeah, you want me to make a stop. So it was like it turns into getting a doctor. a car with a John. John's place works really hard to make sure nothing like that will happen here. They don't contract with outside drivers specifically for this reason.

And they make sure that anyone who is in contact with the women who live here, they're specially trained. They only hire women at John's place. Not that women don't perpetrate violence or harassment, but it's less likely. Some of the staff have also experienced prostitution and are in recovery. They provide medical treatment at John's Place. There's an exam room on the second floor. So doctors, clinicians, therapists, anyone providing that care comes here.

And women aren't touched without giving permission. Residents of John's Place also get a say in the kind of treatment they receive. Emma, for example, is doing dialectical behavior therapy. It's a kind of therapy that focuses on identifying and changing negative thinking patterns. It is fascinating. It is fascinating. Since I've come here, I changed, you know, going from negative thinking to positive thinking, wake up every day, being grateful for everything I have. It's just great. My whole lifestyle, I've changed. I have a renavification date for getting my children back in October. So my whole life has gone from completely negative to positive since I've been here,

and it's amazing. Making choices is a big part of life. at Jana's place. That's a really trauma-informed approach. It gives the women their voices back. For example, they get to decorate their rooms. This is very popular. Here's Kelsey. I have vision boards on my wall. I have the letter K because my name starts with a K. I have pink beads on my curtains. Like, it's happy. Yeah, it's happy. It resembles us. It represents us. Because if we're not comfortable in our own living space, how are we going to be comfortable? It's also clear that this is a sisterhood. Kelsey and Emma are sitting closely on one of the purple couches.

And when Emma was telling me about that awful van ride to detox, Kelsey reached her arm over to her friend. I love my sisters. To wake up to women every morning and say, you look beautiful. Congratulations on you're doing this or you're doing that, having someone to talk to when you feel like, relapsing or having someone to talk to when you're down. I've been here seven months and this

have been the best seven months of my life besides having my children. I don't accomplish going to school. I completed school. I'm going back to school in September. I got a job. Like, I've been sober for it going on a year, August 23rd. Like, it's just, I just cry a lot now. I cry a lot and it's happy tears. It's not misery tears. It's happy tears. Because being out there in the streets, I never thought I would get clean. I mean, I would never thought I would get sober because there's a lot of programs that just care about the money, but they genuinely care about you here. Jana's Place is not the only answer.

And of course, it's not all success stories. They are still battling the same, chronic, frustrating disease everyone else in this industry is. Maggie ended up leaving Jana's place shortly after I visited. I'm not sure why. And then, as we. were finishing this podcast, we got news that Nikki Bell had left the organization. Lyft refuses to give me any information about why, except to say that it has to do with the quote, environment she cultivated. I don't know what that refers to, and I haven't been able to get a hold of Nikki. But leaders at Lyft say

Nikki will always be their founder, and they don't want to erase her from their history. I'm really not sure what to make of all this. But rather than erase Nikki from this podcast, I'm telling you what I know and what I witnessed. Because John's place is trying to look clearly at all the problems you've heard about in this podcast and prioritize them. Here, sexual misconduct isn't just some unfortunate thing that happens. It's a thing they work to prevent. Because sexual misconduct gets in the way of recovery. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you.

I didn't even hear of everything. After our conversation in the glam room, Nikki walked me out to my car. We stood on the sidewalk, the sun beating down on us. We were both sweating. But we kept talking about the women, about the obstacles they'll face when they leave Jana's place. Do you think anything, well, not like we can solve every problem in this super hot day, But like, do you think what would change the stigma that exists? I don't really know because, I mean, now it's like it impacts everybody, somebody knows,

but we're still able to dehumanize and, like, you know, kind of like push these, push people with substance use disorder from to the margins, right? And like, until we, like, actually, like, start treating substance use as an actual medical condition that it is, right? And, like, you know, we're not treating people with diabetes this way or people with, with heart conditions, right? Like, we provide them. I kind of smiled to myself when I heard her say this. Like, oh, look, we're back here again.

Round and round we go. But then, Nikki said something that has really stayed with me. But it's society's job to recognize, like, wow, we've really failed people here. And so we want to change that. And so how do we do that? But instead, it's another thing we heap onto the backs of survivors. Do I think we need to give voice to our experiences? Yes.

but there's also the responsibility of everybody else. The responsibility of everybody else. I'm so grateful to all the women who told me their stories, all of them, even the ones who couldn't come forward publicly. But I'm also sorry that they had to. Survivors carry an unfairly heavy burden, to share their experiences, to testify, to relive their traumas so others can understand and learn from them.

Isn't it time to help take that weight off their shoulders? This was supposed to be the last episode of the 13th step. But then someone came to visit me, someone who's been at the center of this story. Like I said, I didn't necessarily know where this was going to go. Like, for all I knew, it was going to go nowhere because that's what I know from the past. So I was proud of all of us.

Employee A comes to the studio in an epilogue of the 13th step. The 13th step is reported and produced by me, Lauren Chulgin. Jason Moon contributed reporting. He also wrote the music you hear in this show and mixed all the episodes. Alison McAdam is our editor. Additional editing from senior editor Katie Culinary and news director, Dan Barrick. Fact-checking by Donya Suleiman. Sarah Plored created our artwork and our website,

13th Step Podcast.org. That's the number 13. Sigmund Shoots is our lawyer, NHPR's director of podcasts is Rebecca LaVoy. And special thanks to Casey McDermott, Taylor Quimby, Ariana Like, Max Green, Patrick Smith, Kate Cahan, Desire DeSereymos, Temperance Staples, and Alina Bluto.

The 13th Step is a production of the document team at New Hampshire Public Radio. Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature podcast. For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers, and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world and the men and women who wrote them. Like our recent episodes on Dante in Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influenced Sylvia Plath and a talk with scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature.

Join us at the History of Literature Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.