Blueprints For Addiction Recovery

04/06/2026

Voting link below!

We’re incredibly proud to share that our very own, Leanna Ballester, has been nominated for Peer Advocate of the Year by the Pennsylvania Peer Support Coalition (PAPSC)! 💙

🗳️ Help us celebrate Leanna and the vital role of peer advocacy—cast your vote today!
👉 Vote here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NX2VFHZ

This nomination reflects the very best of peer advocacy and community collaboration. Through Leanna’s leadership, the Co‑Responder Program has grown into a compassionate, on‑scene response for individuals facing substance use and mental health challenges—meeting people with care, respect, and real options for support when it matters most.

Under Leanna’s guidance, more than 100 individuals across Lancaster County have been diverted from arrest and connected to community‑based services instead of incarceration. These outcomes represent more than system change—they represent dignity, trust, and opportunity.

Leanna brings humility, curiosity, and unwavering commitment to her work every day. Her leadership continues to shape how co‑response is understood and practiced across our community—and we’re so grateful for the impact she makes. 🙏🏻

04/06/2026

Join us for Night of Recovery on Friday, April 24th at 6 PM live from Dauphin County Technical School in Harrisbug, PA.

This event will be hosted by Chris Dreisbach, founder of Blueprints for Addiction Recovery, and will feature distinguished panel of speakers including Alumni Zach Gowen, Jesus Rodriguez and Blueprints Primary Counselor Amber O'Kane!

This is a free to attend event with Premium seating made available on a first come first served basis. Visit resource tables from local treatment and recovery providers throughout the evening. Stay after the program to meet our panelists and so much more. Doors open at 5 PM, we can't wait to see you all there!

04/02/2026

The best team there is, doing incredible work 🙏🏻

Every person carries dignity and potential — a criminal record should not become a life sentence that closes doors to opportunity.

Blueprints Specialty Programs believes strongly in second chances, and through our initiatives, we work together with reentrants to address barriers to reduce recidivism, ensure successful reintegration into society, and provide individualized, ongoing support throughout the reentry process.

In , we recognize the millions of Americans working diligently to rebuild their lives after incarceration.

04/01/2026

For many people, alcohol wasn’t the problem—it was the answer.

An answer to suffering.� An answer to longing.� An answer to emotions that felt overwhelming, unmanageable, and intolerable.

We start by understanding that if alcohol helped you cope, that made sense at the time. It met a real internal condition—some call it pain, some call it emptiness, some call it a deep longing for relief or connection.

Alcohol Awareness Month isn’t about judgment, labels, or shame. It’s about awareness.

What is alcohol helping me survive?
What need is it meeting?
And today—does it still align with the life I want to live?

Two things can be true at once: something may have helped you get through hard moments and may no longer serve who you’re becoming. Awareness doesn’t demand immediate change—it simply creates choice.

03/31/2026

At Blueprints, we focus on reducing the suffering that often accompanies addiction: intolerable emotions, and from being misunderstood, unseen, and historically invalidated.

Healing begins when people are met with respect, steadiness, and room to fully exist—without judgment or conditions. We remain committed to helping individuals build lives rooted in authenticity, connection, and hope. No exceptions.

03/27/2026

🌟 Staff Spotlight: Nikki 🌟
3rd Shift Lead Residential Technician | Chapter 2 Lead

Nikki brings a calm, steady presence to everything she does. With an infectious spirit and a naturally warm, comforting approach, she creates an environment where both teammates and those we serve feel supported, safe, and understood.

In her role as 3rd Shift Lead Residential Technician and Chapter 2 Lead, Nikki’s consistency and care help anchor the team—especially during moments that require patience, trust, and reliability.

Focused on growing as a leader, Nikki continues to strengthen her communication skills and deepen her understanding of different perspectives. She is also expanding her knowledge of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), allowing her to show up more effectively for our community while fostering growth within her team.

What truly sets Nikki apart is her ability to be present during vulnerable moments. She offers stability when things feel uncertain and reminds people—through steady support and quiet encouragement—that they are not alone. Her belief in compassion without compromise guides her work every day.

We are grateful for Nikki’s leadership, her consistent presence, and the sense of hope and reassurance she brings to our community. 💙

03/26/2026

On Monday, we explored some of the ways emotions impact relationships; how quickly relational stress can shift our behavior in unhealthy and counterproductive ways.

Undergoing profound change is all about learning new, effective skills to replace the many tools we’ve picked up throughout life that hurt or hinder us just as much as they may provide relief from pain or stress in the moment.

The Chapters Program is structured entirely around this idea. We teach individuals the skills to strengthen their identity and values, to manage overwhelming emotions, to change unwanted behavior, and to improve relationships.

These relationship skills - or interpersonal effectiveness skills – are all about how to achieve our goals while maintaining relationships and self-respect, how to develop and maintain relationships, and how to balance the natural conflicts that arise out of sharing our lives and environments with others. They are key to recovery because life is lived in relationship: We live in relationship to ourselves, our values, our environment, and others. Relationships are where emotional vulnerability can combine with old survival patterns to undermine our health, self-respect, happiness, and even safety. Ineffective relationships often drive emotional crises, which lead us into relying on exactly the destructive behaviors we want to change.

The unique combination of therapies provided at The Chapters Program helps individuals learn, understand, and practice, practice, practice these skills in a safe, validating environment. Over time, the new skills become comfortable, repeatable, and ultimately automatic themselves. 💪

03/23/2026

For many people, emotional experiences don’t just come and go—they arrive with an intensity that feels urgent, overwhelming, and difficult to tolerate. When emotions are this painful, there’s often a strong pull to do something to make them stop or ease, a drive most of us recognize in different ways.

Emotions serve important, instinctive purposes, but they don’t always provide a full or accurate picture of what’s happening. When emotional responses are shaped by past experiences and amplified under stress, they can over‑emphasize threat or urgency, clouding perspective in the moment. This makes it harder to communicate clearly, stay grounded in reality, or respond with intention—especially in relationships.

Interpersonal effectiveness skills focus on what to do when relationship moments feel unclear, ineffective, or don’t lead to the outcome someone hoped for. Even when skills are known, real‑world situations are complex—timing shifts, emotions interfere, power dynamics exist, and not every request can be met.

These skills help us pause and assess before pushing harder, backing down, or giving up altogether. We teach and learn how to decide whether to ask for something or say no, how strongly to do so, and how to troubleshoot when efforts aren’t working. The goal isn’t to force outcomes, but to walk the middle path—responding skillfully, flexibly, and effectively.

Together, these skills move us away from all‑or‑nothing reactions and toward more thoughtful, nuanced choices in relationships—supporting steadier connection, recovery, and toward experiencing a life worth living. 🩵

03/20/2026

We know that meaningful change happens when barriers are removed and people are supported across every part of their lives—not just in treatment, but in day to day living.

As a Case Manager in our Chapter 1 Program, Nelson Caldero plays a key role in making that possible. His work focuses on empowering, motivating, and coordinating care, so the individuals we serve can spend less time navigating systems and more time focusing on what matters most to them.

Nelson works closely with participants to strengthen both formal and natural supports across every psychosocial domain—housing, employment, education, food security, health insurance, faith, and community connection. This holistic coordination allows treatment supports like therapy, medication management, and life skills building to come together in a way that feels practical, dignified, and sustainable.

What makes the difference at Blueprints, according to Nelson, is the community of support, teamwork, professionalism, and social environment.

And when he’s not coordinating care or building connections? You may catch Nelson planning his next visit to the Caribbean—proof that balance, joy, and looking ahead are just as important parts of the journey. 🌴

03/18/2026

It can be true that you’re doing the best you can and that things still feel really hard right now—or that you’re not sure where else to turn.

If you’re unsure, conflicted, or not even sure what you’re looking for, that makes sense to us.

And while every experience is unique, many forms of suffering tend to grow heavier in isolation. For many, pain is kept private. It feels complicated and may even feel easier to carry alone for some time.

We understand that reaching out can feel impossible. Especially, if you’ve grown to believe you’re supposed to handle it all on your own.

In addition to our clinical services here at Blueprints, we offer a community drop‑in center in downtown Lancaster: a welcoming, low‑barrier space to connect, ask questions, or simply not be alone for a while.

Both hesitation and hope can exist together 🧡

03/13/2026

This quote continues on to say, “It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

In recovery, it’s common to want distance from the parts of life that feel painful or overwhelming. That impulse makes sense. Many people learned to survive by pushing difficult experiences away.

But healing often asks something different of us.

Instead of avoiding what’s painful, recovery can involve slowly turning toward it — with support, curiosity, and compassion. Not to stay stuck in the past, but to understand how those experiences shaped the ways we cope, relate, and move through the world today.

Recovery isn’t about feeling good every day or reaching a point where someone is suddenly “healed.” More often, it’s a deliberate, day-by-day practice — learning and using new skills, building awareness, and making intentional choices even on difficult days. 🩵

03/11/2026

🌟 Staff Spotlight: Ryan 🌟
Residential Technician | Compassion • Consistency • Impact

Today, we’re celebrating Ryan—someone who shows up for our clients with compassion and always a willingness to grow. Since joining Blueprints, she’s leaned into every opportunity to learn, build new skills, and stay grounded even on the tough days. Her internal motivation to keep improving shows up in the way she supports clients and her team.

What Ryan loves most about her role is walking alongside clients and witnessing the shifts—big or small—that happen during their stay. Her consistency and genuine care help make those moments possible. She often shares how supported she feels by the people she works with across all departments, and that sense of teamwork is something we value deeply at Blueprints.

Outside of work, Ryan’s favorite place to be is with her daughter, Bailey—her “why.” She’s also into puzzles, Legos, and getting lost in a good book.

We’re grateful for everything Ryan brings to our team, and we’re lucky to have her. 💙