The Bitter Southerner: “I’m not the first person to note the ironic location of Making Whole — an Asheville, North Carolina-based addiction recovery program rooted in the principles of craftsmanship and apprenticeship — to founder Jeremy French.
The 8,000-square-foot studio is housed below a wine shop and shares a parking lot with one of the 30-plus breweries that give the artsy mountain town its unfortunate, bumper-sticker-ready nickname of “Beer City USA.”
Smells of fresh hops and scorched pine collide midair between the unlikely neighbors. Tourists sip pints of IPAs and sours a dozen yards away from the unmarked, speakeasy-like entrance to the space French opened in 2018 with the ambitious vision to help people living with addiction disrupt destructive patterns and ultimately transition to sustainable, sober lives through challenging, hands-on work.
“Hardly a day goes by without somebody asking me if I could be any closer to a brewery,” French, 44, says. “My response is always, ‘I couldn’t get any further away from one.’”
It’s an atypical location for an atypical treatment program. At Making Whole, apprentices are expected to work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and share lunch together at noon, but beyond that there is no set daily schedule, no formal curriculum, no 12 steps. “