Recovery in the Making

A nontraditional addiction treatment program — located smack dab in the middle of Beer City USA — teaches fine furniture building as a metaphor for sustainable sobriety and a productive life.

Story by Jay Moye | Photos by Justin Gartman

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. 

And French, a high school dropout with no formal training as an addiction specialist, is an atypical counselor. Scrawny-strong and street-smart, his fiery red hair and beard match his personality and outspoken, F-bomb-heavy passion for everything he builds each day: furniture, his marriage and family, character, and confidence in others. 

On the day we meet, he’s wearing work pants and boots covered in sawdust and a sweat-stained T-shirt that appropriately reads: MAKER.

Making Whole is the distillation of lessons and tools French has picked up during his own 26-year sobriety journey. Men come here to learn from master craftsmen like French, who specializes in architectural concrete, and Andy Rae, an accomplished woodworker. Enrollment is capped at 10 to preserve intimacy. 

Together, they design and fabricate studio-quality furniture. These guys are not building birdhouses or ashtrays; there are no paint-by-numbers blueprints. The collective spends its days laboring over custom, commissioned pieces ranging from heirloom writing desks and concrete-top dining tables, to chess sets and elegant bathroom vanities. But the focus is on the process, not the product. 

“Life problems are emotionally charged and rooted in complicated stories we have about ourselves, so it can take a long time to see the truth,” French shouts over the hum of an industrial fan. “With furniture making, we get to skip that emotional labor and quickly see if something works or not. We find out what we need and what tools are accessible. We learn to break things down, ask the right questions, expand our resource set to discover where the answers are, and simply show up and trust the process.”

As apprentices learn to build furniture, they learn to gradually rebuild their lives. Figuring out how to do simple things well — and consistently — conditions them to recognize and rewire patterns. By committing to a daily practice filled with struggle, they learn to better manage hardships and make more informed choices. 

The process of making furniture is chock-full of troubleshooting and critical decision-making — from designing, measuring, and cutting wood, to mixing concrete to just the right consistency. But the real work is learning how to be engaged and helpful, and to tune in.

“This is Old World-style craftsman work — not community college job prep — where the apprentice is on the mentor’s shoulder to observe and learn,” French says. “There’s more of an ask in this scenario to show up and intimately connect. It’s less about learning specific techniques and more about taking as many cues as possible from how the mentor conducts himself and navigates through specific situations.” 

Projects are dictated by each apprentice’s skill level and current mental state. “We meet guys where they are,” French says, adding that the group’s energy ebbs and flows like the weather. “Some days we need to put our heads down and grind away on the minutiae without having to think much, while others we need the challenge of designing a piece and seeing it through to completion. But the idea is always to push ourselves into uncomfortable intellectual spaces where we can grow.”

They rarely make the same thing twice, which means there’s a high potential for failure. 

“This work is really stretching even guys like Andy, who apprenticed under George Nakashima and wrote a best-selling woodworking book,” French says. “He’s been doing this for almost 40 years and doesn’t know if he’s gonna fail or not. That captures people in a really unique way.” 

Rae is a patient teacher, steering his students with a light-handed touch. He answers questions and offers guidance, but with a long leash. “Sometimes it's just a matter of telling them to keep trying,” he explains. “I never say, ‘You’ve got this,’ because I don’t know if they do. I want these guys to get deeper and deeper into the process on their own, and that involves frustration. They’re under a lot of pressure, because high-end furniture like this demands a certain amount of product integrity, and that makes them nervous.”

He adds, “This is a program that allows you to fail so you can eventually succeed. There's a lot of disappointment that happens here every day, and that's a life lesson that never ends.”

Common “failures” include objects breaking unexpectedly, projects not turning out quite as planned, or apprentices behaving in a way that doesn’t match their own picture of who they want to be. “Success is about staying engaged in the dance, and taking the information failure provides to develop a new way to approach the task at hand,” French says. “The failure we don’t want to see is someone giving up, and closing the door to hope.”

Men learn from master craftsmen like Andy Rae (right), a veteran woodworker. “Everyone is here because they’re trying to better themselves,” Rae says. “This is a program that allows you to fail so you can eventually succeed.”

In an interview with a local news crew, one of Making Whole’s first apprentices was asked what he’d gotten out of the program. His answer: “I’ve learned how to learn.” 

Making Whole’s approach to rehabilitation is nuanced, subliminal, and tailored to each individual’s emotional history and learning style. The framework stretches apprentices outside their comfort zones so they learn to ask better questions until they eventually realize they have what they need. “I’m trying to put software into these guys they may not realize the value and power of right away,” French says. “It’s like using a computer for years and suddenly discovering a tab with functionality you never knew you had.”

Inspirational but not preachy, quotes from Trappist monk Thomas Merton, writer Cormac McCarthy, and poet Mary Oliver are scribbled on a chalkboard next to design sketches and shopping lists. Teachable moments emerge organically, over morning coffee or during the furniture-making process. The structureless rhythm of the day opens the door to vulnerable and authentic conversations.

“It happens when the moments are ripe and the subject matter is less precious than it would be during an hourlong therapy session,” French says. “It’s impossible to maintain a facade for eight hours a day ... the truth of who you are will come out. You can’t hide here.”

French often asks the men in the program to decide if they want to feel better or get better. “Those are two distinct choices, and you can’t do both at once,” he explains. “If feeling better is just marginally more important to you than getting better, then you’ll never get better. Because there will come a time in getting better when you feel worse. The key is to learn that getting better reliably generates the feeling you’re after.”

He defines getting better — which extends well beyond the journey to sobriety — as a “commitment to suffering in a different way.” 

“Because you don’t get to escape life,” he adds. “When you refuse to give up, even if you desperately want to, your brain is rewired when you come out on the other side. You’re a different human being.”

Most things have come relatively easily to Josh in his 35 years of life: sports, school, making friends, breaking the law. Making furniture, however, has been far from a sure thing.

“I’m learning that good things, really good things, take time. And they take practice,” he says quietly as his pit bull and Making Whole mascot, Maya, naps nearby. “I see that now that it’s all a metaphor. I’m picking up things subtly along the way, and not only creating these things here but also creating a life I’m proud of.”

After spending the better part of his adult life in and out of prison and rehab, Josh came to Making Whole last fall after a suicide attempt. He was hungry for a different approach.  

“This place has saved my life and become a big part of who I am,” he says. “It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last before I fall asleep. I now have a purpose ... and it’s more than coming here to make stuff.”

Apprentices are referred to Making Whole through credentialed mental health and addiction professionals and state vocational rehab programs. Some are newly sober, while others have been to rehab more than 20 times. A one-year commitment is expected.

“The common denominator isn’t their relationship to drugs,” French explains. “It’s their relationship to themselves and an ability to be honest and prepared to search for answers and do new work. When these guys bring ingredients like willingness and belief — and something in the pot here mixes well with those ingredients and produces consistently reliable results — that’s the framework we’re trying to develop.”

Making Whole is a tuition-based program; insurance isn’t accepted. Approximately 20-25% of apprentices are on scholarship. Most of the men reside in sober living homes in the Asheville area where they are routinely drug tested, and others are tested through independent testing services that share results with Making Whole staff. They are expected to show up and work a full week and are paid a monthly stipend funded from the collective’s furniture sales. 

“You’re earning a paycheck, but you’re not working in the kitchen next to a line cook selling coke or framing houses with a guy who’s on OxyContin and cracking tall boys at lunch,” Adam, 37, says while sanding a custom turntable console he built for his sister. “A lot of people with our disease don’t have a career. We go into restaurants or take construction jobs. And those industries are saturated with drugs and alcohol. This is a safe space.”

Though no prior experience is required at Making Whole, Adam is a skilled carpenter who once owned a furniture repair business in Virginia. He recently returned to the program for the second time after a relapse-induced car accident landed him in jail. Like his fellow apprentices, Adam looks up to French as a mentor. 

“I believe in the plan and trust Jeremy,” he says. “I need to be busy, engaged, and, to a certain degree, distracted as my brain heals. Because when I’m in the thick of using, I don’t make rational decisions.”

After struggling with drugs and alcohol as a teen in Atlanta with “mischief in his blood,” French got clean in 1995 at age 17. He lived at a halfway home in north Georgia for 16 months, learning about the value of creativity in recovery from the house proprietor, Tom Hickey. 

“He gave me permission to treat creativity as more than a hobby,” French says. 

That permission pushed him to start a landscaping business in 1998, playing drums in bands as a creative side hustle. A few years later, he opened an architectural concrete studio and poured all of his energy into his craft. He hired fellow people in recovery, prioritizing natural grit and problem-solving instincts over technical expertise. This focus intensified over the years as drugs continued to claim the lives of French’s loved ones, including a close friend whose suicide in 2009 prompted him to do more. 

“He was one of many people we lost who I thought could get better but wasn’t getting something they needed,” French says. “I was curious to find out what that something was, and equally curious if I could create a space where I could help guys reliably get better.” 

The Making Whole collective spends its days laboring over custom, commissioned pieces, a process rife with troubleshooting and critical decision-making. “This is Old World-style craftsman work — not community college job prep — where the apprentice is on the mentor’s shoulder to observe and learn,” French says.

In 2015, with 20 years of sobriety under his belt, French took mental inventory of the friends who’d gotten — and stayed — clean. “But not guys who had five years sober,” he adds. “I’m talking about guys I’d trade lives with … and that’s a really fucking short list of people.”

He identified two common denominators. First, they all either had a job or dedicated hobby that entailed solving complex problems through creativity. Secondly, they’d met a mentor (like Hickey) who encouraged them to hone their craft and apply the same discipline to their daily recovery. 

“None of these stories taste exactly the same,” French notes, “but they all share at least a few of the same ingredients.”

French is drawn to creatives like writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who praise the virtues of struggle, and top-caliber chefs, who prioritize instinct over instruction. “Their process is really compelling to me,” he explains. “They’re not OK if they’re not being challenged and if there’s no risk in the work they’re doing.”

French can relate. Templated work with a predetermined outcome makes him restless and stunts his creative growth.

Another early mentor in French’s career, a jeweler, instilled in him the value of process. “He’d just made a piece that was absolutely stunning, but was completely disinterested in it,” French recalls. “He explained that it was completely dead to him. He had no feelings about the outcome … the process was what truly mattered.”

At the time, this message didn’t click. French was early in his career designing architectural concrete, and every piece he produced inflated his ego. 

“But suddenly I’d made enough things that I forgot about them,” he says. “Why? Because those feelings I got were fleeting. I realized my creations were an expression of a process … and that what was important to me was creating.”

By emphasizing the meditative benefits of the creative process, Making Whole encourages participants to invest more in the daily ritual of problem-solving and less in outcomes. There are no shortcuts, loopholes, or finish lines. 

“Drug addicts thrive on navigating between frameworks,” French says. “They want to know the rules so they can figure out what they can get away with, and are always trying to peek behind the curtain. The only way to bridge the gap to a stable life is to be in this type of environment where you’re not chained.”

Most residential treatment programs are rigid and prescriptive, relying on structure, discipline, and repetition. Every hour is carefully choreographed with group and individual therapy sessions, exercise, and other scheduled activities. French isn’t a fan.

“If these guys could voluntarily do what they’re being coached to do, they wouldn’t be here,” he says. “The challenge is how to frame it so you have to … and not because you’re told to, but because you know the only way to the other side is through it.” 

Since there are few formal rules at Making Whole, the ability to “switch on” is critical. 

“A big part of being in this space is to be consciously awake and aware,” Rae observes. “When you make a choice here, there’s a big mirror that reflects back and shows everyone where you are. It’s a subtle, unconscious teaching tool that happens over time. You see patterns of making wiser choices.”

Jeremy French (left) and Adam play a game of chess during an afternoon break. The Making Whole team custom-built just about everything in the space, including this chess set and dining table.

French compares this self-discovery process to gradually appreciating a challenging jazz record like Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew.”

“You have to listen to it in 100 different states of mind before you can hear what’s happening,” he says. “The first time you say, ‘This is chaos,’ but eventually you get it. That’s addiction.”

Making Whole has an open-door policy. Every day, the crew gathers around a massive concrete dining table — the first item made in house — for a family-style lunch they prepare themselves in an on-site kitchen. Music and laughter fill the air. Drop-in guests are frequent, and all are welcomed into the bespoke brotherhood. 

“Part of what I’ve learned these last few years is that the recovery community is some of the most awesome people to be around,” Rae says. “Everyone is here because they’re trying to better themselves. They’re in trouble, like the rest of humanity, but most of us are not consciously trying to move forward. We’re just trying to get by.” 

A close friend’s suicide in 2009 motivated French to bring the Making Whole concept to fruition. “He was one of many people we lost who I thought could get better but wasn’t getting something they needed. I was curious to find out what that something was,” he says, “and equally curious if I could create a space where I could help guys reliably get better.” 

That’s part of the aforementioned “switch on.” Growth requires a combination of intention, presence, and action. 

“Being around this kind of community is empowering for someone like me, who’s not an addict,” Rae concludes. “And if I can benefit, then anyone who walks through this door can, too.”

Header photo: Jeremy French sits beneath a row of photos of friends lost to addiction. Making Whole is the distillation of lessons and tools picked up during his own 26-year sobriety journey.

Editor’s Note: Updates were made to this story on 10/6/2021. Need some immediate support for yourself or members of your family? Call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit SAMHSA National Helpline

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