About DRS

DRS has no affiliation with any treatment provider. Every visitor is free to contact any program directly, there’s never any obligation to call our hotline or attend a specific treatment. When you reach out for help, the choice is entirely yours.

At DRS, our mission is to connect you with reliable, ethical, and high-quality resources for substance use treatment. We never list programs we wouldn’t recommend to one of our own loved ones. Be cautious of facilities that promise a quick fix or immediately focus on your finances, both can signal that your best interests aren’t their priority.

Every piece of educational content on Addicted.org is written or reviewed by professionals with firsthand experience in addiction care. Our medical review team, led by Dr. Rohit Adi (MD) and Michael Leach (CCMA), ensures all information reflects the latest research, evidence-based practices, and public health data.

Content is updated regularly, fact-checked, and guided by reputable sources like SAMHSA, NIDA, and peer-reviewed journals.

Our team has spent thousands of hours researching to build one of the most complete and ethical directories of addiction treatment providers in North America. Each listing is vetted, verified, and continuously reviewed to ensure accuracy and trust. Our team continuously reviews centers to ensure the information you seek is up to date. If you spot an error, our editorial team welcomes corrections directly at communications@addicted.org and we act promptly to review and update it.

While helping people find recovery is at the heart of what we do, education and prevention are just as vital. Recovery begins with knowledge. Many of our team members have lived or worked through addiction firsthand, that perspective shapes everything we create. Through this experience, we develop resources that inform, empower, and prevent addiction before it starts, always grounded in empathy and real-world understanding.

For over 20 years, Marcel Gemme has dedicated his life to helping people overcome addiction and rebuild their lives. His journey began in 2000 as an intake counselor at a drug rehabilitation center, where he saw firsthand how overwhelming and isolating the recovery process can be. Determined to reach more people than he could one-on-one, Marcel launched his first addiction resource website in 2004. As the need for reliable information and ethical guidance grew, he founded Drug Rehab Services (DRS) in 2009 and created Addicted.org, now one of North America’s leading hubs for substance use resources.

Marcel’s vision for DRS is built on three pillars, education, prevention, and rehabilitation, reflecting his belief that recovery begins with understanding and compassion. Over the years, his work has helped thousands of families find trustworthy information, ethical treatment options, and renewed hope for recovery.

Since the inception of DRS, Nicole Landry has been an integral part of its mission to help individuals and families overcome life’s challenges with compassion and understanding. Married to founder Marcel Gemme, she spent over 15 years working as a counselor, providing guidance and practical solutions to life’s challenges. Her experience also includes several years as a counselor in a rehabilitation center, where she witnessed the life-changing impact of recovery firsthand. This inspired her to expand her reach and dedicate her career to addressing addiction on a broader scale as DRS’s Director of Finance.

Deeply humanitarian and family-oriented, Nicole believes in creating meaningful change that extends beyond her work. She is passionate about helping others and is driven by the vision of building a better future for her daughters and granddaughters, one rooted in empathy, education, and the belief that every person deserves the chance to heal and thrive.

Michael Leach is a Certified Clinical Medical Assistant who has worked in addiction treatment for nearly a decade. Before joining DRS, he served as Director of Rehabilitation at New Life Retreat in Louisiana and trained under board-certified Internal Medicine physician Dr. Rohit Adi. His background includes working directly with patients through detox and withdrawal, supporting families, and managing treatment programs with an emphasis on safety and quality care.

Having overcome addiction himself, Michael brings rare insight and empathy to his work. He understands the challenges of recovery from both sides, as a former patient and as a professional. This dual perspective allows him to bridge the gap between those seeking help and the clinicians who provide it. Today, Michael uses his clinical expertise and leadership experience to strengthen DRS’s educational content.

Marie Garceau has been part of DRS since its early days, driven by a lifelong passion for helping others. Over the years, she has played a key role in the growth of the company and has witnessed firsthand how accessible information and compassion can change lives. Her dedication and leadership have helped DRS grow from a small team into a trusted voice in the addiction recovery field.

Known for her organization, precision, and problem-solving mindset, Marie thrives on improving systems and finding innovative ways to serve the community. She’s passionate about staying ahead of technological change and ensuring DRS continues to evolve to meet people’s needs. When she’s not working, Marie enjoys painting, building projects, walking, and spending time with her daughter, Elora: her greatest inspiration.

Karine Gemme joined DRS in 2017 as Website Quality Manager, where her strong attention to detail and ability to quickly learn new systems help ensure accuracy, reliability, and consistency across all online resources. Her commitment to maintaining high standards supports DRS’s goal of providing trustworthy information to those seeking help.

Claudia Gemme joined DRS in 2017 and has since advanced to Website Developer, overseeing both the Addicted.org and SUPE (Substance Use Prevention Education) websites. Combining her technical expertise with creativity, she has contributed to the SUPE curriculum through animation and video editing. Passionate about innovation, Claudia uses technology as a tool to inspire awareness, education, and positive change.

Since 2017, Vicky Gemme has served as Public Relations Coordinator for DRS, dedicated to promoting awareness and building community connections. Guided by her belief in creating a better world through service, Vicky volunteers much of her free time to support local initiatives and continues to strengthen DRS’s outreach and educational efforts.

Nickolaus Hayes has spent over 15 years researching and writing about substance use disorders, combining professional insight with lived experience. In recovery himself, Nickolaus turned his own experience into purpose, dedicating his career to helping individuals and families better understand addiction, treatment options, and recovery pathways.

He began his career at the same rehab center where he received treatment, working as an intake counselor and helping families navigate the often-confusing treatment process. His contributions to Addicted.org continue to serve readers seeking clear information on addiction and recovery.

Robert Newman is an Internationally Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, Prevention Specialist, and Certified Intervention Professional with the IC&RC. His deep commitment to helping others comes from personal experience, overcoming his own struggles with addiction that began in his teens and led to years of hardship before finding lasting recovery. After completing a successful long-term rehabilitation program, Robert dedicated his life to education and prevention, teaching hundreds of thousands of people across multiple states about the dangers of substance use and helping countless individuals find treatment. His firsthand experience, professional training, and compassionate approach make him a powerful advocate for recovery and prevention.

Sheila Sanchez is the founder and operator of Connecticut Bail Bonds Group, where she brings over 15 years of experience helping individuals regain freedom and access the support they need. As the first bondsman in Connecticut to earn certification from the CCAR Recovery Coach Academy, Sheila bridges the gap between the bail industry and addiction recovery, advocating for compassion and reform within the criminal justice system. Fluent in English and Spanish, she leads a team that understands firsthand how empathy and proper guidance can change lives. Through her work, Sheila continues to promote second chances and provide hope to those seeking a path toward sobriety and stability.

Jan Rader spent 27 years with the Huntington Fire Department in West Virginia, becoming the first woman to lead a career fire department in the state and a national voice on America’s opioid crisis. Since stepping down as fire chief in 2022, she has served as Director of the Huntington Mayor’s Council on Public Health and Drug Control Policy. Her career has taken her from responding to overdose calls in the field to testifying at the federal opioid trial, appearing in the Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary Heroin(e), and being named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People list in 2018. She built the Quick Response Team model that visits overdose survivors within 72 hours to offer treatment options, an approach since studied in peer-reviewed research and replicated across the country. Under the combined community response work she helped lead, Huntington’s overdose deaths dropped 50%. Her reviews on Addicted.org focus on opioid-related content, informed by decades of frontline experience with the epidemic and its impact on communities.

Lt. Mike Hotz has served with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department since 2010 and currently leads the MNPD Overdose Unit, which he built from the ground up in 2019 to investigate drug overdose deaths and connect people to treatment resources. Promoted to Lieutenant in 2025, he brings a law enforcement and community response perspective shaped by direct work with the opioid crisis on Nashville’s streets. He also owns and operates CI2 (Clandestine Investigation Instruction), a training organization that travels the country teaching on narcotics investigations and drug overdose death investigations. Before joining the MNPD, Lt. Hotz served as a Rifle Team Leader Sergeant in the US Army Infantry, deployed twice to combat, and received the Purple Heart. His reviews on Addicted.org focus on opioid-related content where his frontline experience directly informs what patients, families, and communities are actually facing.

Dr. Susan Murphy is the President of the West Virginia Drug Intervention Institute, which she helped build from the ground up starting in 2019 after leaving a career in higher education. She holds a PhD in Education from Capella University and spent over 25 years in administrative roles at nonprofits and universities, including as vice president of student affairs and professor at the University of Charleston School of Pharmacy, where she focused on student outreach and medication safety. The decision to shift careers came after she witnessed a fatal overdose in West Virginia. Under her leadership, DII has trained more than 30,000 people on naloxone administration, distributed 100,000 fentanyl test strips across all 55 West Virginia counties, and deployed over 40,000 ONEbox overdose reversal kits in all 50 states, with more than 400 confirmed lives saved. She has authored over 100 articles on harm reduction, medication safety, and overdose response. Her reviews on Addicted.org focus on opioid-related content, informed by years of building and running the prevention and harm reduction programs these articles describe.

Joe Murphy is a West Virginia native and the inventor of the ONEbox®, an overdose reversal kit that provides one-minute emergency video instruction in English and Spanish, allowing bystanders with no prior training to respond to an overdose and administer naloxone. He designed it after watching the opioid crisis devastate his hometown. Working alongside Dr. Susan Murphy for nearly seven years, he helped distribute over 18,000 ONEbox® kits across all 50 states, with more than 300 confirmed lives saved. He has also partnered with organizations including Recovery Point, CCSAPP, and Lily’s Place, and organized what became the world’s largest one-time naloxone training event, reaching over 11,000 people at a music festival. His review on Addicted.org covers our ONEbox® article, which he is uniquely positioned to verify as the person who created the device and spent years putting it into communities.

Knowledge Mupembe is the Programs Lead at the Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drug Network (ZCLDN) in Harare, where he has designed and run the organization’s advocacy, harm reduction, and HIV prevention programs since 2020. His work started at street level, gathering data on the experiences of people who use and inject drugs in a country where drug use is criminalized, which meant reaching people in hidden spaces who feared arrest. That fieldwork led to establishing peer support groups and then to national policy: he was involved in advocating for Zimbabwe’s first National Drug Master Plan in 2021, contributed to the country’s first Key Population Manual for Healthcare Providers to include harm reduction strategies, and led a situational analysis of drug use and injection that resulted in harm reduction being written into Zimbabwe’s national health priorities for the first time. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Politics and Public Management from Midlands State University and has presented at international forums including the International AIDS Conference and the International Drug Policy Reform Conference. His reviews on Addicted.org focus on harm reduction, read against years of building those programs in a setting where they had to be argued for from scratch.

Arumugam Sankar is the Executive Director of EMPOWER India, a civil society organization based in Tamil Nadu that has worked in grassroots communities for over three decades and holds consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council. He is Chairman of the South Indian Harm Reduction Network and a former Vice President of the Indian Harm Reduction Network, where he has pressed for drug policy that treats dependence as a health issue rather than a criminal one. He trained as a lawyer, holds a postgraduate degree in economics, and has spent 40 years in the development sector across issues that overlap directly with substance use, including HIV prevention, access to care, and stigma reduction among people who use drugs. That work has taken him to UN General Assembly meetings, the International Harm Reduction Conference, the International AIDS Conference, and the Asia Pacific Forum Against Drugs. His reviews on Addicted.org focus on content about teenagers and substance use, informed by decades of grassroots and policy work centered on whether the people furthest from services can actually reach them.

 Judith Twala is the Deputy Director of Public Awareness and Advocacy at NACADA, Kenya’s National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse, a state corporation that coordinates the country’s campaign against alcohol and drug abuse through public education, regulation of rehabilitation facilities, research, and policy support. In that role she leads the department responsible for public education and advocacy on alcohol and drug abuse across Kenya. She has more than 16 years of experience as a Counseling Psychologist, is an International Certified Addiction Professional (ICAP), and is a Certified Counselors’ Supervisor qualified to oversee the clinical practice of other counselors. She holds a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from Kenyatta University and serves as a Board Member of the Recovery Allies Learning Collaborative for Asia and Africa. Her reviews on Addicted.org focus on alcohol-related content, informed by years of translating what Kenya’s drug authority knows about alcohol harm into public education, alongside direct clinical counseling experience.

Rev. Dr. Fredrick Ngugi Mwangi is a Kenyan public administrator, accredited counselor, and ordained minister whose work spans addiction recovery, public policy, and community mobilization. He served as a Board Director at NACADA, Kenya’s National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse, and as Deputy Director in the Office of the Deputy President of Kenya. He is the national champion of Kenya’s community-based rehabilitation initiative, a role grounded in how recovery works in settings where residential treatment is scarce and families, churches, and local institutions carry most of the weight. He is a certified professional mediator, accredited counselor, and psychology supervisor, and taught transformational leadership at PAC University from 2017 to 2022. He holds a master’s degree in counseling from Vision International University and has pursued doctoral studies in counseling psychology. His reviews on Addicted.org focus on content about helping a loved one and life after treatment, informed by years of counseling training and hands-on work in community-based recovery where formal resources are limited and families are often the primary support system.

 Dr. Rajesh Kumar is the Executive Director of SPYM (Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses), one of India’s leading national NGOs in substance use prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation, with more than four decades of work in the field and a countrywide service network. His expertise covers both direct program delivery and the policy frameworks that shape how treatment is designed and funded. He sits on high-level committees of the Government of India, state governments, and international bodies including the United Nations, contributing to policy and program development across prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. His work has been recognized with national honors presented by both India’s President and Prime Minister. His reviews on Addicted.org focus on content about helping a loved one and life after treatment, evaluated for accuracy and for whether the guidance holds up beyond a single country’s treatment model.