Serenity House of Sobriety 3.71

History of the Founding of Serenity House of Sobriety

Serenity House of Sobriety is a brainchild of Amy Gay Villacampa-Laboc whose training with the Dangerous Drug Board and exposure with various drug rehabilitation centers in Metro Manila challenged her to develop a wholistic treatment program for people struggling with addiction. She believed in her heart that there is more beyond the popularly adapted TC (Therapeutic Community) approach in the treatment of this problem. Being a product of nurturing programs in her home church and blossomed as a youth leader involved in camps and retreats, her deep spirituality and relationship with God moved her to design a spiritually-grounded program to treat addicts. Her youth camp experience inspired her to follow a framework of treating addicts in a controlled environment aimed at helping them imbibe a lifestyle of spirituality and strong self-awareness rooted on the knowledge of God.

Her research and readings led her to the Twelve Steps Program patterned after Hazelden in Minnesota, USA which further traces its origins to the Twelve Steps Anonymous started by Bill W. and Dr. Bob. These excited her so much especially the medical findings of addiction being a disease that is not curable but treatable; that addicts are good people with a bad disease and that being a disease likened to diabetes, hypertension, heart ailment and other genetically predisposed sicknesses, addiction has to be managed in one’s lifetime.

Such basic principles provided Amy Gay Laboc a foundation upon which the Addiction Treatment Center she envisions to open will stand. Hence in October 2003 a Center named “Serenity,” a word denoting peace and deep calmness which is close to Amy Gay’s heart, was born on its current site, known by local folks as Montelago, a hotel which operated in the 80s. Feeling that the name Serenity sounds incomplete without a complementary word, Amy Gay thought of a more outward expression of a person’s healing which is Sobriety and House as another term for Center. Serenity House of Sobriety was born in October 2003 and received its legal identity in February 28, 2005 after it was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The first year of Serenity proved to be critical especially in finances. With less than 10 residents most of whom were non-paying, the Center could barely support its operations. Amy Gay had to take on several hats, from being the Center Director to cook, marketer, finance manager, psychologist and the most challenging, as security personnel. Her husband Paul Anthony who was then working as a seaman joined her a few months after the Center was born and assumed the responsibility of Administrative Officer. He decided to give up his lucrative seaman profession to join his wife Amy Gay in this new pursuit. Her mother, Teacher Phoebe Villacampa, left also her teaching work in their family owned pre-school in Cavite City to serve as House Mother and assist her eldest child in the Center’s operation. Years later her father Andy Villacampa and only sibling Teacher Joy Villacampa became part of the staff force.

Seeking recognition and accreditation from the Department of Health was also another feat in the life of Serenity not to mention the permit from the city government of Tagaytay and tax exemption from the BIR. But God must truly have noble plans for Serenity because the adversities she faced in securing these legal documents turned out as opportunities. The strict requirements set by the DOH fine tuned the program operations of the Center even surpassing the minimum standards which impressed the inspection team that comes from time to time. The financial tightness led her to go out of its four walls and undertake advocacy work in several parts of the country with a two-fold aim which was to heighten awareness on addiction as a disease at the same time makes the Center known in order to get more residents. True enough; by 2008 the Center experienced a steady increase of residents by leaps and bounds. Today, 2014, Serenity caters to 8 times the number of its original residents in 2003.

Over her ten years of operation as a Center for healing and treatment of all forms of addiction, not only chemical substance abuse but even obsessive compulsive behaviors which now include the new ones like cyber addiction, Serenity humbly lifts up to God in thanksgiving the following milestones which have firmed up her institutional identity:

In-house benchmark programs for residents

1. Spiritual Formation through a communal and individual worship-ful way of life from waking up in the morning to lying down in the evening; daily worship, weekly Sunday worship and other religious observances; quarterly retreats; weekly Bible studies with a designated Spiritual Adviser/Formator.

2. Physical Fitness Program under a trained instructor with activities varying from aerojam and body-building with equipment at hand, Annual Sports festival, sports clinic, badminton classes.

3. Continuing Education program for out-of-school residents through the Alternative Learning Systems of the DepEd and Open University offered by CAP College. This program has provided several residents an opportunity to finish their high school and pursue a college degree.

4. Livelihood Programs linkaging with the Dept of Trade and Industry which sends resource persons to teach livelihood activities like baking, welding, sewing, arts and crafts, massaging and others.

5. Family Therapy sessions offered to families of residents which cover lectures on addiction as a disease and latest scientific researches as well as retreat-type meetings addressing family dysfunction dynamics resulting to healing moments of families

Off-site and community benchmark programs

1. Lakbay Aral/Advocacy Work to various groups such as churches, local government units, schools and universities, corporations, and others;

2. Mission/Service to community through sponsorships of medical mission

Serenity House of Sobriety makes best effort in helping addicts find an effective way of managing their lifetime disease at the same time looks far beyond her walls to reach out to the community, educating people in the hope of removing the stigma on addicts. After all though hates sin God loves the sinner and this love shall remain until every sinner, every addict is restored to Him. And like the parable of the wounded rabbi healing others while attending to his own wounds, Serenity will continue to attend to the wounds of the residents entrusted to her care while extending loving hands to a sick-filled society, trapped in its own addiction or obsessive compulsion, praying that by God’s intervention, freedom from bondage would be attained in God’s own time.