After 3 months of being at the Gooden center I can honestly say it is mediocre at best. I started out at the Hochman house which serves as one of the residential treatment program houses. While the assistant staff at the house was very friendly, they were all extremely young (mid 20’s) and acted no different from people my age (I’m 20) . The Hochman house is a very good place to START treatment at, they keep people busy with decent groups and AA meetings and the house itself is gorgeous. Clients are required to clean for about 30 min each morning leaving the place to be as clean as possible. As for the food at Hochman many meals were delivered cold even though it was all made about 2 blocks away at the Main House. While being there you are allowed to have your phone for one hour and laptop for about 2+ hours at night. The main director/therapist for the Hochman house was a bit old school but friendly to deal with and easy to talk to. The therapists and psychiatrist were decent but it was very limiting how many opportunities there were to talk to them without a request. They also aren’t there every day. Overall the Gooden Center is a good place to go for its 30+ day detox residential treatment program.
After the the Hochman house the Gooden center offers a partial hospitalization program (PHP) and an intensive outpatient program (IOP). These programs to my knowledge take place at their Holliston location. It is set up with 3 small bungalows for PHP/IOP clients and one big house for residential treatment in the back. Coming from the Hochman house to Holliston was a complete change. The small bungalows while cozy at times were often smelly or dirty and filled with roaches. There was also an issue were we got a bed bug infestation and had to sleep 6 days in bed bug ridden rooms. They do make the clients clean their space twice a week but it easily reverts back to a mess within a day. The staff at this location was not all that friendly and were never consistent with treatment goals for clients.
You are required to go to 4 AA meetings a week while in PHP/IOP or else you could get written up and and talked to by the head therapist/director at Holliston PHP/IOP. While I was there though (may not sound good on my part) I never went to an AA meeting or got written up for it. The only write ups and being talked to would only be for not cleaning when I was supposed to. The food is also a bit of an issue while being at PHP/IOP, while it is freely available and actually hot when served it is about a 15-20 min. walk and back to get to the main house to eat. Also if you miss the 30 minute time frame for food at each mealtime there is nothing you can do. There are 4 groups a day for PHP they are very repetitive and are far from being an interactive experience. A lot of the time you can see staff boring clients in groups by reading things from a packet of information that had been read a week and a half prior. There is a non-daily 30-45 music listening group that does for some reason bring everyone to life though. Not many field trips are offered while at PHP the only places they take you are parks, and rarely (each only happened once) DTLA a hike or a movie. The majority of the time there is only one hour to do these activities and a park is most convenient for the staff. While in IOP the 4 groups a day become 2 morning groups only. It leaves a lot of free time past 11 a.m. but most clients don’t do much with that time nor are they enforced to. It is quite frankly a depressing bore.
Many of the guys in both Hochman and Holliston have a BRO/FRAT mentality from my perspective. If you do not necessarily act within these lines it could be very difficult to socialize. I complained only once about the comments made by clients but the staff was far from helpful. If you choose to come to the Gooden Center ONLY stay for 30+ days at residential treatment and go somewhere else after if further treatment is needed. Try PHP/IOP at your own risk.
