Lead Changes Recovery Center

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Glendive, MT
Lead Changes Recovery Center

Equine Assisted Therapy programs, team building and Addictions Counseling. Equine-Assisted Therapy
Horses are powerful partners in healing.

About Us
At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Therapy Center, we believe true healing begins when people rediscover their worth, rebuild trust, and find the courage to step forward with confidence. Our Why
We exist to create a safe place where individuals can heal, grow, and find hope. By walking alongside people in their recovery journey, we guide them to reconnect with themselves, others, and the world around them. Every session is built on compassion, respect, and the belief that change is possible for anyone willing to take the first step. What We Do
Substance Abuse Professional (SAP) Services
As a DOT SAP provider, we help employees navigate Department of Transportation (DOT) and non-DOT return-to-duty processes with professionalism, clarity, and care. Our SAP services are designed to ensure compliance while prioritizing personal accountability and long-term recovery, while supporting them as they get back to work. Through guided equine-assisted therapy sessions, clients learn trust, communication, boundaries, and self-awareness in a hands-on, experiential way. Horses mirror human emotions, offering honest feedback that leads to breakthroughs in personal growth, leadership, and recovery. Addictions Counseling
We provide compassionate, evidence-based counseling for individuals and families impacted by addiction. Our approach combines clinical expertise with relational support, enabling clients to uncover the root causes of their issues, develop resilience, and create sustainable recovery plans. Our Approach
Healing is not one-size-fits-all. That’s why we combine professional counseling, CBT, Motivational Interviewing, and equine therapy to meet clients where they are. Every individual is unique, and we design personalized pathways that honor each person’s story, strengths, and goals. Who We Serve
Individuals seeking recovery from addiction - First Responders, Youth to Adults

Employees and employers navigating the SAP process

Families affected by substance use

Community members looking for growth through equine-assisted therapy with their mental health professional

Team Building and Leadership Workshops

Education and Training in Substance Use, Safety, and Trends

We work with clients and families who are involved with CPS and the Courts. Why Horses, Why Us
The name Lead Changes comes from horsemanship, where a horse shifts its leading leg mid-stride. Just like in life, those changes can be difficult but necessary for moving forward smoothly. At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Therapy Center, we help people make their own lead changes—transformations that allow them to live with purpose, freedom, and hope.

09/16/2026

💜 The version of you you’ve been dreaming about is being built by the choices you’re making today.

Recovery can feel overwhelming when we look too far ahead.

We may start thinking about everything that needs to change, everything that needs to be repaired, or how far we still have to go. But lasting change isn’t usually created through one enormous decision.

It is built through the choices we make over and over again.

Choosing to show up for counseling.

Choosing to call someone instead of isolating.

Choosing to attend the meeting when you’d rather stay home.

Choosing a boundary even when saying “no” feels uncomfortable.

Choosing honesty when hiding would be easier.

Choosing to recognize a trigger before reacting to it.

Choosing to try again after a setback.

Choosing to believe that your past does not get to make every decision about your future.

Some days, progress will feel enormous. Other days, the victory may simply be not going backward.

Both matter.

Recovery isn’t about waking up one morning as an entirely different person. It is about learning, practicing, growing, and gradually becoming someone who responds differently to the things that once controlled them.

The person you want to become isn’t waiting somewhere at the finish line.

You are building that person right now.

One decision.
One boundary.
One conversation.
One new skill.
One day at a time.

At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Assisted Therapy Center, we believe people have the capacity to learn, grow, rebuild, and create lives with meaning and purpose.

🐴 Equine-assisted therapy is available, but horses are always optional.
💜 Licensed in Montana & North Dakota
🩵 In-person & Telehealth
💜 Evening & weekend appointments
🩵 Self-pay & sliding-fee options
💜 Aetna, Cigna, BCBS, Allegiance & PacificSource accepted
🩵 Montana Medicaid coming soon

Recovery is possible. Your choices today are helping build your stronger tomorrow.

Heal. Grow. Change. One step at a time.

09/15/2026

Not everyone will make you a priority—and that can be a difficult truth to accept.

Sometimes we spend so much time showing up for other people that we slowly stop showing up for ourselves. We rearrange our lives, ignore our own needs, tolerate unhealthy patterns, and keep giving because we hope that eventually someone will give the same effort back.

But making yourself a priority isn’t selfish. ❤️‍🩹

It can mean setting a boundary without feeling obligated to defend it. It can mean saying “no” when something is costing you your peace. It can mean recognizing that you cannot control another person’s choices, recovery, behavior, or willingness to change.

And sometimes it means choosing yourself—even when someone else doesn’t choose you.

Recovery and healing are not only about what we leave behind. They are also about learning that our needs, wellbeing, safety, goals, and future matter too.

💜 You are allowed to protect your peace.
💜 You are allowed to have boundaries.
💜 You are allowed to stop overextending yourself.
💜 You are allowed to make yourself a priority.

Heal. Grow. Change. One step at a time.

Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Therapy Center LLC
Licensed in Montana & North Dakota | TeleMed & in-person services | Evening & weekend appointments | Sliding-fee options | Insurance accepted | Equine-assisted services are available but never required.

09/14/2026

Addiction doesn’t always look like chaos.

Sometimes it looks like someone who still goes to work. Someone who still takes care of their family. Someone who smiles, shows up, and tells everyone they’re “fine.”

But underneath the surface, things may be quietly changing. ❤️‍🩹

Honesty becomes harder as hiding, minimizing, and explaining become part of everyday life. Relationships begin to feel strained. Trust erodes. Loved ones may find themselves watching moods, avoiding certain conversations, or wondering which version of the person they’ll get that day.

Self-worth can change too. Shame grows. Anxiety increases. The substance that once seemed to provide relief can eventually become part of what keeps the cycle going.

And the future doesn’t usually disappear in one dramatic moment. It can happen through small losses over time—missed opportunities, damaged relationships, abandoned goals, financial consequences, health concerns, and days spent simply trying to get through.

But addiction does not have to write the ending.

💜 If you are struggling: Recovery can begin with one honest conversation, one request for help, or one decision to do something differently today. You do not have to have everything figured out before you begin.

💜 If you love someone who is struggling: You can care deeply about someone without taking responsibility for their recovery. Support and compassion can exist alongside boundaries. Protecting your own wellbeing does not mean you have stopped loving them.

Healing starts when the truth becomes louder than the addiction.

At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Therapy Center LLC, we believe recovery is about more than stopping substance use. It is about rebuilding trust, relationships, identity, purpose, and hope—one step at a time. 🐴💜

Licensed in Montana & North Dakota | TeleMed & in-person | Evening & weekend appointments | Sliding-fee options | Insurance accepted | Equine-assisted services available but never required.

09/13/2026

💜 “He heals the wounds of every shattered heart.” — Psalm 147:3

Healing doesn’t always mean forgetting what happened.

It doesn’t mean the pain never mattered, the loss disappears, or the difficult chapters of our lives are somehow erased.

Sometimes healing means learning that our wounds do not have to determine the rest of our story.

In recovery, people often carry much more than substance use. There may be grief, trauma, shame, broken relationships, disappointment, loneliness, fear, or years spent trying to survive circumstances that felt impossible to face.

For some, alcohol or other substances became a way to quiet that pain for a little while.

Recovery asks us to begin doing something different—to slowly learn how to feel without escaping, grieve without becoming consumed, forgive without forgetting, rebuild trust, accept support, and discover who we are beyond the things that have happened to us.

And for many people, faith becomes part of that journey.

Faith doesn’t promise that life will always be easy. It can remind us that even when we cannot see the entire path ahead, we can still take the next step.

At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Assisted Therapy Center, we believe recovery is about more than stopping substance use. It is about healing, growth, connection, purpose, and creating a life you no longer need to escape from.

You don’t have to have everything figured out today.

You don’t have to heal everything at once.

Just keep taking the next step. 💜

🐴 Equine-assisted therapy is available but always optional.
🩵 In-person and Telehealth services
💜 Licensed in Montana & North Dakota
🩵 Evening & weekend appointments
💜 Self-pay & sliding-fee options
🩵 Aetna, Cigna, BCBS, Allegiance & PacificSource accepted
💜 Montana Medicaid coming soon

Recovery is possible—you don’t have to do it alone.

Heal. Grow. Change. One step at a time.

09/12/2026

💜 What was the substance doing for you?

When we talk about addiction, it is easy to focus only on the substance and the consequences that followed.

But understanding addiction often requires us to look deeper.

Before substance use, a person may have felt overwhelmed, anxious, lonely, disconnected, insecure, emotionally numb, bored, or in physical or emotional pain.

Then something changed.

For a period of time, alcohol or another drug may have provided relief. Maybe the person felt calmer. More confident. Less anxious. Less pain. More connected. Able to sleep. Able to forget. Able to cope—or simply able to get through another day.

That change matters.

This doesn’t mean substance use was a healthy or sustainable solution. It means the behavior may have served a function before the consequences began outweighing the relief.

That is why one of the questions I often find more useful than:

“Why did you become addicted?”

is:

“What was the substance doing for you?”

That question opens the door to curiosity rather than judgment.

If alcohol helped quiet anxiety, we can work on healthier ways to manage anxiety.

If opioids provided relief from physical or emotional pain, we need to understand the pain.

If stimulants created confidence, energy, or focus, we can explore what was missing without them.

If substances created connection or belonging, recovery needs to include opportunities for genuine connection.

If using provided an escape, we need to understand what felt unbearable enough to escape from.

Recovery isn’t simply about taking something away. Sustainable recovery also means identifying the need underneath the substance use and developing safer, healthier ways to meet that need.

This is where person-centered, strength-based, and trauma-informed care matters.

Instead of asking “What’s wrong with you?”, we can become curious about “What happened, what helped you survive, and what do you need now?”

At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Assisted Therapy Center, we believe behaviors make sense when we understand them in context. Understanding the function doesn’t excuse harmful behavior or remove accountability—it gives us information we can use to create meaningful change.

🐴 Equine-assisted therapy is available as one way to explore patterns, relationships, boundaries, regulation, and connection, but horses are always optional.

💜 Understanding opens the door to change.
🩵 Treatment works. People recover. Hope is real.

Heal. Grow. Change. One step at a time.

09/11/2026

The difference isn’t always why someone drinks. It is about how often and how much someone drinks. High-risk use is what determines our trek to addiciton. It also involves what happens when alcohol starts taking control of your life, your health, and what it does as it ripples into your family, work, friends and community.
1️⃣ Social/ Responsible drinker: Can take it or leave it. Drinking is not the reason they are with the people or event they are at or with. The event or people are the priority. Alcohol dependence: Already thinking about when the next drink is coming. The activity or people are not the priority. The reason to drink or use is.
2️⃣ Social/ Responsible drinker: Stops when they’ve reached the limit of low-risk drinking using the 0-1-2-3 rules. Alcohol dependence: Often drinks far more than they originally intended. These individuals are consuming more than one drink an hour and more than three at a setting and more than 14 in a week.
3️⃣ Social/ Responsible drinker: A bad night makes them want to drink less. Alcohol dependence: The consequences happen… but the drinking continues.
4️⃣ Social/ Responsible drinker: Doesn’t need to hide or explain their drinking. Alcohol dependence: Bottles get hidden. Amounts get minimised. Stories start changing. These individuals get defensive when asked about their drinking. They justify or rationalize the drinking. They will isolate from non-using or accountable friends and family. Their people tend to support the same behaviors and alcohol choices as they do.
5️⃣ Social/ Responsible drinker: Alcohol fits around their life. They have the take it or leave it attitude. Alcohol dependence: Life slowly starts fitting around alcohol. They plan their days, activities, social events, meals, and work around drinking and using.
❤️‍🩹 You don’t need to drink every morning, lose your job, or lose everything before alcohol has become a serious problem. Sometimes from the outside, life still looks completely normal. But inside the home, everyone already knows something has changed.
❤️‍🩹 Save this if it made you think differently about someone’s drinking.

Lead Changes Recovery is here to help you on your journey. Appointments available evenings and weekends. Self-pay with a sliding fee schedule as well as insurance accepted.

Providing compassionate care, without judgement or stigma. We are here to help and support our clients and families every step of the way.

TraumaHealing SobrietySupport AlcoholFreeLife

09/10/2026

Addiction rarely destroys everything overnight. It usually convinces you that you’re still in control.

1️⃣ “I can stop whenever I want.”
But the thought of actually stopping starts to feel harder than you admit.

2️⃣ “Nobody knows.”
You hide bottles, make excuses and cover your tracks.
But the people who love you usually know something has changed.

3️⃣ “I’m only hurting myself.”
Addiction affects the whole home.
Partners worry. Parents lose sleep. Children learn to read moods.

❤️‍🩹 Addiction may live in one person, but the pain spreads much further.

4️⃣ “I’ll stop when life calms down.”
After this week. After Christmas. After one last night.

There is always another reason to delay.

5️⃣ “I’ve ruined too much to change now.”
Shame keeps people stuck.

You may not be able to undo everything, but you can still change what happens next.

But for the people who love someone struggling…

You cannot love someone into recovery.

Support them. Encourage them. Be there when they reach for help.

But don’t lose yourself trying to save someone who still refuses to see the problem. ❤️‍🩹

Getting sober isn’t about becoming perfect. It’s about becoming honest enough to start rebuilding.

09/09/2026

💜 EDUCATION MATTERS: Understanding Gabapentin and Substance Use

Gabapentin is a medication many people may recognize as a treatment for nerve pain or seizures. It is also prescribed off-label for other conditions. Because it is a prescription medication, however, people may assume that it carries little or no potential for misuse.

An article from United States Drug Testing Laboratories (USDTL) highlights why that assumption deserves a closer look.

The article discusses several important concerns:

* Gabapentin can be misused. The article cites research finding substantially higher rates of misuse among people who misuse opioids than among the general population.
* Combining gabapentin with opioids can be particularly dangerous. Both can contribute to central nervous system depression, and research cited in the article found an increased risk of opioid-related death when gabapentin and prescription opioids were used together.
* Breathing problems are an important concern. The FDA has required warnings about serious respiratory depression associated with gabapentinoids, particularly when combined with other CNS depressants or used by people with respiratory risk factors.
* Physical dependence and withdrawal can occur. Abruptly discontinuing gabapentin after continued use may produce withdrawal symptoms, which is another reason medication changes should be discussed with a healthcare provider.

This is an important reminder that “prescribed” does not automatically mean “risk-free.”

It also does not mean gabapentin is a bad medication or that people who appropriately take it should be afraid of it. Medications can provide significant benefits when prescribed and monitored appropriately. The goal is education—not fear.

For those working toward recovery, it is important to be open with medical providers about a history of substance use, take medications only as prescribed, understand potential interactions, and discuss concerns about cravings, misuse, tolerance, dependence, or withdrawal.

And if you are taking gabapentin, do not abruptly discontinue it based on information you read online. Talk with your prescribing healthcare professional about what is appropriate for you.

At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Assisted Therapy Center, we believe informed conversations help reduce stigma, improve safety, and support sustainable recovery.

💜 Recovery is possible. You don’t have to do it alone.
Heal. Grow. Change. One step at a time.

Read the full USDTL article here:

Gabapentin, An Emerging Threat in Today’s Opioid Epidemic — USDTL⁠

https://www.usdtl.com/blog/gabapentin-an-emerging-threat-in-todays-opioid-epidemic?fbclid=IwZnRzaAUOOB5wZG9mBWZkaWQWUOHTz5EI004Jc1gnNembwgQ3qHg5dGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR6GBlhw_HjlUjExDK1Ci50oCQgt8sCZWbdPsbm-pZCYj7z_3LlwwctQ5tOb3A_aem_HIJoBqo73cwsV2Mw-1iZiw

09/08/2026

💜 National Recovery Month: Addiction Is Not a Lack of Willpower

MYTH: If someone just uses enough willpower, they should be able to stop.

REALITY: Addiction can change the way the brain responds to reward, motivation, decision-making, and survival-related drives.

In everyday life, many rewards require effort and patience. We work toward something, wait for the outcome, and eventually experience the reward.

Alcohol and other drugs can disrupt that natural process. Repeated substance use can produce powerful effects within the brain’s reward and motivation systems. Over time, the brain adapts—and the drive to use can become increasingly intense and difficult to control.

This helps us understand something that can be incredibly confusing for families:

“Why do they keep using when they know what it is costing them?”

They may have lost relationships.
They may be facing legal consequences.
Their health may be suffering.
They may desperately want their life to be different.

And yet, they use again.

That doesn’t mean they don’t care.

It doesn’t mean they haven’t experienced enough consequences.

And it doesn’t mean they simply need to “try harder.”

Addiction can involve powerful cravings and changes in brain systems involved in impulse control, judgment, decision-making, learning, motivation, and reward. That helps explain why substance use can continue despite serious consequences.

Understanding the brain science behind addiction doesn’t remove personal responsibility. Instead, it helps us understand what a person may be fighting against and why effective treatment, skills, accountability, connection, and support matter.

Recovery involves rebuilding.

💜 Learning to tolerate discomfort without immediately escaping it.
🩵 Recognizing triggers and patterns.
💜 Strengthening decision-making and coping skills.
🩵 Creating new sources of healthy reward and connection.
💜 Developing accountability and support.
🩵 Building a life worth protecting.

During National Recovery Month, let’s move the conversation away from:

“Why don’t you just stop?”

and toward:

“What is keeping this cycle going, and what could help you begin changing it?”

People are more than their addiction. Treatment works. Change is possible. Recovery happens.

🐴 At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Assisted Therapy Center, equine-assisted therapy is available as one option, but working with horses is never required.

Heal. Grow. Change. One step at a time.

09/07/2026

💜 National Recovery Month: Prescription Does Not Mean Risk-Free

MYTH: Prescription drugs are safe because a doctor prescribes them.
FACT: Legal status does not prevent a medication from causing physical dependence or being misused.

Prescription medications play an important role in healthcare. When appropriately prescribed and taken as directed, they can treat pain, anxiety, sleep disorders, ADHD, and many other medical conditions.

But prescribed does not mean harmless.

Some medications—including opioids, benzodiazepines, stimulants, and certain sleep medications—can cause physical dependence. Others have the potential for misuse, particularly when they are:

💜 Taken in larger amounts than prescribed
🩵 Taken more frequently than directed
💜 Used for a reason other than their intended medical purpose
🩵 Mixed with alcohol or other substances
💜 Taken by someone other than the person for whom they were prescribed

It is also important to understand that physical dependence and addiction are not the same thing. A person can become physically dependent on a medication taken exactly as prescribed. Dependence means the body has adapted to the medication and may experience withdrawal symptoms if it is suddenly reduced or stopped. Addiction involves a broader pattern that can include impaired control and continued use despite harmful consequences.

Understanding that difference helps us replace fear and shame with education, appropriate medical care, and informed decisions.

If you are concerned about a medication you are taking, don’t abruptly stop it on your own. Talk with your prescribing healthcare provider about your concerns and the safest next steps.

During National Recovery Month, let’s continue having conversations that reduce stigma while also recognizing the risks associated with substance use—including substances that come from a pharmacy.

At Lead Changes Recovery & Equine Assisted Therapy Center, we believe education is part of prevention, treatment, and long-term recovery.

💜 Treatment works. People recover. Hope is real.

Heal. Grow. Change. One step at a time.

Address

285 Highway 200 S
Glendive, MT
59330

Telephone

+14069391263

Website

https://bigskyshires.wixsite.com/bigskyshires/lead-changes-recovery, https://leadchangesrecovery.clientsecure.me/

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