Welcome to Tampa, Sophros Recovery!
Sophros Recovery’s first location opened in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2021, and its new Tampa location also serves central Floridians.
Sophros Recovery is a treatment center for addiction and mental health challenges that started with founder Nick Padlo’s own experience with recovery. Nick, a West Point graduate and Army Veteran with deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, battled his reintegration processes that led to addiction after leaving military service.
Sophros Recovery strives to address underlying conditions related to drug and alcohol addiction, but also the reasons people begin to use in the first place. For veterans, Padlo recognizes, “We learn a lot of stuff in the military, but we don’t learn how to navigate emotions.”
Sophros Recovery utilizes a recovery toolkit that teaches how to manage and work through life. This series of tools and skills helps one learn how to navigate life and relationships better. For some veterans, separation from service is a separation from the military’s hardline core values, leaving veterans to wander without a sense of purpose or mission. Having lived in a state of hypervigilance, veterans find themselves in a passive world; This can be a challenge.
For Padlo, who “lost more friends to suicide than to IEDs,” understanding a veteran’s mindset through personal experience has helped him identify the differences between mental and physical pain, “You can’t just run through the pain when it comes to mental health like you could a sprained ankle.”
“I get it,” exclaims Padlo, “It’s hard not knowing where to go, to carry too much pride, and to believe you should be able to handle whatever is going on. I always ask fellow veterans considering help, “Would you ever run away from an enemy in combat? Then, why are you running away from this one?” I remind them that the only way out is through.”
