By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
Reaching the five-year milestone is no easy feat, but with an event like Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness Recovery Day, it’s easy to see why it has quickly become a mainstay in the Castle Country.
Mersades Morgan and Damon Davis from USARA joined the KOAL newsroom to preview the 2025 rendition of Recovery Day and what attendees can expect from the event.
“USARA’s Recovery Day is an event that we do annually to bring together our community and highlight people in recovery, those who are still suffering from substance use disorder, those who have entered into recovery, and then also highlighting family members,” explained Morgan.
She continued,” We recover as a cohesive unit. So we really want to amplify that people are recovering in our community every single day. And our theme this year is Unstoppable Together. So we are excited to come together and show that in Carbon County, recovery is unstoppable as long as we are working together.”
Davis built off this theme, sharing that this event is a celebration of milestones,” To be able to say that you’ve been to four recovery days, which is something that not all of us can say, it’s cool. It’s cool to have something that serves as a bookend to your year in recovery, allowing you to go back, touch base, and celebrate. And we want to normalize recovery more than anything. And this is what this celebration really is about.”
Recovery Day is not just for those in recovery; it is for the community to learn and help destigmatize the process. “We invite anyone and everyone to come swing by the Peace Gardens,” said Morgan. “The event is taking place from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, and it’s going to be a great time. We’ve got lots of fun activities. We’ll have a dunk tank where we’ll be dunking many of our law enforcement officers. They’re great supporters. We’re going to have face painting and bounce houses for the kiddos. We’ll have Gettin’ Our Smoke On doing some dinner for us as well.”
Morgan added,” We’re also going to have a big resource fair where we pull not only our local resources, but also resources from other areas to show that people have options. Because before someone falls into a place where they’re identifying as being in recovery, they’re just a person before they’re anything else. And so we really aim to reduce that stigma and show that people are recovering every single day … We’ll see lots of different resources. We’ve got some of our partners who have made this event possible. We’ve got Carbon Medical Services. We have the Southeast Utah Health Department. We’ve got StepOne Services. So all the way from, you know, potential detox to long-term services to USARA will also be there, and we can engage people in our program as long as they need it.”
As a part of the festivities, USARA will be giving away a car to one lucky attendee through an opportunity drawing. “When you get to the event, you’ll get a punch card. And when you visit 10 different resource booths, you’ll be able to enter that into our giveaway. And then we’ll draw throughout the event. Anyone over the age of 18 can win some of our prizes. We’ve got some really good things from gift baskets to TVs, to the car, which is the big one at the very end.”
Closing our conversation, Morgan shared,” We hope to see you there. We’re excited and hope to have an amazing, successful event. And we invite the community to come and be a part of that.”
USARA’s Recovery Day takes over the Price City Peace Gardens on Friday, Sept. 5, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. For more information on the event and to stay up to date with USARA, you can visit their Facebook group here.