BOZEMAN — The Rimrock Foundation, a Billings-based mental health and substance use treatment center, is coming to Bozeman in the next couple of months.
“Welcome to the Bozeman Rimrock Office,” said Chyrel Garding, Manager of Business Development and Community Outreach for Rimrock.
Garding is a former patient at Rimrock.
“It starts with drinking and cannabis, and for me, it escalated from there,” said Garding, who says it escalated to multiple arrests.
“It was criminal involvement, it was taking from my community,” she said. “My drug of choice at the end was meth, heroin.”
Garding tells MTN she was ultimately arrested one last time.
“I thought for sure ‘I’m going to prison,’” said Garding.
WATCH: Rimrock Foundation announces its first expansion in 50 years, bringing mental health and substance use treatment services to Bozeman
Instead, Garding says she was given two options: prison or treatment.
“It wasn’t my choice to go to Rimrock. It was put in front of me as the lesser of two evils,” she said. “I chose treatment and I’m so thankful that I did.”
Garding’s story didn’t stop with going to treatment in 2017. She says treatment was a struggle that had her “kicking and screaming” and led to her inpatient program being extended to 90 days.
“I was never this compliant person, like, ‘yay let me figure this out,’” said Garding.
Flash forward to 2018, Garding was out of Rimrock and thriving. “They had excellent counselors that taught me how to dig deep into unresolved traumas that I’d never worked through before.”
In fact, Garding says she liked it so much she came back to Rimrock to work as a peer support specialist in 2019. Now, she’s in a leadership role.
The Billings-based treatment center, which Garding says is the largest in Montana, is now coming to Gallatin County.
“Bozeman, I think, is trying to rally around its most vulnerable, and Rimrock is excited to be part of that solution,” said Garding.
The expansion comes after Gallatin County was named the drunkest county in America by the Centers for Disease Control.
“This is our first expansion out of Billings in our 50-year history,” said Rimrock Foundation CEO Jeff Keller. “We’re going to Bozeman to meet a clear need.”
One of those needs, according to Keller, is the HRDC’s Warming Center, conveniently located less than a mile away.
“Being close to the HRDC will allow us to help the demographic that a lot of folks are overlooking,” said Keller.
The Bozeman-based Rimrock Center will be outpatient only and plans to open around December 1st.
