When he moved to Summit County, Eric Turner said he became immersed in a party that didn’t seem to end.
Like many before him, the Columbus, Ohio native was drawn to the mountains for their beauty and boundless recreational opportunities. The high-elevation environment also offered the opportunity to create distance from his past.
He became a ski instructor, leaving behind his old life as a firefighter paramedic, a career that left him permanently disabled due to cumulative PTSD. But as he made friends over drinks at happy hours, daily life eventually began to revolve around alcohol — and other drugs were always in the periphery.
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“One of the main issues, which makes Summit a bit different than a lot of other areas in the country, is that everybody else who is here is on vacation,” Turner said, “and they’re all partying. We see that and think, ‘We should be partying too.’ That’s the whole party atmosphere.”
With an apres-ski culture and a tourist economy, Colorado’s mountain towns contribute to the state’s high rate of alcohol consumption. And other drugs — from cannabis to psilocybin, LSD, cocaine, ketamine, MDMA and opioids — are present in the community.
“We’re a global destination for a good time,” Summit County public health director Amy Wineland said. “People come here to recreate, to enjoy the great outdoors, and along with that comes the party scene. We have a lot of locals who work here who also embrace substances — not only for the party scene, but to self-medicate.”
Navigating safe and responsible substance use in a community where people come to have fun — often involving drugs and alcohol — can be a difficult thing to balance, Wineland said. Because of the role alcohol and drugs play in the tourist economy, public health assessments have found that those who live in Summit County are at a higher risk of developing a substance use disorder.
“It’s a bittersweet relationship with our visitors because they are our economic lifeline,” Wineland said. “How do we strike that balance where people use responsibly and not engage in the most risky of behaviors?”
Substance use — especially alcohol consumption — is part of Summit County’s cultural norm, and many visitors engage in substances when visiting the resorts, the county’s health department concluded in a 2022 health assessment.
More than 80% of Summit County residents agree that alcohol is important to social life for most people in the community, the assessment found. While there is not county-level data for illicit drug use, statewide metrics show Coloradans use drugs at higher rates than the national average. Approximately 22% of adult Coloradans reported illicit drug use in the past month, compared to the national average just 16%, according to a federal survey conducted in 2021-2022.
“Every activity we do up here — whether it’s hiking, biking, skiing, whatever — no matter how healthy it starts off, it always ends up in some kind of substance use,” Turner said. “We can go to the mountain for a day of skiing, and we can have a drink at the bottom — then a drink at the top, and a drink in the middle on the way down and then stop at the bottom again.
“It’s just part of the culture here, and nobody thinks anything about it,” he added. “You get on the gondola and people are drinking and smoking weed.”
Michelle Marzo, a clinician who specializes in substance use and has lived in the community for 30 years, said mountain residents tend to be adventurous and seek out dopamine — the brain’s pleasure chemical — through the thrills of outdoor activities like skiing.
But consuming drugs and alcohol also releases dopamine, and the neurotransmitter is closely associated with substance use disorders and addiction, Marzo said.
“It’s all about the dopamine” Marzo said. “We live in a pleasure-chemical-inducing environment. You cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a liquor store, or marijuana dispensary.”
‘Work hard, play hard’
Now sober for 3.5 years, Turner said the culture around substance use in Summit County contributed to the alcohol addiction he developed after moving here.
Turner lived in employee housing his first year, and his friends and coworkers quickly showed him the best places around town for happy hour.
Summit County, and the ski industry in general, tends to have a “work hard, play hard” mentality, Turner said. Soon, he settled into a rhythm of hitting the bars after work before taking the party home each night.
The experience was akin to living in a dorm room, Turner said, except there was never any homework, and it was almost expected that you’d be hungover — or still a little drunk — at work the following day.
“Most places don’t let you drink on the job,” Turner said. “Here, you can get away with that a little bit more, especially if you’re decent at what you’re doing.”
Drinking also factored heavily into workplace culture for Kayte Boyle, who said she developed an alcohol addiction after moving to Colorado’s resort towns in 2004. Now two years sober, Boyle said “the drinking just escalated” during her first job in Summit County.
Binge drinking — defined as consuming five or more alcoholic drinks for men and four or more drinks for women — is widespread in Summit County. A recent public health survey found that 27% of respondents reported binge drinking alcohol in the past five months, compared to the statewide average of 19%.
Alcohol consumption is so normalized in Summit County, it is integrated into most public events and activities as well as work-related, private and personal social settings, according to the county health assessment.
Boyle said she was working for a lodging company in a ski resort village and the office cabinet was always stocked with coffee, hot chocolate and a bottle of Jameson.
“The fridge was always stocked. There was never a second guess,” Boyle said. “You know, 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock in the morning you’re having a hot Scotch-late. A beer with lunch. Whatever.”
Boyle said she lived and worked in the same building of a local bar. For five years, she said she lived in a cycle of waking up, going to work, leaving work, going to the bar and going home.
In 2012, Boyle moved to Leadville, where she now lives, but continued to work in Summit County. When she took a job at a hotel in Silverthorne, she said the culture was much the same, with the general manager buying the team rounds of shots before their shifts.
Michaela Douglas said she was already addicted to drugs and alcohol when she moved to Summit County in late 2015. But Douglas — who is now 2.5 years sober — said that when she first arrived in Breckenridge, she found a culture that minimized or even encouraged the problem.
Working in the service industry, Douglas said she drank and did cocaine on the job.
“Set up the bar; do a shot. OK, lunch rush is over; do a shot,” she said. “OK, dinner rush is about to start; do a shot.”
But because everyone around her was doing the same thing, she said she didn’t recognize it wasn’t normal.
“At some point, somebody said to me, ‘You know normal people don’t do cocaine at work, right?'” Douglas said. “I was like ‘Nah, everybody does coke at work — little bumps to get through the day.'”
Douglas said she was going straight from her job to the bar, doing whatever drugs were available to her. She even accidentally consumed a drug that was laced with fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid linked to the nation’s overdose epidemic.
“The narcotics in this county are astounding,” Douglas said. “We know a lot about the party drugs that we see in this county, but there are a lot of insidious drugs that are very easily accessible up here. So, I kind of took this party atmosphere and turned it into this major drug addiction.”
A ‘place to escape’
The Colorado Rocky Mountains have long attracted adventurers — from ski bums to mountain climbers. These 12,000-, 13,000- and 14,000-foot peaks are mythologized in popular culture for both their beauty and serenity.
The idolization of these mountain towns and their lifestyle seems to attract a certain type of risk-taker who is looking for change, Wineland said.
“Many people move to this beautiful place to escape from challenges in their lives,” Wineland said, “but they find they still have their challenges when they get here.”
Mental health in Summit County is poorer compared to the rest of the country — and substance use is interconnected with mental health, according to the county’s latest health improvement plan.
Almost half of Summit County adults — about 46% — report a high number of poor mental health days, compared to the national average of 28%, the health improvement plan states.
Wineland described this as the “paradise paradox,” where people move to the mountains hoping the change will improve their mental health but soon discover the stresses of living in a resort community. The high cost of living, especially housing, as well as the transient nature of a resort community can contribute to this, she said.
Mental disorders such as anxiety, depression and PTSD contribute to substance use, while using drugs and alcohol can also contribute to the development of other mental disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Turner, who left Ohio to start a new chapter in Summit, sought treatment for his PTSD before he ever had a conversation about his substance use, the first step to coming to terms with his addiction. Substances often help people forget or feel numb, he said, so those struggling with stress or an underlying mental health condition often turn to drugs or alcohol.
“A lot of people turn to a substance because they think it will improve their symptoms that they’re having from whatever mental health issue,” Turner said. “It can reduce their anxiety. They think it’s reducing their depression. It makes them feel happier at the time. The main problem with that is it works — until it doesn’t.”
‘Change’
Turner eventually realized that if he didn’t give up alcohol, he was headed down a path that would wind him up in jail or prison. Still, finding treatment — and making sobriety stick — took time and perseverance, he said.
The first time Turner attended an inpatient treatment program, he was kicked out after a week, so he went straight to the bar.
His second attempt at inpatient treatment went better, but after returning to Summit County, he relapsed again.
Finally, Turner sought out an inpatient treatment program specific to first responders in California.
“I’m now solidified in my resolve, and I have no interest in drinking anymore,” he said.
For Boyle, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown revealed the full extent of her addiction to her husband — and threatened to tear their marriage apart — before she sought treatment. Even then, she said she didn’t take treatment seriously at first and relapsed more than once.
“I’ve been with my husband 15 years at this point. I thought, ‘If he leaves, that’s it; I’m homeless,'” Boyle said. “I’m going to drink myself to death, and that is it. I just knew I had to change.”
Boyle said that when she first sought outpatient treatment through Summit Women’s Recovery, she found ways to cheat the system. Eventually, she determined she required inpatient care and spent 17 days in treatment.
After returning home, she relapsed. So, she sought out a sober living facility in Denver where she stayed for six weeks.
“It turned my life around — and my marriage around,” Boyle said. “I’m just thriving today.”
Douglas said she walked into her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 2017, but — for her personally — that wasn’t the right path. She said she walked out and didn’t seek treatment again for another two years.
While Douglas said she tried to quit drugs for periods during those next two years, she didn’t attempt to give up alcohol. At one point, she said she got involved in a relationship that grew violent due to the excess of alcohol and drugs she and her partner were engaged with.
“I lived in this constant state of denial because everyone around me was conducting themselves in similar ways. There was no indication the way I was living was wrong,” Douglas said. “I just knew I was really unhappy — vastly unhappy — and I was in so much pain.”
For Douglas, it took an intervention from her employer to get her on the road to recovery. She said she attended two inpatient treatment facilities but relapsed both times.
Eventually, Douglas said she found Summit Women’s Recovery and spent nine months over the course of two years receiving outpatient care. At one point, she relapsed, lost her job and home, and moved to Fairplay out of necessity.
After a suicide attempt in 2021, Douglas said she realized she “didn’t want to die” and developed the motivation to work toward sobriety. By the end of the year, she gave up drugs and alcohol.
As Turner, Boyle and Douglas each battled their addictions, a dramatic shift in the mental health and substance use landscape was occurring in Summit County. While all three found successful paths to sobriety, local advocates and public health officials say more work is necessary to destigmatize substance use disorders and close critical gaps in available treatment options.
“We have come a long, long, long way,” Wineland said. “It doesn’t mean we still don’t have a long way to go to combat these issues.”