Imagine icy water surging across the Northwest. 18,000 years ago, massive torrents unleashed water dammed behind a mile-thick glacier. These floods from Lake Missoula filled the Willamette Valley in days, forming a temporary sea called Lake Allison. This wasn't just water; it was a chaotic surge of ice and rock that returned every few decades for centuries, reshaping the earth again and again.

Inside those floods were giant icebergs carrying "foreign" rocks from Montana and Idaho that didn’t belong in the local soil. When the ice melted, these boulders were left in strange, beautiful places. Broken by the journey and polished by the waves, geologists call them Erratics. Like stones bearing deep striations—scars carved by the pressure of ice and grit—we carry the markings of our own travels as evidence of the strength it took to arrive.

But this is a human story. Ancestors of the Kalapuya and Molala witnessed these waves, and the Yakama and Umatilla peoples carry the power of these floods in their spoken histories today. These shared stories—passed down through generations—remind us that humanity has always survived the storm. Just as the floods deposited the fertile soil that makes Oregon green, our shared histories create the ground where new growth begins.

We are the Oregon Erratics. All of us—staff, administrators, counselors, and doctors—are peers and equals from all walks of life who have survived our own personal catastrophes. Blazed and broken by our struggles, but not destroyed, we show up in unexpected places to help others. Our stories prove that you can be moved, scarred, and changed, yet still land as a striking, beautiful part of the landscape.

Beauty out of cataclysm

Mission & Commitment

Oregon Erratics was formed in 2025 to establish peer-led resources as a standard of care in addiction treatment. We help organizations build sustainable funding to grow recovery capital for everyone. We acknowledge that culture and tradition are treatment. Emulating the robust and thriving peer-based models of recovery among many contemporary Indigenous communities of recovery, we are committed to supporting egalitarian, culturally competent treatment as a path to recovery for all people.

"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity." — Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You

"In the end, there is no helper and no helped. There are just two people who have come together to learn. When we recognize our common ground, the roles of 'caregiver' and 'patient' dissolve, leaving only the simple, profound presence of one human being with another." — Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations

Land Acknowledgment & Tribal Commitment

We acknowledge that the land now known as Oregon is the ancestral heartland of many Indigenous nations who have been its stewards since time immemorial. We honor the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon—the Burns Paiute Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Coquille Indian Tribe, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, and the Klamath Tribes.

Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by substance use disorders, yet they also possess the most enduring models of community-led, peer-supported healing. Oregon Erratics is deeply committed to supporting the work of tribe-affiliated organizations and tribal members. We aspire to stand humbly as partners to those who serve these populations, seeking to learn from and amplify community and wisdom as the vital standards for treatment and recovery.