Practice Stories
LCSW & addiction counselor · Russo Health and Wellness, NJ
A counselor who used his own recovery as the blueprint is now trying to build a farm around it.
Frank Russo grew up expecting to spend his life in his family's restaurants. "My family was in the restaurant business and we had restaurants, and that's what I thought I was going to do for the rest of my life," he says. Nothing in that upbringing pointed toward a license in clinical social work, or a second credential as an alcohol and drug counselor, or a private practice with his name on the door. The path that actually got him there ran through something he doesn't dress up or soften: "I'm a person in long-term recovery... I had my own battle with mental health, with substance use that kind of landed me into this business."
He doesn't frame that history as a liability he's managing. He frames it as the reason he's useful. "I wanted to do something impactful. I wanted to help people. I wanted to connect with individuals. And I knew what it was like for me, so I wanted to give back in a different way."
Frank is quick to point out that the years he spent expecting a different life weren't wasted. Standing behind a bar, reading a room, keeping strangers entertained for an evening — that was its own kind of training. "The one thing I think that's beneficial about the experience of working in a restaurant... is the communication aspect of being around people, learning how to talk to different people... standing in front of a bunch of people at a bar and learning how to entertain for a little while. So the skills learned in there did translate into what I do now."
That same instinct for connection shapes how he talks about AI in his practice, which he now runs as Russo Health and Wellness in New Jersey alongside work at a behavioral health hospital. He uses it for the parts of the job that eat time without building trust — insurance paneling questions, documentation. "AI helped break it down to a clinical, more concrete way where it's also beneficial if you're in network with insurance companies for that insurance reimbursement," he says. But he's unambiguous about where the line sits: "I don't think anything can take away from the one-on-one connection that a human being can have with another human being. When you're in the room with somebody and you feel their energy, it's a different experience and I don't think AI can replicate that."
Frank's practice, which he opened in September 2025 after roughly a decade in the field, is built around a specific gap he sees in young men — a belief system he's trying to help them unlearn. "It was men didn't talk about the way they felt. They didn't share that. If men cried, they were weak. I want to kind of change the belief system on all that. I want to provide a community and a network of support that men have for each other, to uplift each other, to speak openly about things." Not just crisis, either — parenting, relationships, the cost of living, the ordinary pressure of showing up every day.
One tool he leans on, and knows not every clinician endorses, is his own disclosure. "This is a tricky thing for other therapists. They may not agree with me, but I'm going to say it anyway. I think self-disclosure is probably one of the most important tools when used correctly... when you get vulnerable on another level with another human being and let them know that, hey, I have my own struggles too — this is what I've been through, this is what I still go through, this is how I deal with it today, but look where I'm at, and you can be there too." He connects clients to each other for the same reason, using an acronym he built himself: "I like to use the acronym of like hope, as hearing other people's experiences."
He also wants to correct a specific misconception he hears constantly — the image of what a person struggling with substance use is supposed to look like. "It could be the lawyer that's representing you in court. It could be the police officer that's protecting you. It could be the judge. It could be the doctor that is treating your children." And underneath the substance itself, he says, is almost always something older: "people are dealing with trauma, people are dealing with grief, people are dealing with past abuse in many different ways, and the substance use is how they actually cope with the problem."
Right now, Frank's practice runs on telehealth from where he lives, in what he calls "the country" — rural northern New Jersey. But telehealth isn't the destination. It's a placeholder for something bigger he's already describing in detail, though it doesn't exist yet: "the goal would be to get like a trauma center, almost like a therapy farm. Barn, emotional regulation, saunas, cold plunge, gardens, pets — and really do therapy surrounding that type of aspect." He's tired of the format everyone defaults to — "somebody's on a couch, somebody's on a chair, or you're across from, you know, on a screen" — and convinced that real change needs more room than a chair and forty-five minutes can give it.
That farm is still a vision, not a building. Whether it gets built, and how, is the tension Frank hasn't resolved on camera — he talks about it with the certainty of someone describing a plan, not a maybe. Watch the conversation to hear him describe it in his own words, cold plunge and all.