Learning to Stay Underwater: Experiential Work, Discomfort, and Recovery at Voyage

More Than Recreation

At Voyage Recovery Center, some of the most important therapeutic moments happen far outside the walls of a therapy office.

They happen while paddling into rough surf. They happen waist-deep in the ocean waiting for a wave. They happen on mountain bike trails, in cypress swamps, and thirty feet underwater on a single breath.

To someone unfamiliar with Voyage’s experiential program, those moments might look like recreation. To Matt Marchese, Voyage’s Director of Experiential, they are something else entirely.

“They’re real experiences,” he says simply. “Not hypothetical situations.” That distinction matters. For Matt, experiential work isn't meant to distract young men from the difficult work of recovery. It is the work. It’s an opportunity for clients to practice discomfort, build confidence, reconnect with purpose, and begin developing healthier ways of living alongside a community of peers doing the same thing.

“I define experiential work at Voyage by impactful lived experiences,” he explains. “It plays a wide role in our clients’ recovery—building healthy reward pathways, improving confidence, finding new or reconnecting with old passions. I think it also shows them that there is much more to life outside of addiction.”

Why Voyage Invested in Experiential Therapy for Young Adults From the Beginning

That philosophy has been central to Voyage since the program’s earliest days. Long before experiential therapy for young adults in recovery became a popular talking point in treatment marketing, Voyage was investing deeply in outdoor experiences, challenge-based activities, and peer-centered therapeutic work designed specifically for young men in early recovery.

The reasoning was never simply that getting outside is “good” for people, although it certainly can be. The deeper belief was that recovery often requires young men to relearn how to exist in community, how to tolerate discomfort, and how to reconnect with parts of themselves that addiction slowly disconnected them from.

Matt understands that process intimately because he lived it himself.

From Voyage Client to Director of Experiential

Before becoming Voyage’s Director of Experiential and earning his credential as a Certified Recovery Peer Specialist (CRPS), Matt first arrived at Voyage as a client. During his time in the program, he was introduced to freediving, something that would become a major turning point in his life after treatment.

“Voyage and the experiential program were extremely impactful for me,” he says. “I was first exposed to freediving during my stay at Voyage and loved it from the start.”

After completing the program, Matt began working at a local freediving shop, eventually becoming a freediving instructor. What started as an experiential activity became a source of confidence, purpose, structure, and community—things many young men lose during active addiction and struggle to rediscover in early recovery.

That personal experience continues to shape the way he approaches experiential work today.

“I remember what I was going through at the time,” he says. “It gives me a unique level of patience and understanding. I try to provide clients with the most meaningful experience I can.”

What Experiential Therapy Can Access That Talk Therapy Can’t

At Voyage, experiential therapy is intentionally woven into the broader clinical process rather than operating separately from it. Clients don’t simply participate in activities and move on with their day. Experiences are processed in groups, discussed with therapists and peers, and tied back to patterns, behaviors, fears, and coping mechanisms that show up elsewhere in life. Processing Experiential in Group

That integration is what makes the work so impactful.

Traditional talk therapy can help a client understand his thoughts and emotions intellectually. Experiential therapy allows him to encounter those same patterns in real time.

“A client could be freediving and experience the discomfort of holding his breath underwater, turning around immediately,” Matt explains. “In experiential therapy he can talk about what he felt, receive feedback, and immediately try again, diving a little deeper each time and seeing tangible results from his effort.”

The same thing happens in other settings. A young man may want to quit halfway through a difficult mountain biking trail, convinced he cannot continue. Then his peers encourage him to keep going, and he finishes the ride feeling something unfamiliar: pride, confidence, connection.

“These are firsthand experiences our clients go through,” Matt says. “The distress tolerance built in freediving can’t be built in theory. Self-confidence grows much stronger with real experiences tied in with therapeutic work than simply talking about it.”

What Matt Watches For

When Matt describes what he watches for during experiential activities, he talks less about performance and more about patterns.

“I’m paying attention to what is getting the client excited, what he’s avoiding, who he’s gravitating toward, whether his body language matches what he’s saying,” he explains.

Avoidance is common, especially in young men who have spent years learning to escape discomfort as quickly as possible. Many clients initially resist unfamiliar activities or immediately assume they are incapable of succeeding before they even begin.

“I see lots of guys underestimate what they are capable of,” Matt says. “Many clients do not think they’ll be able to dive to a certain depth, hit a specific breath hold, stand up on a wave, and more. Nearly everyone who really applies themselves without giving up does things they doubted they could accomplish.”

Learning to Tolerate Discomfort

That relationship with discomfort is one of the central themes of Matt’s work.

“I think discomfort is pivotal to recovery and to a meaningful life,” he says. “In early recovery there will be times when someone wants to go back to old behaviors, pick up a drink or a drug, and the ability to tolerate that discomfort is what gives them time to do something differently.”

It’s an idea that comes up repeatedly throughout Voyage’s experiential philosophy. Staff members receive Wilderness First Aid Certification not simply for practical safety reasons, but because the program intentionally places young men in situations that require awareness, resilience, teamwork, and trust. The Practical Side of Love in Recovery

The goal is never recklessness. In fact, Matt is quick to emphasize that safety comes first in every experiential setting.

“If a client is ever in a situation where they could be pushing themselves into danger, we slow down and make sure we move forward in the safest way possible,” he says.

But within those safe boundaries, discomfort becomes something clients learn not to fear quite so much.

What Freediving Teaches About Cravings

One of Matt’s favorite examples of this comes from freediving itself. When someone dives underwater on a single breath, the body begins sending increasingly urgent signals to surface as carbon dioxide levels rise. Long before oxygen is truly depleted, the brain begins insisting that discomfort means danger.

Matt sees a direct parallel between that process and the experience of cravings in early recovery.

“When we feel an intense craving in early recovery, if there is no awareness of what’s going on and no ability to tolerate the discomfort of it, the chances of acting on those thoughts and feelings are high,” he explains.

Freediving teaches clients something different. It teaches them that discomfort can be observed without immediately reacting to it. That panic can pass. That the body and mind are often more capable than they initially believe.

“If we can learn to observe the discomfort, understand that we can feel this way and it will pass without having to act on the thought, our ability to remain sober in the face of those cravings is significantly higher.”

Helping Young Men Reconnect With Life

For parents trying to understand why Voyage invests so heavily in experiential work, Matt hopes they recognize that these experiences are doing far more than filling time.

“In active addiction the brain gets rewired,” he says. “Things that would normally provide accomplishment, pride, relief, and enjoyment feel blunted and dull in early recovery.”

Experiential work helps reignite those pathways. It gives young men opportunities to experience healthy connection, accomplishment, challenge, and joy again—often for the first time in years.

And sometimes the shifts are surprisingly subtle.

A client who was isolated and withdrawn starts laughing with peers. A young man terrified of the water swims farther than he thought possible. Someone who spent years believing he was incapable begins trusting himself again, little by little.

For Matt, those moments are the work.

Not perfection. Not instant transformation. Just the slow rebuilding of a life that starts to feel meaningful enough to stay present for.