UF Health Florida Recovery Center opens renovated facility

A UF Health building on 13th Street in Gainesville opened its newly renovated facility today.

The UF Health Florida Recovery Center provides addiction treatment programs and they held a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the new 9,000 square-foot building.

After more than $3 million in improvements, the building has meeting rooms, an auditorium, and offices that will house the Department of Psychiatry and UF Health Addiction Medicine.

“This is really an expansion of the commitment to give people the best opportunity at recovery,” UF Health Florida Recovery Center medical doctor Scott Teitelbaum said. "That's an illness (addiction) with a tremendous amount of stigma and it's not a pretty illness."

National Safety Council estimates 88,000 people die from alcohol-related causes annually in the U.S.

“There is nothing like to see a healed individual or healed family suffering from an addictive disorder,” Teitelbaum said. “In my life today, next to my family and my children—this is the proudest day of my life."