A few minutes before 6 p.m., Rainbow Bakery had only three customers sitting at its tables. But fifteen minutes later, the bakery was filled with students buying coffee, eating donuts and challenging each other to play the Pac-Man machine in the corner.
About a dozen students hopped from shop to shop in downtown Bloomington for the Culture of Care Week Coffee Crawl. Culture of Care partnered with Students in Recovery to run the event to promote drug and alcohol awareness.
“We didn’t think a speaker would be the best option to get people engaged,” said Dan Niersbach, Culture of Care’s director of drug and alcohol awareness. “But this seemed like something that could be community building and easy and fun.”
The coffee crawl started at Rainbow Bakery and moved to four other local restaurants, including Pourhouse Café, Laughing Planet, Soma Coffeehouse and Runcible Spoon.
The event was part of Culture of Care Week, an annual campaign before Little 500 to promote safety on campus. This is the first time Students in Recovery, which has organized coffee crawls in the past, have partnered with Culture of Care.
“There’s a party culture at IU that’s different than every other school I’ve visited, and it’s not conducive to students at all,” Niersbach said. “This is a great little example of ways to spend your time that are less destructive. And there’s something about the peer-to-peer support of Students in Recovery that’s really powerful.”
Rain didn’t deter the students on their walk from Rainbow Bakery to Pourhouse Café. Some carried their own mugs. Niersbach bought a box of donuts at Rainbow Bakery and brought them along for the rest of the trip.
“This is just such a calm, relaxing night to do this,” senior Lyuda Kusel said. “There aren’t many better ways to hang out with your friends and meet new people than to go get coffee with them.”
Students in Recovery is a support group for students recovering from addiction. Jake Desmond, who helped create the group after struggling with drug addiction himself, said he is always looking for ways for their group to spend weekends.
They’ve done coffee crawls, bowling nights, rock climbing and they’re spending Little 500 at King’s Island.
The coffee crawl contingent filled the basement of the Pourhouse Café, many of them on their second or third coffee. One student pulled out a chess set, another student shuffled a deck of cards and everyone settled in.
“Can I redo that move?” one student asked his opponent in the middle of their game.
After about half an hour, they packed up and moved on to Laughing Planet for their third stop of the night. Desmond and Niersbach led the way.
“When I was going through drug addiction, I had no resources and didn’t really know what was going on with me,” Desmond said. “We’re trying to use events like this to plant that seed that recovery and friends who don’t use drugs are a lot more common than people think. And it gives me a lot of purpose in my life to help other people in the ways I’ve been helped.”
