“I never sang when I was drunk,” says Richard Miller. “I was too busy getting into trouble.”
“She’s got me singing,” he then adds, nodding toward Cindy Morris.
Morris is a music therapist who specializes in working with individuals with previous or current substance-addiction issues. Here at Hospitality House of Boone – which offers both immediate shelter and long-term housing – she’s known as the Music Lesson Lady.
According to the American Music Therapy Association, the first references to music therapy surface in the late 1700s, including an article in Columbian Magazine in 1789 titled “Music Physically Considered.”
Music therapy was practiced in Veterans Administration hospitals after World Wars I and II to treat soldiers suffering from shell shock, a condition that now falls within the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder. Music seemed to speak to many of these soldiers who otherwise were unreachable.