Meet our Team
Our leaders live in Austin, TX. They are men who have achieved sobriety. They have effectively ended the hopeless cycle of addiction. Higher Plane Sober Living and our sober living residences are a project of passion. As a result, we are giving back the solution that was so freely given to us.
David Crawford
Owner, Co-Founder
I studied Business Administration at Oklahoma State University from 1981- 1985. I had a successful 20-year career in the publishing business. There I served as President and Chief Operating Officer of PRIMEDIA, a national publishing company. In this business role, I excelled as a leader and mentor to many men and women across the country. I enjoyed assisting them in their career and financial goals. It brought me great joy to see them improving the quality of their daily lives.
As a real estate investor and recovered alcoholic, I help men move into a healthier and successful life path. I believe in the strength of sober living and a life filled with purpose and meaning. Embracing structure, finding new success and growing in responsibility provides a new direction for life-long sobriety.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous teaches, “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.” Nothing is more gratifying to me than seeing a young man recover from a hopeless state of mind and body.
Ozzie Garcia
Director, Co-Founder
I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. My struggle with substance abuse addiction began at the age 13. At the age 15 I began to cycle in and out of various facilities in efforts to seek treatment.
I entered my 6th and last treatment in May of 2015. It was then I had a profound experience with the 12-steps, with my peers and with God. As revolutionary changes began to take place, I discovered that I had an unwavering passion to support other men. I wanted to help them also as they pursued long term sobriety and responsibility. I wanted to pass along the gift that had been so freely given to me.
I’ve worked in the substance abuse treatment field for 5 years. I’ve written and directed 12-step programming for well-respected treatment facilities in the Austin area. We designed Higher Plane Sober Living to help clients apply the same principles learned in early sobriety. In addition, we provide a highly structured environment where residents can continue to practice these spiritual principles in their daily lives.
John Newman
House Manager, Marywood Sober Living House
The majority of my teen years and into “adulthood” I always sensed there was something missing – and that I was different in some form or fashion from most of my friends that I hung out with, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. I didn’t know why I wasn’t able to make good decisions, feel peace and joy, or why I was always getting into some sort of trouble.
I blamed my parents for divorcing each other, blamed my birth parents for giving me up for adoption, blamed the law for being too strict, thus living with quite a long list of resentments and secrets that I needed to escape from – and found that escape I was looking for but in the form of drugs and alcohol. The problem wasn’t with anyone, the problem was me.
After being beat down into a state of hopelessness over and over, getting the same result from my using, God did for me what I could not do for myself. I was finally willing and desperate enough to work the 12 steps of recovery 100%, and I have experienced now everything that had been missing for so long as a result of it.
Aside from all the great external things that I have been blessed with, what is most important to me is that I now have peace, joy, contentment, patience, self control, but most of all, a beautiful relationship with God who has restored me to sanity.
Trevor Dance
House Manager, Loyola Sober Living House
I struggled with addiction for the majority of my life, facing demons that I suppressed with drugs and alcohol. I found that even with external success like school and work, my biggest battle was my internal unmanageability.
In July of 2020, I entered my final treatment facility where I had a spiritual experience with the 12 steps.
Now I spend as much time as possible sharing my 12 step solution of strength and hope to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Through recovery and God, I have been given the chance to experience life in a new, fun, and revolutionary way.
It is extremely rewarding to watch men recover and go on to live beautiful and fulfilling lives.