Trey Anastasio’s life changed in 2006. The guitarist and singer of Vermont jam band Phish was cruising through Whitehall, N.Y., around 3:30 a.m. on a cold December morning when he was pulled over for erratic driving. The then-42-year-old musician failed a field sobriety test and was found to be in possession of heroin, as well as driving on a suspended license.
Facing a potential three-year prison sentence, Anastasio pleaded guilty to a reduced drug-possession charge and was ordered by a drug-treatment court to complete 14 months of community service and undergo a treatment program. He was appointed a case manager, Melanie Gulde, who worked with him throughout his sentence.
“Our relationship when we first met was very different,” Gulde, 57, recalled. “The dynamic was that I was his case manager in New York’s felony treatment court.”
In the years since the Phish front man completed his sentence, Anastasio and Gulde became friends. The two talked often about how they might help others struggling with addiction.
Anastasio has remained sober since 2007 and served as a sponsor for others in recovery. With Gulde, who is also sober, he started to dream up ways to “give back what was so freely given to us,” she said in a phone call from Ludlow, where she now lives and works as the program director at the Divided Sky Residential Recovery Program.
The retreat, which opened in November 2023 in the Okemo Valley, is a nonclinical, 46-bed addiction recovery center. It’s the crown jewel of Anastasio and Gulde’s Divided Sky Foundation, a nonprofit they launched together in 2020. After a few rough early years when local residents resisted the opening of the center, Gulde said the Divided Sky facility is now flourishing and expanding its services, including unveiling a new women’s scholarship fund. In a social media post celebrating the center’s two-year anniversary, the organization noted that “more than 4,000 people have reached out, and hundreds of guests from 37 states have begun their road to recovery with us.”
The idea for Divided Sky came after Anastasio invited Gulde to a Phish show in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 2019.
At first, I actually avoided listening to the band because I wanted to know Trey as a person.
Melanie Gulde
“I wasn’t a Phish fan when we met, and I didn’t really meet him in the capacity of, you know, a ‘rock star’ or anything like that,” Gulde said. “At first, I actually avoided listening to the band because I wanted to know Trey as a person.”
Gulde saw in Anastasio someone who cared deeply about giving back after his own ordeal. “Others might be surprised by how important this is to him, but it’s just who he is,” she said.
Anastasio, who declined to speak to Seven Days for this story, has credited Gulde for helping him out of a dark period when addiction nearly cost him his band, if not his life. Phish briefly broke up in 2004, largely due to substance use among the bandmates. “It was so dark,” Anastasio recently told writer and podcast host AJ Daulerio on “The Small Bow Podcast.” “We were using hard drugs and smoking cocaine … It was so bad.”
In an interview with People in 2024, Anastasio talked about the importance of meeting Gulde.
“She saved my life,” he said. “She’s a badass, but she’s also very loving.”
Once the two had hatched their plan for Divided Sky, they wasted little time purchasing property in Ludlow at the site of a former weight-loss clinic.
They faced almost immediate opposition from residents concerned about an addiction treatment facility in their small town. After the pushback, plans to operate Divided Sky as a medical and clinical space were dropped. Residents in Ludlow had voiced concerns about having court-mandated patients at the facility who could require constant medical oversight, so the decision was made to transition to a retreat-style model with a community-oriented, holistic focus. In other words, all guests at Divided Sky check themselves in of their own volition.
“The medical model was our original plan,” Gulde said. “But every time we’d get approval, the residents would appeal it again. It was costing us so much time.
“In the end, I think we ended up in a better place,” Gulde continued. “We’re not dealing with insurance. We don’t have to kick people out after 30 days or when their insurance runs out. We can provide extensions and scholarships because we’re different and unique.”
Divided Sky isn’t cheap. A 30-day stay runs $7,500 for the 12-step immersion program. A weeklong Recovery Recharge option costs $1,875, designed for alumni and individuals who have achieved sustained recovery.
“The scholarship piece is really important,” Gulde acknowledged. “There’s a lot of people who don’t have the means to do a program like this, but we can meet them financially where they’re at.”
Gulde worked for 17 years in the New York State court system, where her job was to assign treatment to drug offenders. But she said she often didn’t feel she was sending people to programs that would actually help — many prioritized medication over all else.
Gulde believes Divided Sky stands apart for its beautiful surroundings, which allow for forest bathing and cold plunges in Buttermilk Falls; community-based programs with ethnomusicologists, who lead daily music-making and music therapy groups; and the nature of the treatment itself, a hybrid of daily therapy, 12-step program meetings, and a strict no-phones, no-laptops policy. While clients are encouraged to take charge of their progress and offer feedback on what works or doesn’t, Divided Sky meticulously structures each patient’s day, from morning meditation to group meetings and educational classes.
“We don’t treat people; we empower them,” she said of Divided Sky. “We’re not fixing anyone; we’re helping them to understand their strengths.
“We have to remind some people that they’re worthy of a better life, because with addiction comes a lot of shame,” she continued. “We teach people they don’t have to sit in that feeling anymore.”
Anastasio touched on that stigma in his People interview: “Your loved one is a sick person trying to get well, not a bad person trying to get good,” he said. “I’ve seen people in dire situations come back from this. It’s never too late to have hope. Families can be saved.”
Toward that end, Divided Sky is continuing to grow. In September, the foundation announced the new scholarship for women, a much-needed expansion, Gulde said. She pointed to research that shows women tend to progress into addiction faster than men, a phenomenon known as the telescoping effect.
“Women are also more likely to be a single parent, which means their options are less. She can’t leave work for a month to recover and have childcare for her kids,” Gulde pointed out. “Women tend to come in with more trauma than men, so treatment isn’t always the same.”
She hopes the new scholarship will take away the financial burden and help more women get the help they need.
“I feel really good about where we are and how it’s going,” she said. “We started slow, and I remember when we were struggling with some of the locals. I just kept saying over and over, ‘We just want to help people.’
“We’re doing that now,” she said, “and we’re doing it in such a unique way.”
This article appears in The Wellness Issue • 2026.
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