Cameron Lundstrom Rebuilds Life After Addiction and Incarceration

“You look like you need a nap and a sandwich,” Cameron Lundstrom, 55, recalled an old girlfriend saying to him upon meeting her for the first time. The woman’s observation was astute; at the time, Lundstrom described himself as being strung out on meth and in immediate need of rest and nourishment.

Years later, the phrase “nap and a sandwich” became the namesake of the organization Lundstrom founded and directs: NAS (Nap and a Sandwich) Recovery Solutions. Based in greater Denver and providing services across the Front Range, NAS Recovery Solutions, an American Society of Addiction Medicine Level I outpatient treatment program, is the embodiment of Lundstrom’s personal mission of helping others overcome addiction and lead purposeful lives.

But it took decades of moving in and out of the justice system and battling addiction himself before realizing his purpose. 

Originally from the Inland Empire region of California, Lundstrom characterized his childhood as tumultuous, uncertain and traumatic. He lived with his mother, who struggled with addiction, and younger brother, effectively serving as the man of the household from an early age. He became involved in the criminal justice system at 14—first for trespassing and then for running away after alerting paramedics of his mother’s suicide attempt. 

“Running became my coping skill that night,” Lundstrom said. 

After months of running, Lundstrom relocated to Arvada and united with his biological father, Steven, for the first time. Unintentionally, he served as a reunifying force for his parents, who, after almost two decades of living in different states and leading different lives, remarried in Colorado when Lundstrom was 17. 

Having been estranged from his mother since moving to Colorado, Lundstrom emancipated from his parents but remained close with them. His father, Steven, was a Vietnam War veteran, and he encouraged his son to enlist in the army at the outbreak of the Gulf War. 

“You need some discipline in your life,” Lundstrom recalled his dad saying to him. He enlisted and served in Operation Desert Storm but struggled to reintegrate into society upon coming home from the war. 

“I started drinking heavily; my marriage was falling apart,” Lundstrom said. “All of my childhood trauma was coming out of me, and I didn’t know how to control it.” 

From there, everything spiraled. In 1996, then a father of two young daughters, Lundstrom was sentenced to nine years (four in prison and five on parole) on a possession charge for $20 worth of drugs. His experience with incarceration “turned [me] from an addict to a criminal,” he said. 

He cycled in and out of prison five times through 2010. Throughout those years, Lundstrom managed roughly eight–10 months of sobriety in the intervening time between getting released and winding up back in prison. 

“After getting eight or 10 months of sobriety, I never once thought to myself, ‘Man, I really want to go shoot some meth into my neck.’ I’d get lonely, and eventually, I wanted to go hang out with my friends. You know, the opposite of addiction is connection,” he said, quoting Johann Hari’s 2015 TEDTalk. 

Lundstrom’s continuous search for connection amongst a community of people battling addiction would eventually lead to a crushing, life-altering prison sentence. Upon being released “off paper” in 2010 (he satisfied the terms of his sentence and was not on parole or supervision), “the universe put a woman in my path who was exactly like my mom,” he said. 

Together, the two committed a string of armed robberies to satiate their addictions. When he was caught in 2011, Lundstrom faced 608 years in prison, four times the maximum sentence length for his crimes because of his status as a habitual offender. 

Confronting the weight of this reality, Lundstrom knew he needed to change his life. Sitting in Jefferson County Jail, he found a copy of Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” a book his dad recommended to him some 20 years prior when he was coming home from the Gulf War. Next to “Seven Habits,” Lundstrom found Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.” 

Seeing the two books next to each other in the book cart in 2011, “I knew it was my dad talking to me,” Lundstrom said, even though Steven had passed away in 1994. 

“‘Seven Habits’ was going to help me fix who I was,” Lundstrom said. “‘The Art of War’ was going to help me beat my case. I immediately picked them up and began working on myself.”

In his efforts to improve himself, Lundstrom took “The Seven Habits” on the Inside, a training program adapted from Covey’s book developed to reduce recidivism, and eventually became a ‘Seven Habits’ program teacher. Things were going well for him; after accepting a plea deal, he was able to reduce his sentence to 30 years, and by 2016, he had 14 years remaining until he was eligible for parole.

“Then I found a lump in my neck,” Lundstrom said. “My paradigm changed entirely. Up until that point, I had been working on myself. Then I turned all of my efforts to helping other people.”

With dramatically improved behavior and a cancer diagnosis, Lundstrom was able to schedule a court hearing, still with 12 years until he was eligible for parole. At the hearing, the judge reduced his sentence by 20 years, rendering him two years past parole eligibility. 

Although he was now eligible for parole, the team of clinicians he worked with wanted to see his cancer treatment through, so Lundstrom endured surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy from a prison cell, losing 38 pounds in seven weeks and eating from a feeding tube as a result of the radiation. 

The entire prison chanted “Cam beats cancer! Cam beats cancer!” when he completed his treatment. 

In 2019, Lundstrom was released from prison, cancer-free and almost decade-clean—the last time he ever touched methamphetamine was the night of his arrest in 2011. 

“Serving others helped me beat cancer,” Lundstrom said. Now out of prison, he knew he had a mission. He got a job as a dishwasher and began meeting with fellow formerly incarcerated people on parole at the request of his parole officer. 

Because of the work he was doing helping people navigate life after incarceration, Lundstrom was recommended to interview for a pilot program with the Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel (ORPC) and became the first parent advocate in the state of Colorado. As a parent advocate, Lundstrom reunified formerly incarcerated parents with their children and was the only person in the role in the state for two years. It also helped him reconnect with his girls. 

“One of the things that kept me in addiction was denial,” Lundstrom said. “I wasn’t able to accept who I really was. Once I came to terms with the fact that I had been a horrible dad and owned up to that, [my daughters] were receptive when I tried to connect with them again.” 

Today, both of Lundstrom’s daughters, as well as his son-in-law and wife, work with him at NAS Recovery Solutions. “I’m a believer in nepotism,” he said with a jovial laugh and smile. He has four grandchildren who affectionately call him “Cam-pa.” 

After more than two years of tireless work, Lundstrom left ORPC and set his sights to working on NAS Recovery Solutions full-time, further fulfilling his life’s purpose of helping others. “My heart was still in corrections with all of my brothers and sisters stuck in that cycle of relapsing and getting put back into a concrete box,” he said. 

Before leaving ORPC, Lundstrom participated in the inaugural cohort of an entrepreneurial mentorship program through Remerg, a hub for re-entry resources based in Denver with state-wide reach. 

“Like the Khan Academy of re-entry,” said founder and executive director Carol Peeples, a former teacher herself. Peeples described Lundstrom as being “very high energy, confident, and outspoken,” qualities that lent themselves to success in Remerg’s mentorship program. 

“He knew what he wanted to do with NAS, and he took full advantage of the opportunities to go out there and build something,” Peeples said. “He was hustling, and hustling in a good way,” Peeples said.

While in the program, Lundstrom was mentored by entrepreneur Kyle Hansen, founder of the leading pet brand Outward Hound and CPG Fitness Colorado. Upon meeting Peeples and other folks involved in re-entry work, Hansen learned that many formerly incarcerated people have naturally entrepreneurial mindsets but face barriers in finding employment or start-up capital after leaving prison. 

“They’re wired for the grind for whatever it takes to be successful in entrepreneurship,” Hansen said. “They tend to read a lot in prison and are both street smart and book smart.” 

To bring about the change Lundstrom desired, NAS needed to be scaled. Lundstrom has assembled a team of 12 coaches from various backgrounds (plus an additional 14 billing partners), all but two of whom are in recovery. The other two coaches are what Lundstrom refers to as ‘allies,’ or people who have experienced addiction because someone close to them did. 

“I myself can maybe work with 50 people a year at best,” Lundstrom said. “If I have a recovery coaching business, I can touch 500 people a year. If I build recovery coaching businesses, maybe I can reach 5,000 people a year. The only way we can take a bite out of recovery is if it grows exponentially like addiction does. Like you get somebody high, that person gets three people high, those people get 10 people high, and all of a sudden, it spreads like wildfire. Recovery has to be able to do the same thing.”

In addition to participating in Remerg’s mentorship program and his sheer tenacity and dedication to helping others navigate life after addiction and incarceration, a 2021 Colorado law helped Lundstrom scale NAS. House Bill 21-1021 mandates that peer support groups like NAS are eligible for reimbursement from the Colorado Department of Health and Human Services. 

“I’m stoked about the movement in Colorado,” Lundstrom said. “Colorado is a progressive leader nationally in dealing with addiction, recidivism and corrections. It’s transformed from 20 years ago, when I first started my criminal career. It’s a completely different ball game.”

Today, NAS serves roughly 500 clients and has worked with about 1,000 in total. Lundstrom has ambitious plans for NAS in the coming year. He is currently working on developing innovative solutions that use artificial intelligence to track his clients’ success after they have completed their work with NAS, allowing him to continue providing personalized support. He is also working on expanding the NAS alumni network, emphasizing the value of community and connection in maintaining sobriety and recovery. 

“There’s a difference between sobriety and recovery,” he said. “Long-term recovery means you’ve transitioned into a place where you’re engaged and interested in a new life. Sobriety means you’re just not using, and just because you’re not using doesn’t mean you’re healed.” 

He has some advice for people who are in recovery or have recently been released from prison. 

“You need to find your principles,” Lundstrom said. “My principles are the cornerstones of my recovery and rehabilitation. Knowing your principles translates into running a business because you build them into your business. Know your principles, adhere to them like iron, and be willing to walk through the doors that open for you, even if there’s one you didn’t anticipate going through.” 

If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction and are in search of a path to recovery, have questions, or just need someone to talk to, contact NAS Recovery Solutions by going to their website, nasrecoverysolutions.com, or speak to someone directly at (720) 239-2848.