Words are important. If you want to care for something, you call it a “flower”; if you want to kill something, you call it a “weed.” –Don Coyhis Whether alcohol- and other drug (AOD)-related problems are viewed through the lens of medicine (illnesses), psychology (habits), sociology (norms), morality (vices), religion (sins), or law (crimes) rests(……)
“There is nothing about a caterpillar which would suggest that it will become a butterfly” — Buckminster Fuller Recovery from a life-threatening condition can bring far more than the removal of pain and sickness from an otherwise unchanged life. Confronting one’s mortality through the experiences of illness and recovery can bring unexpected gifts. Surviving heart(……)
Philip Seymour Hoffman died February 2, 2014 of an apparent heroin overdose. On that day, like every day in the United States, between 75-100 less known individuals also died of a drug overdose. One of the factors distinguishing Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, other than his fame, was that the recurrence of his addiction and its(……)
No child held in a parent’s arms envisions a future of addiction. No parent holding a young child’s hand envisions their hopes and dreams for that child to be one day ended by addiction. And yet, those wrenching realities are played out daily in this country. More than a half a million individuals die drug-related(……)
Those of you who have been reading my weekly blogs these past six months will recognize two simple and enduring themes: Recovery is contagious and recovery is spread by recovery carriers. Those notions first came to me on April 14, 2010 when I stood to speak at Northeast Treatment Centers’ (NET) dinner honoring NET’s 40th(……)
Ken Burns’ wonderful PBS documentary on the Civil War includes historian Shelby Foote telling the story of a young solider brought before General Lee for discipline. Seeing the trembling soldier, General Lee tried to calm the young man by assuring him that he need not be afraid–that he would receive a just response to his(……)
Five newly posted interviews and a newly posted paper explore the birth, evolution, growing pains and growing vibrancy of the new recovery advocacy movement in the United States. This movement grew from an increased awareness that, through our prolonged cultural invisibility and silence, people in recovery have contributed to the public perception that recovery was(……)
There is an implicit assumption within prevailing models of addiction treatment that family health improves spontaneously upon recovery initiation of the addicted family member. That assumption is evident in the paucity of family-oriented treatment models and the lack of post-treatment monitoring of family functioning and family member health. Stephanie Brown performed a great service when(……)
The prevalence, pathways and processes of long-term addiction recovery have been hidden from public view for far too long. Most importantly, recovery has been invisible to those most in need of its transforming presence. Recovery has long been cloistered behind the walls of treatment centers and within the rooms of mutual aid meetings. Today, recovery(……)
There is a discrepancy for each of us between the internal self and the personas we project to others. Personal health, wholeness and integrity hinge in great measure on the degree to which these private and public selves can be brought into harmony. That reconciliation is potentially life-saving for persons seeking the metamorphosis from active(……)