This is a fantastic episode of The Peer Support Professional's Guide podcast. Click here to listen to this conversation. I just got done listening to this episode and had to share it. Here's the episode description: Recovery advocate and policy leader Bill Stauffer joins me to trace the evolution of peer support from its grassroots … Continue reading Episode 2: Protecting the Soul of Peer Support – Lessons in History with Bill Stauffer

Sis Wenger, a pioneering advocate for children affected by addiction and former leader of the National Association for Children of Addiction (formerly National Association for Children of Alcoholics), recently passed away. She also worked tirelessly to reach children living with addiction directly, spreading the message that they were not alone. Under a partnership between Maplegrove … Continue reading Remembering Sis Wenger: a tireless voice for children impacted by addiction

Addiction Research & Theory recently published an interesting article entitled "The unseen burden: exploring the lived experiences of mothers caring for individuals with substance use disorder." It focuses on the lived experiences of Indian mothers caring for sons with severe Substance Use Disorders. The authors set the focus of the paper as follows: This growing … Continue reading Moms, SUDs, & “emotional disintegration within the family”

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin Workforce attrition in addiction care is about much more than burnout. It is often more a result of moral dissonance created by systems that profess recovery but operationalize something far less. As an example, the … Continue reading Hope Carriers in a System That Doesn’t Walk Its Own Talk on Recovery

I recently had the opportunity to see John Kelly present some of his research on recovery. Kelly is doing some of the most important work in the addiction and recovery space. I say this because he's one of the few researchers publishing on long-term outcomes and quality-of-life. Most contemporary research gives us little more than … Continue reading Quality of life in the first five years of recovery

Consequences don't stop our using. They promote it." When I first heard Dr. Holman say this (around 2009) or so, it really struck me. Why? It had an entire feel about it. Not how she said it, but the words themselves. And the message was pretty specific, too. For decades I had of course heard … Continue reading Sentences to Ponder (Susan Holman, MD)

Disclaimer: Nothing in this document should be taken or held as clinical instruction, clinical supervision, or advisory concerning patient care. There’s a classic practice in addiction counseling I first saw in the late 1980’s.  But I’ve never seen it written up.  Not in the clinical-applied literature, practice guidelines, research studies, or anywhere else I can think … Continue reading A classic practice in addiction counseling: the group or house checking the “we”

Earlier this year, Frontiers in Public Health published an important study by John F. Kelly, Morgan Klein, Katherine Zeng, Sydney Manske, and Alexandra Abry. I say it's important because research that captures information about relapse tends to focus on the days, weeks, and maybe months following the initiation of recovery. We have very little professional … Continue reading Alcohol Use Disorder Relapse After One Year of Remission