When Bill White called for an overhaul of our treatment models (Recovery Management) and our treatment systems (Recovery Oriented Systems of Care), there was an emphasis on community organization and “hope-based interventions” to reduce stigma by making recovery more visible and voluntarily attract more people into treatment and recovery support.
That history came to mind when I came across this podcast, which led me to this article about people in recovery serving as a visible backbone of the revitalization of some Appalachian towns previously devastated by oxycontin, heroin, and fentanyl.
In Hazard, about a quarter of the new jobs are held by recovering addicts. In Pineville, an hour and a half southwest of Hazard, one-third of new jobs are filled by people in recovery, Jacob Roan, who oversees economic development in the town, told me.
Quinones, Sam. “Opioids Decimated a Kentucky Town. Ex-Addicts Are Saving It.” The Free Press, 7 Feb. 2024.
“When somebody gets clean, they want to change the world, and have ideas of how to change the world,” Stephanie Callahan, a former addict and current business owner in Hazard, told me. “You do something just to prove you can do it.”
The focus of the podcast is on community development, but the discussion of economic recovery parallels some of the stories of addiction recovery.
The host of the podcast describes the role of individuals and community in economic renewal.
All these things take courage and they encourage each other… What you begin to see over a period of two or three years is all this business formation. Some of them fold, but a lot of them stick.
Sam Quinones in the Strong Towns podcast episode “Sam Quinones: Recovering Addicts Are Having a Bottom-up Revolution in This Small Kentucky Town.” 4 Mar. 2024.
They talk about failed ideas related to economic renewal – waiting and hoping for some big outside investment in the town’s economy. This reminded me of Sandra Bloom’s comments about rebuilding under-resourced organizations damaged by chronic stress and trauma — the idea that no one is coming to rescue us and we have to do it ourselves.
As a result of the destructive parallel processes we have discussed in Destroying Sanctuary, many people who work every day at trying to improve the lives of others are themselves drowning in crises. While speaking to an audience of educators and social service workers in Philadelphia, Geoffrey Canada, the change agent who has created the Harlem’s Children Zone, urged us to address our problems locally because if we are waiting for someone in higher authority to come and solve the problems of Philadelphia’s families, he warned, “nobody’s coming.”
His remarks rang true. If those of us in the helping professions wait for some imagined future time when our work is finally appreciated by the larger culture, when emotional labor is valued as a vital part of individual and cultural health, when the problems of health care delivery are remedied, and when the haves in our society recognize that a ruined world will be ruined for their children’s children, just as it will be ruined for everyone else, we might wait forever. As we wait, even more knowledge will have uselessly slipped away and more lives will have been needlessly wasted. The bottom line is that we are going to have to fix our organizations ourselves. And we are going to have to do it with the resources we already have because “nobody’s coming,” and even if they are, they are probably bringing us more regulations and paperwork, not more resources.
Bloom, S. L., Farragher, B. (2013). Restoring Sanctuary: A New Operating System for Trauma-Informed Systems of Care. United Kingdom: OUP USA.
In the podcast, they talk about seeing people in recovery as a resource and asset in the community.
Each recovering addict is like a new natural resource, a little like coal actually, it’s like energy rising from decay. Someone who’s viewing the world more energetically, more creatively, and with a sense of gratitude.
Sam Quinones in the Strong Towns podcast episode “Sam Quinones: Recovering Addicts Are Having a Bottom-up Revolution in This Small Kentucky Town.” 4 Mar. 2024.
This made me think of Dawn Farm’s Recovery is Good Business program to link businesses and people in early recovery in a way that benefits everyone involved.
The interview and the podcast did not provide the time and space to get into the details of the back story. How did the rebirths of these towns come to be? Who were the key players?
While recovery was mentioned, it’s clear that addiction recovery is one facet of a larger community recovery experience.
It made me think of these communities as an example of the “healing forest” metaphor.
In this metaphor, the clinical treatment of addiction is seen as analogous to digging up a sick and dying tree, transplanting it into an environment of rich soil, sunshine, water, and fertilizer only to return it to its original deprived location once its health has been restored and subsequently lost again. What is called for in this metaphor is treating the soil—creating a Healing Forest within which the health of the individual, family, neighborhood, community, and beyond are simultaneously elevated. The Healing Forest is a community in recovery.
Evans, A.C., Lamb. R. & White, W.L. (2013). The community as patient: Recovery-focused
community mobilization in Philadelphia, 2005-2012. Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 31(4), 450-465.
It also brings to mind a story from Cecil Williams. In his book, No Hiding Place, he shared the story of his community recognizing that nobody’s coming and they took it upon themselves to try to develop a healing forest. This work was also cited as an example of hope-based intervention. I always found it inspiring.
In the late 1980s, before Glide got serious about recovery and finding ways to unconditionally embrace those with raging addictions, we sent addicts who came to Glide to the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic…. The addicts we sent across the city kept saying to me, “To get to the Haight Ashbury, the bus goes through the Tenderloin and up through the housing projects in Hayes Valley. By the time I get to the clinic, I’ve jumped off the bus to shoot up, snort, or smoke something.”…
So I stopped sending them away. I knew Glide had to find a way to help these folks recover… One of the things I preach about is to “walk the walk that you talk.” … So we walked our talk. We decided to march on the most troubled housing projects in San Francisco…. We came to embrace them with unconditional love and declare there was another way to live…. Those in the front carried a street-wide banner that declared our nonviolent battle cry, It’s Recovery Time. Others carried placards: The User Needs Recovery and Welcome Home to Recovery. We marched as a posse of lovers. We marched to herald freedom from drugs, addiction, and despair…. No one marched empty-handed either. Some carried paintbrushes and gallons of paint. Others bore heaping plates of fried chicken and potato salad. We marched to help. It does no good to go in shouting and screaming for change with your empty hands shaking in the air. You’ve got to have something to offer.
When the hundreds of marchers converged in the center of the four-sided square housing complex, I took a bullhorn and began to shout to those peeking out of the top-floor apartments. “C’mon down. Join us. It’s recovery time. We know who you are. You’re our sons and daughters. It’s time for you to take control of your lives.”
Williams, C. (1993). No Hiding Place: Empowerment and Recovery for Our Troubled Communities. United States: HarperCollins Canada, Limited.
Those early ROSC efforts often talked about increasing the visibility of recovery and recovery pathways as a way to show what is possible at the individual level and how it might be achieved. It’s easy to imagine this story of Hazard serving that same function at the community level.
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