The first major effort to define recovery in America was in 2007, when the Betty Ford Foundation, now the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation published What is recovery? A working definition from the Betty Ford Institute. The paper noted that “recovery is a voluntarily maintained lifestyle composed characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship.” Our understanding … Continue reading Developing Broad Consensus on How We Conceptualize the Resolution of Substance Misuse
Author: billstaufferpa
William Stauffer is the Director of Pennsylvania Recovery Organization Alliance (PRO-A). In recovery for well over 3 decades, he is a nationally recognized trainer and writer addiction and recovery. He has testified to the US Senate Special Committee on Aging and in 2019, he organized a hearing with the PA House Human Services Committee to expand opportunities for young people. He is a past co-chair of the public policy committee for Faces & Voices of Recovery and the 2019 recipient of the Vernon Johnson Award Individual Recovery Advocate of the year. He teaches Social Work at Misericordia University. He was recently named to the Leadership Council of Foundations for Drug Policy Solutions (FDPS) a national think / do tank where he serves alongside some of the most respected leaders in the SUD service system. In December 2022, Mr. Stauffer was invited to serve Governor-Elect Josh Shapiro & Lieutenant Gov-Elect Austin Davis on the state Human Services transition team.
2022’s #8 post: Headwinds for Recovery Community Self Agency
“. . . the individual, family and community are not separate; they are one. To injure one is to injure all; to heal one is to heal all. – from The Red Road to Wellbriety, 2002” – as quoted by William White, Recovery Rising Perhaps the most important insight in recent recovery history is that … Continue reading 2022’s #8 post: Headwinds for Recovery Community Self Agency
Holding Space for Healing & Resiliency – What We Know and Yet Still Fail to Apply
“I believe that the community - in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures - is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.” - Wendell Berry We need to change how we think of recovery community organizations across our … Continue reading Holding Space for Healing & Resiliency – What We Know and Yet Still Fail to Apply
To Move Forward, Our Institutions Must Take a Hard Look at Their Internalized Stigma Against Us
Recovery from addiction has two significant facets. For centuries, it is centered on a dynamic that is relatively unique in respect to medical conditions. The power of one person, as part of their own journey of healing helping another to also find their way into recovery. This dynamic has then been repeated over the eons … Continue reading To Move Forward, Our Institutions Must Take a Hard Look at Their Internalized Stigma Against Us
The Birthing of the Modern Recovery Movement & Marty Mann Recovery History Interview with Bev Haberle
Forward – I have been thinking for some time about the linkages across recovery history. We don’t always do the best job at recording and teaching our own history. It is vital to the future that we understand our own past and how it has shaped our current environment. We must understand where we came … Continue reading The Birthing of the Modern Recovery Movement & Marty Mann Recovery History Interview with Bev Haberle
Cannabis: Demon Drug or Miracle Medicinal Plant, the Dilemma of Binary Thinking
“Human beings have a strong dramatic instinct toward binary thinking, a basic urge to divide things into two distinct groups, with nothing but an empty gap in between. We love to dichotomize. Good versus bad. Heroes versus villains. My country versus the rest. Dividing the world into two distinct sides is simple and intuitive, and … Continue reading Cannabis: Demon Drug or Miracle Medicinal Plant, the Dilemma of Binary Thinking
Developing Narratives of Healing to Overcome Deaths of Despair
“A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another.” ― Wendell Berry One does not have to look very hard to see there is a … Continue reading Developing Narratives of Healing to Overcome Deaths of Despair
Those Who Control the Teachings of a Movement’s History Control Its Future
How we think of addiction and recovery has changed in America, largely due to the New Recovery Advocacy Movement (NRAM). The future of NRAM and SUD Peer Services are inseparably intertwined. SUD Peer Services originated out of NRAM as a primary objective. In An Open Letter to SAMHSA and the SSA’s On Inclusion – Our … Continue reading Those Who Control the Teachings of a Movement’s History Control Its Future
The Recovery We See
Originally posted in June 2021 reposted with minor edits and hyperlink updates What color dress do you see? There was this thing going around the internet a few years called “the Dress,” millions of people around the world saw it and chimed in on what color that they perceived the dress to be. It has … Continue reading The Recovery We See
Embracing Recovery Capital Within Our Care System to Save It
There have been devastating impacts on our entire helping systems workforce over the long siege of the COVID Pandemic. Recently, I read the Ohio PHP Executive Report, the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Health and Well-being of Ohio's Healthcare Workers. The report summarizes data collected from 13,532 respondents across 13 of Ohio’s Professional … Continue reading Embracing Recovery Capital Within Our Care System to Save It
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