Let us hope that the frequent framing of pharmacological treatments as the only evidence-based approach doesn't eclipse the evidence for behavioral and social interventions like sober housing: Following substance abuse treatment, individuals who live in a collaborative housing setting with community rules and responsibilities have their substance abuse treated more effectively than those not provided supportive housing, according … Continue reading Evidence for community

Bill White has a great post on anonymity and advocacy. He examines the changing cultural context for anonymity and the different functions of anonymity. On anonymity as a spiritual principle: When AA literature speaks of anonymity as a “spiritual principle,” it does so out of a profound understanding of the importance of self-transcendence as the … Continue reading Gut check

Kind words from After Party Magazine. I made their list of top blogs. Nice! Addiction & Recovery News The brainchild of Jason Schwartz, Clinical Director of Dawn Farm—a non-profit treatment program in Ann Arbor, Michigan—Addiction and Recovery News started out as a list of news links sent to his staff so they could stay on … Continue reading Blog love

More from that article on advocacy and anonymity: The fellowships themselves often assert that they should be ‘anonymous but not invisible.’ However, the claim from some sections of the wider Recovery Movement that anonymity is about shame and secrecy fails to appreciate that whilst the public sphere can be a realm of liberation, it is … Continue reading More to ponder on advocacy and anonymity

The Facts Keep these facts in mind: Overdose is now the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S. Most of these overdose deaths are due to opioids. If help arrives in time, overdoses can be safely and quickly reversed with a squirt of naloxone up the patient's nose. More than half of all overdoses … Continue reading Next steps for preventing OD deaths in Michigan

On recovery advocacy and anonymity: . . . when supporters of the Recovery Movement conflate ‘spiritual anonymity’ and ‘secrecy,’  they  fail to appreciate the richness of the practice for individuals, and the value of freely available, financially and ideologically independent fellowships, not associated with particular individuals or recovery ‘gurus’, important though these may be. I'd … Continue reading Sentences to ponder

Naloxone saves lives. That's good. Very good. However, naloxone is not enough. Naloxone is not enough for EMS workers. "As EMS providers, this call is a success," Hassan says. "In the big picture of health care, is it a success? Well, no, it's incomplete right now. For it to be a total success he'd get … Continue reading Naloxone is not enough

The Affordable Care Act brought with it increased attention to reducing patient readmission rates. A new finding will surprise many in the medical community and affirm many in other helping professions, like counseling and social work--good communication between caregivers and patients improves readmission rates. . . . findings from our research using six years of data from … Continue reading Good communication equals better outcomes

This post is focused on psychiatric medication. Some may ask why this is relevant to a treatment program and blog that focuses on addiction treatment and recovery. The reason is pretty clear, from my perspective--most of our treatment admissions are on a psychotropic and most of those are on multiple psychotropics. Some have histories of … Continue reading More bad behavior from PHARMA

Pat Deegan (with Robert Drake) published a recent article on measuring recovery as an outcome. Their focus is on mental illness, but it offers some interesting food for thought about parallels with addiction recovery outcome research. As access to care grows, an important question is whether actually facilitates recovery. Perhaps we can measure some of the … Continue reading Measuring Recovery as an Outcome