I was introduced to Darren McGarvey's work a few years ago. I haven't followed him closely, but he seems to have a knack for putting his finger on very salient contradictions and tensions in public and professional discourse about addiction and recovery. I came across this Instagram post yesterday that touches upon the uses and … Continue reading “Today, I live in the shadow of a character I created.”

The Minneapolis Times published a provocative column on harm reduction from a writer who previously worked in a social service agency. Harm reduction made sense to me as a way of managing an immediate danger. Somewhere along the way, it seemed to become an end in itself. The question was no longer only how to … Continue reading When survival becomes the endpoint

When I started working in addiction treatment to reliably access residential rehab in Scotland you had to live in the right area, be wealthy or just plain lucky. I heard it too often from patients and families who could see what was needed and, despite their best efforts, couldn't get near it. When we argued … Continue reading Mission Accomplished? Rehab in Scotland, Five Years On

This phenomenon is extensively documented in the professional literature under such descriptors as maturing out (Winick, 1962, 1964), autoremission (Vaillant, 1983; Klingeman, 1992), self-initiated change (Biernacki, 1986), unassisted change (McMurran, 1994), spontaneous remission (Tuchfield, 1981; Anthony & Helzer, 1991), de-addiction (Frykholm, 1985; Klingeman, 1991), self-change (Sobell, Sobell, & Toneatto, 1991), self-managed change (Copeland, 1988), and … Continue reading Sentences to Ponder (more about “solo recovery”)

Solo (natural) recovery involves the use of one’s own intrapersonal and interpersonal resources (family, kinship, and social networks) to resolve AOD problems without benefit of professional treatment or involvement in a recovery mutual aid community. White, W. & Kurtz, E. (2006). The varieties of recovery experience. International Journal ofSelf Help and Self Care, 3(1-2), 21-61.

Learn more and join Voices of the Unheard through NACoA’s campaign page This blog has shared thousands of posts about drug use, addiction, treatment, and recovery over the last 20 years. Very few of those posts focused on the effects of adult substance use problems on children. All of our contributors tend to focus on … Continue reading Children Deserve Recovery Too

There is an often used saying, “connection is the opposite of addiction.” It is an oversimplified slogan suggesting a simple solution to a series of highly complex pathogenesis and environmental processes. It contains truth but is far from the panacea it is used to convey. Yet connection really is vital to sustained recovery. Historically, recovery … Continue reading Recovery is a Transformative Process Extending Beyond the Individual

Disclaimer:  nothing in this post should be taken or held as clinical instruction, clinical supervision, or advisory concerning patient care.  I'll hedge my answer and say the three books I list below are the ones I tend to suggest to clinicians that they read as a resource for their own learning. And from that on-going … Continue reading Question from the field: “What are your top 3 book suggestions for parents, in addition to Al-Anon?”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) published a summary of drug use data from 2025 on August 12 of this year. The data is compiled from the Monitoring the Future Longitudinal Panel Study that has been examining self-reported drug use among those aged 19-65 since 1976. Here are a few direct quotations from the NIH … Continue reading Some 2025 USA drug use statistics