A few weeks ago, an article in Futurism described a troubling exchange between an AI chatbot and a user identifying as Pedro, a person identified as having methamphetamine addiction seeking advice about how to make it through his work shifts when he's feeling exhausted and has abstained from methamphetamine for 3 days. The chatbot encourages … Continue reading The AI Mirror: “take that small hit, and you’ll be fine”
We can think about the people in recovery like individual trees in a forest. A forest is not just a group of individual trees; they are interconnected in what has been termed the “wood wide web.” All the trees, plants and microbial organisms in a forest are in reality connected to each other. The wood … Continue reading C-CHIME: Seeing the connected forest through the individual trees – A cascade model of building recovery capital through community and connections – Dr David Best, Bill Stauffer June 2025
Here’s a recent study examining rates of emergency department encounters and hospitalizations in Colorado among youth following cannabis legalization. Overall, I find several portions of this work rather interesting. Below, I provide some quotations from the Abstract, Discussion, and Conclusion sections. The information below brings to mind for me the positive movement forward that has … Continue reading Psychosis-related emergency department and hospitalization rates in Colorado after cannabis legalization
Disclaimer: nothing in this content should be taken or held as clinical instruction, clinical supervision, or advisory concerning patient care. One way to think about clinical work in addiction counseling is through the lens of academic and evidence-based practices. And another way is to use the lens of psychodynamic approaches. Below, find a simplified way … Continue reading Using Both Lenses: Academic/Evidence-Based and Psychodynamic
“For decades, people in recovery from addictions to other drugs have their lives cut short by tobacco-related diseases. Their drear friends, patients, and colleagues died from nicotine addiction, but it could also be said they died from blindness – the failure to see nicotine as an addictive drug and the failure to see smoking cessation … Continue reading Tobacco Recovery in the Addiction Recovery Space: Time for Action!
For years, many experts have "well, actually-ed", arguing that prescribing patterns had little to do with the opioid crisis. Of course, the opioid crisis is a complex and wicked problem, but we are poorly served by experts who scold the public and tell us not to believe our lying eyes. JAMA Health Forum provides some … Continue reading 3-in-4 current fentanyl users started with prescription opioids
“The experts on recovery are people in recovery” – Rallying Cry from the Era of the New Recovery Advocacy Movement. We once, not long ago, had a movement in America embraced broadly across our society in which people in recovery began to inform the fledgling research on our healing. It influenced a strengths orientation within … Continue reading Constricted Ways of Knowing and the Loss of Recovery as a Focus of Our Institutions
Here, the 5 year model monograph is reduced to a one-pager. The notion of reducing the monograph to a one-pager was given to me by Katlyn Nordstrom, and I greatly appreciate that suggestion. What follows is the content of the one-pager. I'm guessing I might continue to adapt the material in the monograph into tools … Continue reading Five-Year System for Severe SUDs: The Model, Functions, and Focus Areas
I recently wrote a piece, Considering the Facets of Whites Laws of Recovery Dynamics to further the dialogue on how the New Recovery Advocacy movement fits into a broader dynamic of cresting and ebbing efforts to expand long term recovery in America as the norm in our society. As an aside and to be candid, … Continue reading The Arc of Recovery Movement History Ultimately Bends Towards Expansion – William Stauffer & Dr David Best
My original theoretical drawing circa 2014 Notes: This post features an AI-aided summary that condenses my 70-page master's thesis, written in 2016, into a manageable 7,000-word essay. I never published the thesis, though I handed out copies to coworkers and friends. This was because, like many of my ideas, it grew voluminous rather quickly, and … Continue reading Throwback Thursday; Revisiting a Critical Theory of Addiction and Recovery (CETAR)
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