“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 

Reading about addiction and recovery can be overwhelming and confusing. Media reports and experts often make strongly worded statements that are contradicted by statements from other media sources and experts. Other times, they seem to negate or minimize the lived experience of people with drug or alcohol problems and their families. For example, it’s very … Continue reading A consumer’s guide to research on substance use disorders

Demonstrated solutions to alcohol and drug problems will do more to reduce the stigma attached to these conditions than will endless debates about the source of such problems. White, W. (2000). Toward a new recovery advocacy movement. (Photo credit: beware of pity by shawnzrossi)

...I do want to suggest that something got lost along the road to professionalization. What got lost was a relationship between two people that transcended the roles of counselor and client. What got lost was our deep involvement in the community and in local communities of recovery. What got lost was our recognition of the … Continue reading Sentences to ponder: the roles of professionals and community

Eve Tushnet, from a list of 5 things the disease model gets wrong about addiction: It isn’t mercy. If someone genuinely did not choose to do wrong then compassion for that person isn’t mercy—it’s justice. And conversely, if you can only have compassion on someone if you believe she did not choose her misdeeds, then … Continue reading Sentences to ponder: mercy or justice?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Pexels.com For most of my career, I've been responsible for managing treatment programs. I believed strongly in those programs. At one of those programs, we developed a continuum of care that provided treatment and substantial, structural recovery support for more than 2 years for people with high severity, high chronicity, … Continue reading Treatment as usual isn’t cutting it (same for research as usual)

“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

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com I think the future rests in seeing harm reduction and recovery as strategies to be uniquely combined and sequenced across the stages/styles of drug use / drug addiction and the stages of recovery rather than as warring ideologies. William White from Bamber, S. & White, W. (2011). Bamber-White … Continue reading Sentences to Ponder

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