“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” ― Samuel Beckett We have never had a care system that provides people who need help with addiction the resources they need to heal. For me, one of the most poignant lessons in how hard it is to get people what they need to heal happened with … Continue reading No More Waiting for Godot – Lets Follow Our Addiction Care Laws 

Forward – I have known JohnWinslow for the better part of twenty years. I kept running into him in DC and in my travels around the country. He is a person in long term recovery for over 46 years, and he has been in the field of helping people recovery for the vast majority of … Continue reading Interview with John Winslow – Founder of International Recovery Day

Source: NIDA There is and can be no ultimate solution for us to discover, but instead a permanent need for balancing contradictory claims, for careful trade-offs between conflicting values, toleration of difference, consideration of the specific factors at play when a choice is needed, not reliance on an abstract blueprint claimed to be applicable everywhere, … Continue reading Nora Volkow on More Realistic And Pragmatic Addiction Treatment

Lately I’ve been working out a practical structure1 for a 5-year model of clinical involvement for patients with addiction illness (not less severe presentations).  What I have in mind is quite concrete but would take a lot of words to say.  I am often a visual or spatial thinker, and for this topic it’s true … Continue reading Working Out a Multi-Year Support Structure

It is great to see this piece coauthored with Ryan Hampton Author of Unsettled published in STAT news RCOs deserve better than bake sales Funding for recovery community organizations is a patchwork affair. There has never been an established, stable funding mechanism to support them. Some are funded through time-limited grants, some through block grants … Continue reading STAT NEWS First Opinion 2 4 22 Recovery community organizations need more than bake sales to help people survive addiction

Recently here on Recovery Review Jason Schwartz has been posting some fairly interesting new material, as well as re-posting older material, about the idea of addiction as a disease.  The material he has shared has grown interesting enough and produced enough thoughtful conversation on various platforms, that I wanted to share a version of my very first … Continue reading A Fresh Look at “The Big 5” Substance Use Disorder Criteria

“Let us use whatever power and influence we have, working with whatever resources are already available, mobilizing the people who are with us to work for what they care about.” – Margaret Wheatley The title of this post comes is inspired by Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose To Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, … Continue reading Building Bridges Between Islands of Healing

I watched an informational video about search patterns used by the Coast Guard and gained some thoughts I decided to share.  The video was just under 30 minutes long and you can find it right here if you’re interested.  As you read this article, see what you notice from outside our field that could serve … Continue reading Coast Guard Search and Rescue:  Lessons and Inspiration