On the far right side of the Recovery Review home page are a few so-called "navigators". Yesterday we added a category to the "Special Series" navigator. The category we added is called "Psychodynamic Perspective". Here's what the Special Series navigator looks like right now. I've circled the new one we added in red so you … Continue reading Added to the Recovery Review navigator: “Psychodynamic Perspective”
Listening to Echoes of Our Own History
Authors Note: A version of this is currently in Counselor Magazine. I submitted it for consideration in May 2023 and received notice of it being used last week. My credentials have changed since then and there were substantive changes to the work. The citations here are consistent with what was submitted. I am pleased that … Continue reading Listening to Echoes of Our Own History
Recovery Housing Veto in California
California Governor Gavin Newsom recently vetoed a bill that would have allowed local governments to use up to 10% of state homelessness funds for abstinence-based recovery housing. The bill sought to adjust the state's housing-first policies, which prohibit using homelessness funds for abstinence-based recovery housing. A 2016 law adopting the “housing first” model as state policy prohibits … Continue reading Recovery Housing Veto in California
Protection, Remission, and Recovery
Thomas McLellan and Nora Volkow, two very important figures in modern addiction and treatment science, just published a new article. This strikes me as an important and potentially very consequential article. I'll share a few of the things that grabbed my attention. They describe the impetus for this article as follows: Prescribing MOUD with a … Continue reading Protection, Remission, and Recovery
We Lack a United Voice in the Recovery Movement
"With the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back” – Hunter S. Thompson" Collection of 2000s recovery advocacy ephemera. (Credit: Illinois Addiction Studies Archive) This week I am attending the annual conference of the National Alliance on Recovery Residences (NARR). NARR is … Continue reading We Lack a United Voice in the Recovery Movement
Question from the field: How does someone maintain longevity in the addiction field?
Two people working in the addiction field recently gave me a question to respond to here on Recovery Review. Interestingly, they both gave me the same question. One phrased it as a topic by saying, “I would enjoy hearing some more about risk and protective factors for SUD clinicians.” The other phrased it as a question: … Continue reading Question from the field: How does someone maintain longevity in the addiction field?
Long Term Recovery – the Policy Opportunities of Demand Reduction to Strengthen Our Nation
Many years ago, I met with a conservative member of Congress from my home state of Pennsylvania who eventually went on to the US Senate. I was relatively new to legislative meetings but quite passionate about recovery, even in those days. His background before serving politically was in international economics. When I got done explaining … Continue reading Long Term Recovery – the Policy Opportunities of Demand Reduction to Strengthen Our Nation
7-OH and the Question of Harm Production
This guest post is by Lee Holley, LCSW, LCDC, PSS. Lee is a psychotherapist based in Texas. He specializes in therapy for people with alcohol and other drug problems through a recovery-oriented harm reduction lens, combining clinical expertise with lived experience in long-term recovery. As a psychotherapist who bases my philosophy of treating alcohol and … Continue reading 7-OH and the Question of Harm Production
Drug Innovation or Contamination?
As harm reduction has risen in prominence and influence in the addiction, treatment, and recovery spaces, one of its contributions to discussions about public policy related to drug use has been the suggestion that prohibition creates a drug supply with unpredictable potency that is vulnerable to contamination, and that these factors drive overdose. This leads … Continue reading Drug Innovation or Contamination?
History Repeating – the “Opioid” Epidemic Supplanting the Recovery Movement: Pathology Over Resiliency and Healing
“The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence” ― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets The New Recovery Advocacy Movement got off the ground in America roughly three decades ago, during a time when addiction recovery policy and practice had fundamentally lost its way. In that era, … Continue reading History Repeating – the “Opioid” Epidemic Supplanting the Recovery Movement: Pathology Over Resiliency and Healing
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