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
“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
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
“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 I have reposted this from time to time and in this version corrected some wording and added citations. The title of this … Continue reading Building Bridges Between Islands of Healing – Revised from Jan 2022
"There is no greater tyranny against the minds of men that to allow the minds of their children to be destroyed by addiction disease because of our lack of courage and commitment at the time it is needed most. This is the time. If we fail now, we will have failed our future. This is … Continue reading Revisiting Support for Long term Recovery and the Reversed Tragedy of the Commons
A newly published monograph "addresses the challenges of achieving long-term stable (OUD) remission and recovery, and, more specifically, the related challenges involved in adherence and retention within the pharmacotherapeutic treatment of OUD." This document is a critical step toward understanding what medication can and cannot achieve for which patients under what circumstances. This right-sizing of … Continue reading Medications for Opioid Use Disorder: Enhancing Retention to Achieve Longterm Remission and Recovery
“The look which the doctor gave me simply set me back on my heels. My hand remained untaken...Then I realized with a shock that this was not a meeting of two gentlemen on a plane of equality. In the eyes of the man before me, I was just another insane patient” - Marle Woodson 1933 … Continue reading Revisiting William White: A History of Contempt: Countertransference and the Dangers of Service Integration
The Wall Street Journal recently ran a commentary arguing that "Not Everything is Healthcare." Health insurers like UnitedHealthcare, Centene and Humana have devoted billions of dollars in the past decade to building new “affordable housing.” They’re also spending heavily on nutrition programs and local community resources. No, the insurance industry hasn’t suddenly begun emphasizing philanthropy over profit. Rather, it … Continue reading SDOH and Recovery Capital: Of Course Everything Isn’t Healthcare
“I was recruited by the field to address a shadow side of the organizational life of addiction treatment programs. As I responded to these calls, it became quickly apparent that something far more universal was afoot than the aberration of organizational life of addiction programs” – William White, Recovery Rising pg. 233 In 1989, John … Continue reading Revisiting the Work of William White: Sick Systems in Treatment Interview with John DuCane 1989
