Harvard-trained historian Ernest Kurtz loved stories. The power of story and the role of storytelling in personal identity and addiction recovery filled his writings on Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), and they were central themes in the books he co-authored with Katherine Ketcham: The Spirituality of Imperfection and Experiencing Spirituality.

I apprenticed under Ernie’s guidance for more than two decades in hopes of mastering the art and science of historical research. Sitting across from him in his office, I must have asked Ernie a thousand questions. His most frequent response was to lean forward in his chair, eyes twinkling, arms and hands in motion, to share a story in a voice that would have done Moses justice. Ernie was at heart and above all a spellbinding storyteller.

Ernie was fascinated with how life stories were, by necessity, reconstructed as part of one’s recovery from alcoholism. He often commented on how the A.A. story style helped newcomers construct a new life story from the fragments of their brokenness. The new story helped make sense of experiences that were otherwise inextricable, helped fire hope, salvaged self-esteem, and bolstered the commitment to sobriety.

One of the many themes within Ernie’s historical research was the role of memory in storytelling—writ small (personal identity) and large (collective history). Aware that much of my recounting of the modern history of addiction treatment and recovery flowed from interviews with key players within that history, Ernie cautioned me to think of memory as more construction site than storage drawer. He often discussed the potential loss of objective history due to the filtering of memory through efforts of self-enhancement, institutional interests, and contemporary political and cultural wars. His admonition? Verify everything!

Ernie was equally intrigued by the role of memory as scaffolding for addiction and recovery. He suggested that how we select and attach meaning to events in our life exert a profound effect on our future. The selection and deselection of life events to form a coherent narrative in his view could support either addiction or recovery.  An essential feature of the journey between the former to the latter was thus a process of story reconstruction and storytelling. Ernie suggested: change the story, change the life—a process aided by both skilled clinical intervention and participation in a community of recovering people with whom one could identify.

Ernie also explored how recovery stories changed over time, marking a prolonged process of healing and reconstruction of personal character and values. In The Spirituality of Imperfection, he identified six experiences/traits expressed in these evolving stories—all keys to this long-term reconstruction of self: release, gratitude, humility, tolerance, forgiveness, and being-at-home. As is evident, Ernie understood addiction recovery as a process involving far more than the deletion of drugs from an otherwise unchanged life.

During my last visit with Ernie before his passing, he shared with me a number of private documents. Included was 145 pages of raw notes on story and storytelling. This elaborately coded document contained quotations and summaries from all his related readings as well as many of his own reflections, only some of which appeared in his published work. I have cherished these notes for the past five years and have decided, with permission from Ernie’s wife, Linda Ferris Kurtz, to share some excerpts from these notes. Below are just a few of Ernie’s prized discoveries and reflections on story, memory, and storytelling. I share these as a way of continuing to honor what Ernie meant to so many of us. To review selected excerpts from the Kurtz notes on Story, Memory and Storytelling, click HERE.

SAMHSA’s BRSS TACS releases directory of peer recovery coaching training and certification programs

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS) recently released their State-by-State Directory of Peer Recovery Coaching Training and Certification Programs. The directory provides detailed information about certification processes for peer recovery coaches, including training requirements, curricula, exam criteria, fees, and program descriptions. The directory also identifies recovery coach supervisor training requirements and supervisor training courses.

 

BRSS-TACS_State-by-State-Directory-of-Peer-Recovery-Coaching-Training-and-Certification-Programs_8_26_2020

Social anxiety/phobia, often mischaracterized as extreme shyness, constitutes a potential pathway into addiction and a major obstacle to addiction treatment and recovery.

Robert and Kaisha could not be more different at a quick glance, but they shared the curse of what others perceived as extreme shyness. Robert and Kaisha dreaded any social situation filled with strangers, the expectation of conversation, or any undue focus upon themselves. Just the thought of entering such a situation induced a trembling voice, a racing heart, sweaty hands, a blushing face, dizziness, nausea, extreme self-consciousness, and fears of embarrassment and humiliation. In social situations that could not be escaped, they sought invisibility, shunning as much contact as possible, avoiding eye contact, speaking very little or not at all, and spending inordinate time afterwards harshly judging their social performance.

Robert and Kaisha found something of a solution for their social anxiety. They discovered magic elixirs that lessened or dissolved their fears and loosened their tongues. The problems only came when their increasing dependence on ever-increasing dosages and frequencies of these elixirs created all manner of other problems in their lives. When these escalating problems forced them to seek help, imagine their mortification to hear that their “treatment” would involve group therapy and participating in recovery mutual support groups in their local community.

The situation faced by Robert and Kaisha is by no means rare. A study by Book and colleagues found that 37% of people entering addiction treatment also experienced clinically significant social anxiety. The 37% figure would extrapolate to more than 740,000 individuals entering addiction treatment each year. The Book study raises several important questions.

Of 21.7 million Americans in need of help for a substance use disorder in the past year, only 2.3 million received specialized SUD treatment.  What portion of those not receiving treatment were dissuaded from seeking help due to social anxiety and the group-orientation of addiction treatment and recovery mutual aid?

Since 1999, more than 770,000 Americans have died from drug overdoses. What portion of those lost lives chose not to seek help due to social anxiety and the group-orientation of addiction treatment and recovery mutual aid?

Since 1999, nearly one million individuals died from alcohol-related causes. What portion of those lost lives chose not to seek help due to social anxiety and the group-orientation of addiction treatment and recovery mutual aid?

There are an estimated 1.4 million suicide attempts and more than 47,000 deaths by suicide in the United States each year. What portion of these people suffer from a substance use disorder and fail to seek help due to social anxiety and the group-orientation of addiction treatment and recovery mutual aid?

The situation faced by people who need help for a substance use disorder but who shun such help due to social anxiety could be improved if:

*Addiction professionals assessed the presence and degree of social anxiety of every person seeking help for a substance-related problem.

*Integrated addiction and mental health services existed that could concurrently treat SUDs and anxiety disorders via potential combinations of psychosocial support and medication.

*Treatment adjuncts/techniques potentially helpful to those with social anxiety (e.g., thought-stopping, reframing, biofeedback, systematic desensitization, situation rehearsal, progressive relaxation, breath training) were routinely available in addiction treatment programs.

*Outpatient individual counseling was universally available as an alternative to the dominant group-oriented intensive outpatient and residential models of addiction treatment.

*Prescriptive bibliotherapy and self-guided manuals were more widely available as adjuncts and alternatives to addiction treatment.

*E-therapy and e-recovery support services, including online recovery support chat rooms and online meetings (e.g., In the Rooms) were assertively promoted to people with social anxiety.

*Each person with social anxiety was assigned a recovery coach as a personal travel guide into the social worlds of addiction recovery.

*People with social anxiety were phased in to recovery-focused social contact, beginning with orientation to program literature and rituals, one-on-one contact, and large speaker meetings where there is no expectation for participation prior to exposure to smaller closed meetings.

Social anxiety constitutes a major obstacle to addiction treatment and recovery. Human connection is a key mechanism of change within addiction recovery, but people with social anxiety may need special support to access such connection. Scientific research, careful clinical observation, and personal lived experience may offer such people improved solutions for the future.

 

Acknowledgement: Thanks to members of the Recovery Rising Book Club for comments on an early draft of this blog.

 

References

Book, S. W., Thomas, S. E., Dempsey, J. P., & Randall, P. K. (2009). Social anxiety impacts willingness to participate in addiction treatment. Addictive Behaviors, 34, 474-476.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, (2019). Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS): 2017. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

White, A. M., Castle, I-J., P., Hingson, R. W. & Powell, P. A. (2020). Using death certificates to explore changes in alcohol-related mortality in the United States, 1999-2017. Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. 44(1). 178-187.

I believe we live in the greatest era of snake oil salesmen in the history of mankind. —Michael Crichton, Next, 2006

The addictions treatment field has grossly oversold the effectiveness of a single episode of brief clinical intervention. For more than two decades, calls have increased for a radical redesign of addiction treatment and related recovery support services—a shift from acute care models of intervention to models of sustained recovery management (RM) nested within larger recovery-oriented systems of care (ROSC).

Defining Acute Care: Acute care (AC) models of addiction treatment encompass service interventions that intervene at a late stage of problem development via services focused on brief biopsychosocial stabilization that lack sustained support across the stages of long-term personal and family recovery. AC models of intervention that have dominated specialized addiction treatment since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century share distinct characteristics:

*Services are delivered “programmatically” in a uniform series of encapsulated activities (screen, admit, single point-in-time assessment, minimally individualized treatment, discharge, brief “aftercare” as an afterthought, termination of the service relationship).

*Clinical intervention is focused on symptom elimination for a single primary problem.

*Professional experts direct and dominate the assessment, treatment planning, and service delivery decision-making.

*Services transpire over a short (and historically ever-shorter) period of time—usually as a function of a prearranged, time-limited insurance payment designed specifically for addiction disorders and “carved out” from general medical insurance.

*The individual/family/community is given the impression at discharge (“graduation”) that “cure has occurred”: long-term recovery is viewed as personally self-sustainable without ongoing professional assistance.

*The intervention is evaluated at a short-term, single-point-in-time follow-up that compares pretreatment status with discharge status and short-point-in-time post-treatment status.

*Post-treatment symptom recurrence and needed readmission are viewed as failure of the client rather than flaws in the design or execution of the treatment protocol. Treatment in subsequent admissions is essentially the same as that of the first admission.

Why Acute Care? The modern addictions treatment field migrated toward an acute care model in the 1970s and early 1980s. The model reflected a bid for professional credibility of an emerging field, a needed response to the surge in public funding for addiction treatment, and a strategy to acquire private insurance reimbursement for such treatment. The resulting scheme of treatment and related funding policies resembled the acute care hospital, with duration of treatment becoming ever briefer following the advent of aggressive systems of managed behavioral healthcare. Detoxification programs were modeled on the hospital emergency room, inpatient and residential programs were modeled on acute care wards of the general hospital, and outpatient programs were modeled on the outpatient medical clinic. The resulting model prescribed a series of clinical steps all compressed in as little time as possible.

Potential Value of Acute Care: AC models of SUD intervention are very appropriate for people with low to moderate substance use disorders (SUDs) who also possess substantial recovery capital. Millions of people fitting this profile are today in long-term stable recovery who express unending gratitude for the AC treatment they received. For people with more severe SUDs, acute care is one critical stage in what needs to be a multi-staged process of sustained recovery support.

Unintended Consequences of AC Model: Failure to meet SUD severity criteria denies access to care for many people with mild to moderate substance-related problems and substantial recovery capital. People with the most severe, complex, and chronic SUDs are being repeatedly recycled through AC models of care whose low intensity and duration of services offer little hope of sustainable SUD recovery. (58% of people now admitted to addiction treatment in the U.S. have one or more prior treatment episodes, TEDS Data). I have regularly compared AC models of addiction treatment to providing inadequate dosages or duration of antibiotics in the treatment of bacterial infections. In both cases, treatment leads to temporary suppression of the symptoms but inadvertently leads to resurgence of the condition in a more intractable condition.

Cost-ineffectiveness of AC Model

Millions if not billions of dollars allocated to AC treatment is wasted due to the lack of earlier intervention into alcohol and other drug problems and the lack of long-term post-AC recovery support services. Service utilization and related profits within inpatient and residential treatment programs would plummet if improved recovery rates dramatically reduced multiple treatment admissions. Knowledge of that fact is a major obstacle to needed systems transformation within the addiction treatment industry. Ideally, dollars now allocated almost exclusively to AC treatment of addiction in the U.S. would be reapportioned across the stages of long-term personal and family recovery.

Ethics of Acute Care: Acute care models of addiction treatment that lack assertive outreach to shorten addiction careers and recovery support services across the stages of long-term recovery should be called out for what they are: clinical incompetence and financial exploitation, by consequence if not intent. The practice of recycling people with severe, complex and chronic SUDs repeatedly through AC-limited services is more money machine than “treatment “ and should be professionally and publicly exposed as such.

Alternative to AC Models of Care:

The alternative to the AC model that leaders in the addictions field are exploring is a model of recovery management nested within larger recovery-oriented systems of care.

Recovery management (RM) is a philosophical framework for organizing addiction treatment services to provide pre-recovery identification and engagement, recovery initiation and stabilization, long-term recovery maintenance, and quality-of-life enhancement for individuals and families affected by severe substance use disorders.

Recovery-oriented systems of care (ROSC) are networks of formal and informal services developed and mobilized to sustain long-term recovery for individuals and families impacted by severe substance use disorders. The system in ROSC is not a local, state, or federal treatment agency but a macro-level organization of a community, a state, or a nation. ROSC initiatives provide the physical, psychological, cultural, and social space within local communities in which personal and family recovery can flourish.

Distinctive Features of RM and ROSC

The emerging RM & ROSC vision calls for:

*strengthening the infrastructure of addiction treatment to ensure sustained continuity of support and accountability to the individuals, families, and communities served by addiction treatment institutions;

*more proactive systems of identifying, engaging, and ensuring service access for individuals and families at the earliest possible stage of AOD-related problem development;

*individual, family, and community needs-assessment protocols that are comprehensive, strengths-based, and ongoing;

*the utilization of multidisciplinary and multi-agency service models for supporting long-term recovery for those individuals, families, and neighborhoods experiencing severe, complex, and enduring AOD problems;

*the reconstruction of the service relationship from an expert model to a partnership model involving a long-term recovery support alliance;

*expanding the service menu, with an emphasis on evidence-based and recovery-linked service practices;

*ensuring each client and family an adequate dose and duration of pre-treatment, in-treatment, and post-treatment clinical and recovery support services;

*exerting a greater influence on the post-treatment recovery environment by shortening the physical and cultural distance between the treatment institution and the natural environments of those served, and by intervening directly to increase family and community recovery capital;

*assertive linkage of clients and families to recovery mutual aid groups and other indigenous recovery support institutions;

*post-treatment monitoring (recovery check-ups for up to five years following discharge from primary treatment), ongoing stage-appropriate recovery education, sustained recovery coaching, and, when needed, early re-intervention; and

*the systematic and system-wide collection and reporting of long-term post-treatment recovery outcomes for all individuals and families admitted to addiction treatment.

RM and ROSC system redesign would integrate the now isolated siloes of primary prevention, harm reduction, early intervention, treatment, and recovery support services.

People in personal/family recovery and a vanguard of addiction professionals are working diligently across the country to make this vision a reality. If I had another lifetime to devote to the elevation of the quality of addiction treatment in the United States, this is what I would be trying to achieve.

References:

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) Discharges, 2015. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2018. Accessed February 13, 2020 at https://wwwdasis.samhsa.gov/dasis2/teds_pubs/TEDS/Discharges/TED_D_2015/teds_d_2015_codebook.pdf

Kelly, J. & White, W. (Eds., 2010). Addiction recovery management: Theory, science and practice.  New York:  Springer Science

White, W. (2008).  Recovery management and recovery-oriented systems of care:  Scientific rationale and promising practices.  Pittsburgh, PA:  Northeast Addiction Technology Transfer Center, Great Lakes Addiction Technology Transfer Center, Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health & Mental Retardation Services

Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter. –African Proverb

From Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton: “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?”

Me: “Because I am.”

In the late 1990s, I experienced an epiphany of sorts—a sudden awareness that the addiction field had acquired a massive body of scientific and professional knowledge about alcohol and other drug problems and their clinical treatment but possessed little knowledge of the prevalence, pathways, styles, and stages of long-term personal and family recovery. Being over fifty seemed a strange time to plot a new career direction, but that is what I did. My decision was clear: whatever remaining time I had would be devoted to the scientific study of recovery and pushing the addiction field’s organizing center from a focus on pathology and the nuances of clinical intervention to a focus on the lived experience of long-term recovery. Fortunately, I was not alone in either this awareness or that commitment. The subsequent years witnessed the rise of recovery-focused research scientists and a new generation of recovery advocates. Today, recovery journalism–from the scientific journals to the growing legion of recovery blogs–is coming of age.

When I entered the addictions field in the 1960s, there were two distinct classes of workers:  “professionals” (doctors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers) and “paraprofessionals” (people with lived experience of addiction and recovery). There was little consideration that one could be both a professional AND a person in long-term recovery: you were one or the other. If you had a foot in each world, your legitimacy could be and often was questioned within each—seen as too broken in the professional world and not broken enough in the recovery world. Over time, people in recovery working in the field were extruded as addiction counseling became more professionalized and as those in recovery, as an act of self-protection, hid their recovery identity behind a smokescreen of increasing credentials.

Now for a present story. A lively discussion recently ensued among a group of people in recovery when the name of a prominent recovery advocate came up. The discussion entailed back and forth arguments over whether the person was a “real addict” [in recovery] or an “academic.” Again, notice the binary choice here—a remaining shadow of the past.

Historically disenfranchised people face the stigmatizing judgement of others in ways that limit the vision of their own potential as individuals and as a people. Black children who excel academically are castigated by some of their peers as “acting White” in oppressed, wounded worlds where Blackness and academic achievement are perceived as incongruent. In a similarly distorted worldview, a person with an advanced degree could not be a “real addict” or a “person in recovery.” In that view, academic achievement and eloquent writing are incompatible with the status of addiction recovery. The good news is that such warped views of self and the world are breaking down.

Under the influence of a vibrant recovery advocacy movement and new recovery support institutions (e.g., recovery high schools, collegiate recovery programs, recovery-focused academic mentoring), legions of people in recovery are pursuing college, university, and graduate training, and they are doing so as visible people in recovery. The result is an explosion in recovery-focused writing that spans memoirs, scientific studies, professional papers, popular journal articles, and social media posts. The perception that academic excellence and exemplary writing are incompatible with recovery status is fading among people in recovery, in the professional world of addiction treatment, and among the public. That is a remarkable achievement of historical significance.

I am part of a community of physicians, nurses, pharmacologists, psychologists, social workers, research scientists, historians, authors, educators, addiction professionals, and community activists. AND we are all people in  long-term addiction recovery. If you are a person in recovery, you can be anything you want to be—and still be a person in recovery. Recovery is a launching pad, not a restrictive cage. Don’t let anyone foist you into such a cage.

Eddie, Greene, White, & Kelly, 2019 (Medical Burden)

Earnshaw, Bergman, & Kelly, 2019 (Comfort Disclosing)

Bergman, Kelly, Hoeppner, Vilsaint, & Kelly, 2017 (Digital Recovery)

Bergman, Ashford, & Kelly, 2019 (Opioid Medication Attitudes)