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Dr. Amanda Fallin-Bennett, Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing, has successfully competed for National Institute for Health funding as well as a variety of state and…
Read MoreNo matter how old you are, what your musical taste is or whether or not you can read a note, there’s never a wrong time to learn how to play an instrument.
Read MoreThe FIRST STEP Act was recently passed and was signed by the President. This was historical. Federal passage of the FIRST STEP Act provides action on criminal justice reform. Ultimately, the FIRST STEP Act is one step in the right direction for reducing mass incarceration in the United States. The Second Chance Act reauthorization was recently included in the FIRST STEP Act. The changes will reduce incarceration for a number of lesser offenses, many involving drugs.
Read MoreTechnologies to promote recovery have targeted the individual with only token interest in interventions in larger social networks. Three provocative discoveries challenge this limited focus: 1) An individual’s prognosis for addiction recovery is profoundly influenced by the family and social environment—a point now widely acknowledged but rarely reflected in the clinical treatment of substance use disorders, 2) the resolution of alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems is often a product of social contagion–multiple people within an extended social network simultaneously initiating and maintaining recovery, and 3) the greater the density of recovery carriers within a social milieu, the greater the likelihood other addicted members within that milieu will initiate recovery.
Read MoreWith the federal passage of the FIRST STEP Act, we finally see action on criminal justice reform! The FIRST STEP Act recently passed and was signed by the President. This was historical. For years, Congress had attempted to pass criminal justice reform legislation, such as the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act (SRCA) introduced in 2015 by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Read MoreRecent blogs on this site have featured Bill White’s Blasts from the Past. Also profiles from our Recovering Moms who are in the know and in the now. I contribute from my lived experience of the past and relate it to the now. I noted that an event would be held in the future—January 24— in Los Angeles, featuring a Recovery Ambassador training followed by a dinner and gala fundraiser. Faces & Voices of Recovery is working on a web site page for and about recovery ambassadors after the L.A. training. We can spotlight all who have taken the training who are now leading recovery advocacy efforts as recovery ambassadors or as recovery carriers. Recovery carriers? Read on for more…
Read MoreAddiction Professional, December 27, 2018
Attending Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings had reinforced Alan Wartenberg, MD’s recovery for years, until the early 1990s when he started overseeing medical services at New England programs that offered methadone treatment. The reaction the internist says he then received from some members of the NA fellowship ran the gamut from uncomfortable to downright menacing.
Read MoreI listen to the radio. The seasonal carols have begun. I Hark!—and sing along. I repeat and repeat the sounding joy. Of course, many stories and carols focus on the news of old, proclaiming, “unto us a child is born.” I recall the words of that grown up child who, it is written, said, “if you don’t believe in me, believe in what I teach.” Of course, the radio also brings snooze news, commercials galore, and talk shows. Beyond the nativity is the negativity.
Read MoreMy relationships with White Bison founder Don Coyhis and with the Native American Wellbriety Movement are among the most important influences on my recovery advocacy and recovery research activities. I first met Don in the late 1990s as rumblings of a new addiction recovery advocacy movement in the United States were just beginning. In the years that followed, Don and I had innumerable opportunities to collaborate. We served together on boards of recovery advocacy organizations, shared speaking platforms at national conferences, and co-authored numerous articles and a book on the history of recovery in Native America. Through those years we mentored each other and became endeared friends—brothers of another mother, as is sometimes said.
Read MoreThe rise of an international recovery advocacy movement is, country by country, expanding the physical, psychological, social, and political space in which long-term personal and family recovery can flourish. Earlier posts have highlighted such efforts in Canada, the UK, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and East Africa. Today, we explore recovery advocacy in the Republic of Ghana in West Africa.
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