Resource Library
Recovery Resource Library
Since 2001, Faces & Voices of Recovery has been producing position papers, infographics, reports, toolkits and much more. Click on the link below to view our publications:
The Concept of Recovery as an Organizing Principle for Integrating Mental Health and Addiction Services
Despite a range of long-standing historical, political, ideological, professional, structural, and practical barriers, there has been, and continues to be, a clear consensus that integration between mental health and addiction services is sorely needed and long overdue. This paper focuses on one dimension of the challenge of integration from among the several—the conceptual—and proposes the…
The Creation of AA and its Iconic Text
Considerable research has been done on the birth and early evolution of A.A. since Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous by Harvard-trained historian Ernie Kurtz was published in 1979. Ernie was subsequently encouraged and enthralled by each new historical discovery about A.A. but remained in the final years of his life disappointed that no one had since…
The Digitalization of Recovery: Supporting Those Left Behind
Recent essays in this series predicted the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the future of addiction recovery and celebrated the resilience of communities of recovery as they transitioned from face-to-face to online recovery support meetings. This brief article calls attention to those potentially left behind in this transition to digital support and explores the ethical and effective implementation…
The Ecology of Recovery Revisited
For more than two decades, advocates with lived experience of addiction recovery have tried to shift the conceptual center of the addictions field from a focus on addiction-related pathology and deficit-focused models of assessment and treatment to a focus on resilience and recovery. A less heralded effort has been to extend the intrapersonal focus on…
The Ethics of Public Recovery Self-Disclosure
Ethics involves the application of moral principles to promote good and prevent harm. Ethical decision-making within our service and advocacy activities is an assessment of the ratio of potential benefits to potential harms in any course of action—with a particular emphasis on “first do no harm.” Such decision-making involves asking ourselves three questions. First, what…
The Evidence For and Against Evidence-Based Practice
Over the years, there have been many developments and changes in the way that social interventions and clinical treatments have been delivered, including the introduction of behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapies (e.g., Lazarus, 1971; Thomas, 1967), the move toward time-limited, task-structured interventions (Mullen, Dumpson, & Associates, 1972; Reid & Epstein, 1972), and the use of manuals…
The Illuminating Recovery of Dr. Oliver Sacks
One of my favorite authors is Dr. Oliver Sacks, the famed clinical neurologist and author of such works as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and Seeing Voices. Two of Sacks books (Hallucinations and On the Move) and a Sacks biography (And How Are You, Dr. Sacks by Lawrence Weschler) recount Sacks early drug experimentation, his eventual…
The Impact of COVID-19 on Black and Latino communities in the U.S.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has revealed deep-seated inequities in health care for communities of color, and amplifies social and economic factors that contribute to poor health outcomes. Recent news reports indicate that the pandemic disproportionately impacts communities of color, compounding longstanding racial disparities. Learn more about the impact of COVID-19 on Black and Latino communities…
The Importance of Role Clarity and Role Integrity
The recent growth in peer-based recovery support services as an adjunct and alternative to addiction treatment has created heightened ambiguity about the demarcation of responsibilities across three roles: 1) voluntary service roles with communities of recovery, e.g., the role of the sponsor within Twelve Step programs, 2) clinically focused addiction treatment specialists (e.g., certified addiction…
The Irrationality of Addiction Treatment
The most cursory review of the history of addiction treatment reveals a long tradition of inadvertent harm in the name of help (iatrogenic illness). Such treatment insults span bleeding, purging, and toxic, mercury-laden medicines in the 18th century. They include the fraudulent boxed and bottled home cures and the use of cocaine to treat morphine…