Researcher, historian, practitioner and recovery advocate William (Bill) L White has been the most prolific writer in the addiction recovery field. Bill’s fascinating book Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America is a classic. You can see the Table of Contents here.
As many can testify, Bill is an amazing public speaker. Here is the Norman E. Zinberg Memorial Lecture, Experiencing Recovery, he gave at the Harvard Addiction Conference in 2012. Bill’s lecture is on YouTube, divided into ten parts:
Part 1: Early History of Recovery in the U.S.
Bill describes just how far back recovery goes historically in the US—to Native American Indians in the 1730s! (13’36”)
Part 2: The Rise of Modern Addiction Treatment
An amazing history of recovery and treatment for alcohol and drug addiction. (9’01”)
Part 3: Toward a Recovery Paradigm
Bill talks about the disconnection between recovery and treatment, and asks what do we know about the science of recovery. And how do we define recovery? He tells us how little neuroscience has told us about recovery. (8’50”)
Part 4: Frameworks of Recovery
Bill discusses the degrees/depths of recovery, and how some better people feel ‘better than well’ after recovery. He goes on to describe different types of recovery initiation/maintenance framework and different styles of recovery. (5’53”)
Part 5: Recovery Identity & Cultural Affiliation
Bill focuses on identity, social stigma and recovery styles. He describes how some people hide behind anonymity because they are ashamed of themselves. (6’03”)
Part 6: Recovery Durability Set Point
When does recovery become durable? When does sobriety today predict sobriety for a lifetime? When does my risk of resuming alcohol and drug use and having a recurrence of a substance use disorder plummet? (2’22”)
Part 7: Family Recovery
Bill briefly describes how many families fall apart during the early stages of recovery and points out that as a society we do very little about this. Stephanie Brown describes this effect on family as the trauma of recovery. (2’41”)
Part 8: History of Recovery Support
Bill talks about the various types of recovery support that have existed historically: natural support, limited generalist support within the community, peer recovery (mutual aid) and treatment. He then goes on to describe how things have been changing in recent years. (3’19”)
Part 9: Recovery Advocacy and New Recovery Support Institutions
Bill talks about recovery as a new paradigm and its influence on treatment systems. He goes on to describe the new recovery advocacy movement and new recovery institutions and organisations. Most of this is occurring at a grassroots level. (7’10”)
Part 10: Recovery Paradigm and Addiction Treatment
Bill says he is not a teacher of these issues about recovery, but still a student. He encourages us all to be students of this rapidly changing ecology of recovery in the US. Bill also looks at what we need to do in the future in relation to recovery and recovery-based care. (4’01”)
