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Recovery Stories Blog

‘Coping in Early Recovery: The Toddler Stage’ by Stephanie Brown

images-1In my last blog on Stephanie Brown’s book  A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation, I looked at what Stephanie describes as the Baby Stage of early recovery. Here, I look at what Stephanie says of ‘The Toddler Stage’.

‘As a baby moves into the toddler stage, she begins to acquire a new kind of learning. She begins to pick up language, which builds the foundation for understanding and forming ideas.

Similarly, the woman born newly into abstinence begins what is called cognitive learning. She listens to others telling the stories of what they did in the past and what they do now. She begins to hear a new language, the language of recovery, and, like a toddler, begins to form her new self and her new identity around the acceptance of her addiction. She comes to know the words, “I am an alcoholic” or “I am an addict” and build her new, strong sense of self on this foundation…’

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‘Powering America’ by John McKnight

UnknownI want to follow up John McKnight’s video from the other day with one of his blogs, from March 2011.

‘In a neighborhood, people are empowered by the work they do together.  Often, they use this power to confront institutions and advocate for the neighborhood’s self-interest.  In this kind of action, power is understood as our ability to get someone else to do something for us.  This is the consumer power of confrontation.

The other kind of neighborhood power results when we come together to create something for ourselves – from ourselves.  This is the power of citizens engaged in community building.

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John McKnight on where change begins

“One of those men belong to one association and one belongs to none. Statistically, the one who belongs to one association will live two years longer than the one who belongs to none. Now you can measure medical interventions, but hardly any would claim that they make you live two years longer.”

In his forty years working with impoverished American communities, John McKnight witnessed incredible social change at the grassroots. He discovered that the majority of the solutions to issues like unwanted teenage pregnancy and crime depended on empowering local citizens and building relationships at the community level.

Although social innovations disrupt the status quo in boundary-breaking and sector-spanning ways, change begins with the individual and their surrounding network.

‘A healthy mind in a healthy society’ by Dinyar Godrej

rsz_imagesHere’s a wonderful blog on the mental health scene from the New Internationalist magazine.

Sitting in the waiting room of a busy psychologists’ practice in Rotterdam, I’m intrigued by the furtive nature of the experience. People waiting for their 50 minutes of focused talk avoid each other’s eyes, acknowledging each other with embarrassment, if at all. I could be in the waiting room of a sexually transmitted diseases clinic.

I’m a bit puzzled. With the increased familiarity of stress-related problems nowadays, shouldn’t this kind of guilt (no other word quite captures it) be a thing of the past?

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‘Felling the Forest’ by Rebecca Daddow

get-low-blog-imageHere’s an interesting blog from Rebecca Daddow of Nurture Development.

‘This past weekend, I watched the film Get Low – it was recommended to me by Cormac following a conversation about Community Builders (can you spot who the Community Builder is in the film?). It is a film filled with wonderful acknowledgements of the gifts we possess and find naturally around us. In many ways, it speaks to some of the core values of ABCD.

One of the scenes that resonated most with me sees the main character, Felix, walking through the forest that grows on his land with an old friend, Mattie, who he has reconnected with after 40 years of self-imposed isolation:

Mattie: “It really is beautiful out here. It probably looked like this everywhere 100 years ago.”

Felix: “If you leave things alone, they know what to do”

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‘How Do I Cope in Early Recovery?’ by Stephanie Brown

rsz_dscf0052_2In my last blog on Stephanie Brown’s book  A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety, and Radical Transformation, I looked at what women can expect in early recovery, in particular in relation to their feelings. Stephanie goes on to look at the question, ‘How Do I Cope?’

‘If you are like many other women in early abstinence, you feel inadequate, maybe even dumb. How did you get yourself into this predicament? And what do you do now? How do you stay away from your drug of choice and every other drug too? How do you focus on yourself one day at a time?…

How do you tell your family that you need to stop drinking and that you need meetings when they don’t think anything is wrong? Or when they’re so angry they don’t want to stick around while you get well. Most of all, how do you survive each moment and each day when the pain is so great and you are so scared?’

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‘Social Actions to Control Addiction: Reviving Community Art’ by Bruce Alexander

rsz_slum_151210_fct951x585x28_t460In my humble opinion, one of the great thinkers in the addiction field is Bruce Alexander. In his excellent book, The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, Bruce talks about addiction arising from people becoming disconnected (or dislocated) from the close ties to family, culture, and traditional spirituality that constituted the normal fabric of life in pre-modern times.

In the closing chapter of his book, Bruce describes some social actions to control addiction. What he describes are social actions that will NOT necessarily reduce addiction directly, but will help counter some of the adverse effects of our free market society and globalisation, factors that are leading to marked increases in addiction of all kinds.

In this blog, I’ll look at one of these suggested actions – Reviving Community Art – quoting directly from Bruce’s book:

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’10 Mistakes That Could Ruin Your Addiction Recovery’ by Addiction Helpline

rsz_ten-recovery-mistakesThis is an interesting article on the traps you may fall into in your recovery, published by Addiction Helpline in the UK.

‘It takes a significant amount of effort to break away from addiction. You could do all the right things, like going to rehab, yet you still end up more or less back where you started. This is a real shame, but it is always preventable. The reason people end up ruining their recovery is they go off track – this starts by falling into one of the common traps.

Here are 10 mistakes you will want to avoid to enjoy a lasting recovery:

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‘Addiction can’t always be cured so let’s focus on quality of life’ by David Best

rsz_3ycm9w7x-1380697705David Best has a new short article out in The Conversation. Would be great if you could sign up and comment. 

‘Alcohol and substance abuse costs the Australian economy A$24.5bn a year. The human toll from accidents, overdoses, chronic disease, violence, mental illness and family disruption, however, is immeasurable.

Modern, evidence-based policy responses to addiction focus on treatment, where patients aim to withdraw from drugs through therapy and medications. Harm-minimisation strategies such as the supply of clean needles and syringes and the prescribing of substitution medications are also key elements of Australia’s drug strategy.

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‘A Celebrity Death, Addiction, and the Media’ by Gabor Mate

rsz_1gabormateabout-330x330One of my favourite people in this field is Gabor Mate from Vancouver, whose book In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts is a classic. Here is the first posting on Gabor’s new blog, well worth a look.

‘It is always big news when a celebrity is stricken dead by a substance overdose. What never makes the news is why such tragedies happen.

The roster of drug- and alcohol-related show-business deaths is ever expanding: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Keith Moon, Kurt Cobain; in the recent past, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston; and, most recently of all, Cory Monteith. A complete list would, of course, include many others.

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‘Narcotics Anonymous Comes of Age’ by Bill White

rsz_201307diamondjubileelogoBill White has recently written a blog and co-authored an article on the 60th Anniversary of NA.

‘Narcotics Anonymous (NA) is too often relegated to the status of stepchild of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).  NA’s unique history, culture, and distinctiveness are routinely obscured within references to “AA and other Twelve Step programs.” 

For the past several years, Chris Budnick, Boyd Pickard and I have been conducting research on the history of NA, and we recently authored an article commemorating the 60th anniversary of NA’s founding.  In this article we identified and discussed 12 things we believed every addiction professional should know about NA.

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‘The Four Walls’ by Mark Ragins

rsz_markHere’s some great earlier writing on recovery from Mark Ragins, who set up The Village in California. This is what recovery is about!

‘In 1989, the California State Legislature authorized the funding for three model mental health programs, including the Village Integrated Service Agency in Long Beach, in part to answer the question, “Does anything work?”

We created a radical departure from traditional mental health services basing our entire system on psychosocial rehabilitation principles, quality of life outcomes and community integration. Arguably, we have created the most comprehensive, integrated and effective recovery based mental health program anywhere.

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On Healing: Mary

rsz_jimn_jim_falls‘You know, I don’t think most Murri people have idea about healing. A lot of people I know think healing is just going to the doctor and getting fixed up – getting some pills or something like that. Faith healers – religion – stuff like that.

Saddest thing is they don’t even realise that they’ve got all the coping mechanisms, and they’ve been healing themselves all these years. If it was pointed out to them, things would really start to happen. They would build on it, because they know things are wrong, but they just don’t know what to do about it.

What I’ve learnt is, healing is facing up to the fact that you’ve got choices, and there is no need to live your life in this pain. You can always get out of it.

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Development of the recovery model in the mental health field, Part 1

rsz_emil_kraepelin_1926A recovery revolution is occurring in both the addiction and mental health arenas that is challenging practices within both fields. In various places in different countries, recovery is becoming the concept around which addiction and mental health systems of care are being organised.

A transformation of systems of care is underway, shifting away from systems based on pathology to ones that promote wellness and recovery. Hopefully, these changes will also see a much needed bridging between the addiction and mental health fields.

Where did this interest in recovery arise? And why do we feel that we need to change our present systems of care? In this, and in following blogs, I will look briefly at the development of the recovery model in the mental health field.

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The Anchor Recovery Community Centres

rsz_kennedy-anchor-visit‘I think that stigma will most likely be changed when the community sees us acting differently, in the community as people in recovery. Contributing to the community, you know… blood drive or cleanup. Citizenship.

I say to folks all the time, “By our silence, we let other people define us.”‘

I just love this video clip from ManyFaces1Voice, so much energy in it. And I’m really impressed by the look and feel of The Anchor Recovery Community that is shown. 

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On Healing: Jackie

rsz_1outback-sunset-880‘Healing is a really confusing word. When I first thought of it I thought I would go along and all this pain was going to be healed and at the finish I would just walk away and I would be healed, but now I know healing means learning.

Learning about yourself – learning about looking at things in a different way. Understanding how those things came to be.

Owning your own things, but not taking on board other people’s things. Being responsible for what you are responsible for, but not for other people’s responsibilities.

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Mindfulness Video Testimonial: Gareth Walker

Gareth, the founder of the Everyday Mindfulness website, talks about the benefits of practising mindfulness and how it helped him changed his life for the better.

‘The cumulative effect of not getting entangled in these stories of the mind has been an enormous benefit to my wellbeing and to the amount of peace I experience. The change in my life has been absolutely enormous.”

On Healing: Lorna

rsz_aa10‘The word healing – it means to me [that] I need to look at all my pain. Feel the pain and release it. Work with it, talk about it, and let it go, rather than hold on to it, locking it up inside myself.

I need a safe place where I can talk about my pain, all the pain that I have had in my life, my drinking in my marriage, my childhood, to to be able to sit and feel free enough to talk about it to get it out of me. I had it in me for so long, too long.

I believe that’s when the healing takes place, when I can feel well enough in myself to talk honestly about how I feel, what happened to me, what it was like for me. It is action healing. That it what I found for myself. It is action.

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‘Recovery for the Health of It’ by Bill White

rsz_heatlh_imageThe threats to health that occur during active addiction have been widely communicated in the popular media and in the scientific literature, but the health profile of  people in long-term recovery from substance use disorders remains something of a mystery. 

While one might assume that physical and emotional health rapidly improves following recovery initiation and stabilization, a health survey of Philadelphia and surrounding counties just published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs reveals a more complex and ominous picture.

In 2010, the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services contracted with the Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC) to incorporate recovery-focused items into PHMC’s 2010 Southeastern Pennsylvania (SEPA) Household Health Survey of Philadelphia and four surrounding counties. 

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No matter what, somebody is going to get better today

rsz_400187010_640I love this film clip from ManyFaces1Voice! So enthusiastic, energetic and inspiring. I feel the recovery. Thank you, Neil. Film clips like this form the making of the film The Anonymous People by Greg Williams make a difference. There’s real Recovery Energy in the US!

“I had written down a couple of notes and I threw my main script away and I just said, ‘I know what you’re going to do. I know you got… I know these are hard budget times and this is a hard struggle for you. I know you’ve got some hard choices. You’re going to cut us, I can see that.

No matter what, somebody is going to get better today. Somebody is going to sit in a church basement or sit knee-to-knee with someone else in recovery and get it. Someone is getting recovery today, no matter what you do. I just need you to know that, that’s it out there, we’re out there.

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