‘Community Recovery’: Bill White

An excellent paper by Arthur Evans, Roland Lamb and Bill White, highlighted in a blog by the latter, which I originally posted in December 2013.

‘In the Red Road to Wellbriety, the individual, family and community are not separate; they are one.  To injure one is to injure all; to heal one is to heal all.’ The Red Road to Wellbriety, 2002

As a field, we have long known that the effects of personal addiction ripple through families, social networks and organizations.  But might whole communities and whole cultures be so wounded by prolonged alcohol and other drug problems that they are themselves in need of a sustained recovery process?  This suggestion is the premise of a new paper co-authored by Dr. Arthur Evans, Jr., Roland Lamb and myself just published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly.

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‘Community Recovery’ by Bill White

Wellbriety Movement 2Another excellent paper by Arthur Evans, Roland Lamb and Bill White, highlighted in the latter’s recent blog.

“In the Red Road to Wellbriety, the individual, family and community are not separate; they are one.  To injure one is to injure all; to heal one is to heal all.” The Red Road to Wellbriety, 2002
 
As a field, we have long known that the effects of personal addiction ripple through families, social networks and organizations.  But might whole communities and whole cultures be so wounded by prolonged alcohol and other drug problems that they are themselves in need of a sustained recovery process?  This suggestion is the premise of a new paper co-authored by Dr. Arthur Evans, Jr., Roland Lamb and myself just published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly.

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‘The Role of Harm Reduction in Recovery-oriented Systems of Care: The Philadelphia Experience’

images‘While harm reduction can be viewed as an end in itself with a focus on mitigating harm to individuals, families and the community as a whole, harm reduction strategies can also be viewed collectively as a platform or point of access for promoting long-term health, and, for those with severe alcohol and other drug problems, long-term personal and family recovery.

If our goal is to promote health and reclaim lives, then we must understand the direct and sometimes circuitous paths through which individuals and families achieve and sustain such health. We must meet each individual and family with fresh eyes in every encounter with a belief that each encounter is an opportunity for movement, no matter how small, towards health and wholeness.’ Arthur C. Evans, Jr., 2013

‘Bridging the harm reduction and traditional addiction treatment and recovery worlds “requires openness to the possibility that our worldview and the cherished concepts we use to describe it may need to become subtler, more fine-grained, amended or even discarded; and, that approaches which don’t work for one person can, equally, be life-saving for others, when all the time our own beliefs, experiences, perhaps even our entire biography, shouts out that this can’t be so.” Neil Hunt, 2012

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‘I was confronted by a sight I will not forget for as long as I live’ by Wynford Ellis Owen

rsz_img_2082My good friend Wynford Ellis Owen toured recovery centres and initiatives in the north-east of America late in 2010. He used some of the information he gleaned from this trip to help him build The Living Room recovery centre in Cardiff. Wynford wrote a number of blogs on this trip and here is part of one from mid-November 2010.

“People in recovery have a real understanding of what it means to struggle to be OK as opposed to what it means to struggle to seem OK.”

One of the many insightful sayings that punctuated my conversation over dinner this evening (Tuesday 9th November) with Roland Lamb, Director of the Office of Addiction Services in the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioural Health and Mental Retardation Services (DBH/MRS).

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Roland Lamb interview: “The Struggle Continues, The Victory is Certain”

P1010948Last year, I blogged about Bill White’s interview with Roland Lamb, one of the key players in helping transform the behavioural healhcare system in Philadelphia to a system based on recovery. This system is concerned with both mental health and addiction, and is a $1 billion system caring for over 100,000 people.

I’ve combined my four blogs into one, which highlights key parts of this very interesting interview. There is a lot we can learn from the Philadelphia in transforming our own behavioural health are systems.

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