“All systems are perfectly designed to get the results they get.” – Don Coyhis

What would happen if we treated substance use with comprehensive, individualized care and support over the long-term? We don’t entirely know; we have never fully tried that approach for the general population. We do know that the kind of care provided physicians and other impaired professionals but not the general public yield really encouraging long term outcomes, yet such care is unavailable for the rest of us. We must change this.

I have been thinking about this since listening to the Podcast The Mayor of Maple Ave written and produced by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sara Ganim about Shawn Sinisi, a young man from Altoona PA known in the neighborhood where he grew up as “The Mayor of Maple Avenue.” As a teen, Shawn was molested by Penn State Coach Jerry Sandusky. He then descended into trauma induced addiction. He was repeatedly failed by the SUD service system and died of an overdose on September 4, 2018, at 26 years old. I felt defeated by the end of the podcast, knowing so many people have worked tirelessly for decades in an attempt to fix the litany of staggering failures it so brutely highlighted.

There are far too many glaring flaws highlighted in this podcast in how people are served for substance use issues to delineate. It reveals a service system that is underfunded. A system in which people receive short duration care at lower intensity than needed provided by a mix of well-intended people and those seeking to profiteer off of highly vulnerable people. One developed in a world that largely defines them as unworthy of help. While listening to the episodes, I thought about all the people I know who have devoted their lives to improving care in these very systems. Candidly, I felt very demoralized by the end of the podcast that despite all their best efforts, this is what our system of care far too often yields. I have watched far too many people die in similar ways. This is the most significant motivator to carry on.

One area that our systems failed Shawn is by not providing integrated SUD and MH care, including services for trauma. My own experience on this came from when I ran a long term licensed long term treatment center for 14 years. There was a state effort to improve public SUD care by integrating MH services. We embraced it. We trained our staff, hired MH counselors, increased our medical and psychiatric services, expanded groups, and generally improved our care for our clients experiencing coexisting mental health conditions. While in some ways it worked, we never got a single extra penny to add all of this care despite all the promises it would come. Funding for care is anemic at best. People get rushed through the system of care, thinly doled out in daily increments justified with mountains of paperwork.

Eventually, all the things we added to serve these patients got cut because we did not receive a single dime to provide them. That backstory does not get told, so the public sees it as a treatment failure and blames providers as incompetent or uncaring rather than more properly viewing it as a funding infrastructure failure. Stigma affirms all the biases of un-helpable people who don’t deserve care served by incompetent providers. This is how the tape generally gets played.

The podcast also talks about the failures of Peer Support. Like most human services, they work better if we invest in supervision. We would never dream of sending workers in other professions out to work in such ways. If a student graduates from nursing school, we do not place them into a critical care setting on day one or ever without close supervision, yet this is exactly what we do in the SUD field, often because the field simply lacks the resources to do it any other way. On one of the episodes, the podcast talks about the wild west world of recovery housing. It suggests improving regulation for recovery housing, which sounds good until you consider that the costs of such oversight is saddled on the shoulders of destitute residents who live in these places. High costs push them out onto the street or a flop house if they are lucky. It calls for the integration of SUD treatment with Healthcare despite our recent survey, OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHANGE – An analysis of drug use and recovery stigma in the U.S. healthcare system showing high rates of stigma against people like me. We do not feel welcome in a healthcare system in which we experience horrible treatment and widespread discrimination.

I may sound critical of the podcast, I am not. It is top notch Journalism. The problems identified throughout it are glaring and very real. Yet, addiction is perhaps our most complex condition, and we continually want to frame it and its resolution in simple terms. I suspect for those who listen to it, it will be a sort of Rorschach test for what one sees as broken about our service system. But as a person who spends a lot of time considering how to fix things, I know that there are ten problems hiding behind every simple sounding solution.

There is no one right treatment or even one intervention we can deploy to fix everything. The easiest way I have found to highlight this is to consider cancer. When cancer is diagnosed, we know that what we consider success is five-year remission and we have a long term, varied interventional strategy entirely individualized for what works on a case-by-case basis informed by the best science we have. Cancer is a broad category of pathology that runs from ranges from slow moving cell division at the threshold of benign to aggressive, fast moving, life-threatening cellular mutation. We deploy a full range of treatments and supports when we discover cancer. We focus on long term resolution given the type of cancer a person has, the stage it is in, where it is found and how far it has spread. Complex considerations informed by science.

We know that, like cancer early intervention with an SUD is critical, the longer an addiction goes under treated or untreated the harder it becomes to resolve. At the same time this tragedy was unfolding, I was working to set up a hearing in the General Assembly on how we have lost most of our service infrastructure for young people here in Pennsylvania. Services most often don’t occur until these kids’ become adults and after they hit the criminal justice system. It is an epic failure. It took several years to set up the hearing and we have not moved the needle very far on care for young people since then, even as we are seeing trends of concern in respect to young people and drug misuse post pandemic.

I have talked about how societal low expectations that people get better set people up by establishing a system of care that provides far less than what people need to heal. We know that anything less than 90 days of care for a person with an SUD is ineffective, and yet we have built an entire care system that only provides a fraction of this to those in need in respect to treatment and nearly nothing beyond it for community support. Our treatment system is designed to provide less than the minimum effective dose of care for nearly all Americans! The analogy is knowing that one needs 10 days of antibiotics to clear an infection and only providing two days of antibiotics as treatment and then blaming the patient for not healing when their infection rages back.

Perhaps the only direction that makes sense is to examine the stability of long term recovery when it can be achieved and to work backwards from that point to better understand it and to provide more people the resources needed to get there. This is called the Five-year recovery paradigm and is based on the statistic that 85% of the people who stay in recovery for five years remain in recovery for the rest of their lives. To do so, we would need to retool our systems by:

Can we envision a system in which people can access residential care without delays or intricate authorization processes, stay there for the time they need, then return to the community to participate in age-appropriate treatment and education? If not, we should ask ourselves why such a vision eludes us. Drug overdoses cost one nation one trillion dollars annually, and alcohol and other drug related consequences eclipses those costs depending on how one measures them. We tend to see this as “those people” who did this to themselves. One of the things that Shawn’s story depicts so clearly is that it is not that simple. “Those people” are us.

No one group holds the solution, and there is tremendous inertia to keep things as they are. Our whole system is built to deliver exactly what we are getting right now. It is perhaps too large an ask to reform our whole system. What would happen if we would run a demonstration project in an average community somewhere in America and in that community, we provided everything people needed to get better over the long term?  I suspect we would learn that doing so would save money and lives. Until then, it seems that the lives of those who suffer do not matter far beyond the families experiencing these tragic losses. It is time we change that, even if we only tried to do so on a small scale, perhaps it would show us that this would be worth doing in all communities across America.

The most important facet of the Mayor of Maple Ave to grasp and act on is that similar stories are unfolding all around us, and we need to act to ensure that the end of these stories include recovery and the kind of life we know can be the probable outcome for people like me when we are given the proper care, for the right duration with the requisite focus on long term support.  

We owe as much to every single Shawn who seeks help from our systems of care.    

As Black History Month concludes, we invited our grant writer Kenya Welch to weigh in on the immense and far-reaching impact of substance use disorders on communities of color, especially Black communities. Here’s what she had to say.

While the current overdose epidemic has been framed as a public health crisis, it has deeper, less sympathetic roots for Black Americans who were categorically criminalized during the “War on Drugs.” While attention to the crisis has focused primarily on White suburban and rural communities, communities of color, and especially Black communities, have experienced dramatic increases in substance use disorders and overdose deaths.

In fact, the rate of increase of Black overdose deaths between 2015-2016 was 40% compared to the overall population increase at 21%, exceeding all other racial and ethnic population groups in the U.S. From 2011-2016, compared to all other populations, Blacks had the highest increase in overdose death rate for opioid deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl and fentanyl analogs. More recently, according to a report by the Boston Medical Center, “while white fatalities have decreased through 2019, opioid overdose deaths among Black Americans — particularly Black men — are accelerating.”

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) have traditionally fared poorly in American healthcare statistics, so the vast disparity in substance-related outcomes for Blacks in America is no surprise. In addition to historical racism in the healthcare system, there are many complex factors involved in treatment and recovery services in communities of color. Although one-size-fits all solutions would be ideal, their effectiveness is simply not reality. As SMART Recovery moves to intentionally increase our presence in diverse communities, how can we be more effective? Here are a few thoughts:

  1. Use local community members as trusted experts and partners. Local community members have unique insight into the needs of their neighbors. Their expertise and participation will be sought to become our partners and collaborators.
  2. Create holistic systems of treatment/care that can help those in recovery to access supportive services. Treatment and recovery do not exist in a vacuum, and support resources like mental health care, job training, and housing are often necessary. SMART recognizes the value of partnerships with community-based organizations that address the many intersecting issues that complicate success.
  3. Decrease obvious barriers that can stand between people and recovery services. For example, have in-person meetings at locations that are in diverse communities, accessible by public transportation, and at times that accommodate participant work schedules.
  4. Representation matters. Use training resources that include diverse communities’ voices, facilitators that practice respect for diverse cultures, and services that recognize and address complex elements like historical distrust, community stigmas, and the need for privacy and confidentiality.
  5. Approach services with humanity and grace. Recognize that no community is monolithic; each of us has a unique story and path leading us to where we are. Our job in the recovery space should be one grounded in respect, compassion, and grace. Our job is to open doors to spaces that are safe enough for all people to walk through.

We would love to hear your ideas on ways we can make SMART a safe space for ALL. Please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

Young and cheerful friends sitting and fry marshmallows near bonfire at night time on the nature

Every one of us goes through times where we feel bogged down by negative emotions, triggered by traumatic or stressful events, and just generally at the end of our ropes. All this negativity can bounce around our heads all day long, serving as continual reinforcement that leads us to feel burnt out, depressed, or anxious. Luckily, we don’t have to live with these thoughts. We can choose to let go and move on. Of course, it’s easier than it sounds. Getting to a place of self-actualization and confidence doesn’t happen overnight. A great way to get started is to take a physical representation of your negative thoughts, like a scrap of paper with a few thoughts jotted down, and destroy it, by tossing it into a bonfire (s’mores optional but highly encouraged). This is freeing and incredibly cathartic as one embarks on their recovery journey. Several of the Twelve Steps touch on making amends and becoming a better version of ourselves. Consider having a releasing ceremony around a bonfire with your closest friends, family members, or even just by yourself.

What exactly is a releasing ceremony? It’s a lot simpler than it probably sounds.

Journaling is already known as an excellent method for reflection and healing. Take that same principle of writing out what’s bothering you and apply it to a scrap of paper – just a shortened list of a few things that have been weighing especially heavy on your mind.

 

Once you feel that you’ve gotten everything in your head onto your scrap of paper, go ahead and throw it into the bonfire. Watch as the paper, filled with resentments and negative thoughts, slowly begins to burn and crisp up, then quickly disappears among the flames. The smoke produced from burning the scraps of paper floats up high into the sky along with the stress and anxiety weighing you down.

 

Now that you’ve seen how easy it can be to let go and focus on positive things that truly matter, reward yourself (and your fellow friends around the fire) with some tasty s’mores. There’s nothing like some comfort food after an emotionally comforting experience. Who ever heard of a bonfire without s’mores anyway?!

Of course, your problems won’t just disappear after burning them up in a fire. However, you should now at least feel a bit less burdened. You confronted something that had been bothering you, looked it in the face, and tossed it away to disappear. Out of sight, out of mind. View this as the first step in a longer process of eventual healing and forgiveness, both to yourself and to those who have wronged you.

***

For more information, resources, and encouragement, “like” the Fellowship Hall Facebook page and follow us on Instagram at @FellowshipHallNC.

 

About Fellowship Hall

For 50 years, Fellowship Hall has been saving lives. We are a 99-bed, private, not-for-profit alcohol and drug treatment center located on 120 tranquil acres in Greensboro, N.C. We provide treatment and evidence-based programs built upon the Twelve-Step model of recovery. We have been accredited by The Joint Commission since 1974 as a specialty hospital and are a member of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers. We are committed to providing exceptional, compassionate care to every individual we serve.

 

The post Tossing Negativity Into the Fire appeared first on Fellowship Hall.

You can call Steve Kind by his official title of National Support Team Administrative Assistant, and he’d be happy to answer, but it would be like calling a fully loaded Maserati just a way to get around. Steve’s role at SMART is multifaceted and extends in many directions, including outreach and marketing. And having a variety of responsibilities on a daily basis is just fine with him.  

Steve has been with SMART since April of 2022, “Having used SMART Recovery on my own quest for sobriety, and later becoming a facilitator, I knew I wanted to be a part of the organization.” He now answers phones and emails, helps connect other organizations and individuals to training, represents SMART at sober events, and is helping figure out how to make SMART more prominent on the web.

Steve is especially suited for helping in the digital realm based on his previous experience as owner of a website design and internet marketing firm. But while increasing search visibility for SMART’s website gives Steve a kick, the real positive of his job is in being there for people, “The most rewarding thing is to have someone reach out to us in need of help and end our communication with them excited to have found a recovery path that works for them.” The excitement goes both ways.

Here are Steve’s responses to the Take 5 Spotlight questions:

  1.  Are there tasks you perform regularly during your workday? I am the frontline for all incoming phone communication. I respond to all general email inquiries or route them to the appropriate team.  I make outreach calls and track progress.
  2. What are a couple of the ways you interact and coordinate your job with national office staff? I interact with the national office staff on a daily basis by either connecting the appropriate staff with the incoming communication or by coordinating with them in outreach efforts.
  3. What is one of the ways that you think you personally make/want to make a difference at SMART? I don’t have an off button.  Whatever is asked of me to help grow the organization I am happy to do.  I want to see meetings available in every area of the countries we serve.  Dogged determination, and a lack of fear in approaching those who could help with that effort, are what I bring to the table.
  4. What is your message to all those dedicated SMART volunteers across the country?
    I find their passion for helping others inspiring!  Our volunteers devote their time and skills to making a difference in people’s lives, and I applaud them all.
  5. What kinds of things are you interested in outside of work? Any hobbies?
    I love reading and writing.  I have authored a book and enjoy reading books on a wide variety of topics.  I enjoy traveling, trying new things (especially ones that scare me), and meeting new people.  I can be happy with a crowd at a concert or sitting quietly with a good book.  I also enjoy a good movie now and then…but they’re usually not as good as the book.  

The bottom line for Steve, no matter what title he might be assigned, is that his work is a response to real human beings in need. And that makes individuals approaching SMART from any direction bound to hit their target of getting help.

Learn more about the Take 5 Spotlight series and see others who have been profiled.

PLEASE NOTE BEFORE YOU COMMENT:

SMART Recovery welcomes comments on our blog posts—we enjoy hearing from you! In the interest of maintaining a respectful and safe community atmosphere, we ask that you adhere to the following guidelines when making or responding to others’ comments, regardless of your point of view. Thank you.

If you are interested in addiction recovery support, we encourage you to visit the SMART Recovery website.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If you or someone you love is in great distress and considering self-harm, please call 911 for immediate help, or reach out to 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline @ 988, https://988lifeline.org/

We look forward to you joining the conversation!

*SMART Recovery reserves the right to not publish comments we consider outside our guidelines.*

‘I notice you’re not drinking, David’, she said. It was more of a question than an observation, but I didn’t answer. We were in an upmarket restaurant having a meal with our professional peer group celebrating the successful delivery of a teaching course on addiction treatment. My colleague, a fellow addiction specialist (not a current or recent colleague), was sitting opposite me at the table, her wine glass full. 

I’d been in this situation before, several times in my recovery, and, as it turned out, would be interrogated subsequently and recurrently by others on my choice not to drink. I could have said, ‘Well if I were to drink, I could end up losing my wellbeing, my good mental health, my job, my relationships, and my freedom to make healthy choices’, but I was two years into recovery – early days – and I didn’t want to disclose my history of alcohol dependence at that point.

Unsatisfied, she began to speculate on my alcohol-free status. ‘Are you driving?’

I said, ‘No Pamela,’ (not her real name) ‘I am not driving’.

Like a cat with an antagonistic mouse, she went on, ‘Are you up early tomorrow then?’

‘No, not particularly’, I responded.

‘Perhaps you had a heavy drinking session last night?’ she asked.

‘No, I didn’t.’

She fixed her gaze on me, determined to have an answer. ‘Well David, why are you not drinking’?

I gave in, not so much out of resignation as mischief. ‘As it happens Pamela, that’s because I’m a recovering alcoholic’.

She looked at me without expression for a second or two longer then turned her head abruptly to the side and said to her neighbour, ‘Hasn’t the weather been terrible recently?’ We didn’t return to the subject again.

Unlikely as it seems, I promise you that this is exactly the way the conversation went. 

There were three things that I took away from that encounter. The first was that my not drinking disturbed her. The second was that my disclosure of being someone in recovery was not something she wanted to acknowledge. The third takeaway was that this indirect pressure for me to drink represented a tangible risk at this early stage in my own abstinent recovery.

Let’s be clear, most people are not bothered by someone who does not drink – after all more than 20% of the population in the UK is teetotal now (higher still for younger people), but where there is resistance, discomfort or challenge, there is usually something else going on.

I’ve been challenged several times at social gatherings about not drinking – ‘Surely you would take a drink if you had something amazing to celebrate? What if someone gave you a gift of a rare single malt whisky – you’d want to taste it – right?’ As it turns out, malt whisky was my drink of choice, so not ideal to be challenged in this way really.

I think such questions come from an often-unrecognised unease around the questioner’s own relationship with alcohol. I certainly had an unhealthy interest in friends’ drinking when amid my own alcohol problems. There is a culture around drinking and often a societal pressure to drink. Not to drink can make you ‘other’.

Early recovery is a challenging time. Relapse never feels very far away and although it’s fairly unlikely many others will experience risky encounters with addiction specialists in social settings, it would be foolish to ignore the very real crocodile-infested waters that can exist for those of us making the perilous passage to recovery. One of those risks relates to advertising.

Although there is not a great deal of research on how alcohol advertising impacts those in recovery, the research which is available shows a high level of awareness of alcohol advertising in this population with concerns that such ads trigger craving.  The Alcohol Health Alliance published a blog a couple of years ago where two people in recovery shared their challenging experiences of being exposed to alcohol advertising in an impossible-to-avoid way. The vulnerability is clear.

It is everywhere – the ads you see on the TV during commercial breaks and during football matches, to the cut price drink deals that follow you around the supermarket from the moment you walk in.

Peter

A rapid review of the literature from last year conducted by researchers at the University of Nottingham, reported by Alcohol Focus Scotland, found there was cause for concern (see box below).

When I joined Twitter a couple of years ago – tweeting about recovery, not drinking – I found myself inundated with adverts for alcohol and had to block them one by one. Interestingly, they were then replaced by adverts for gambling sites. I found the unwanted images frustrating, although not particularly risky, but in early recovery I would have been very reactive around these.

I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it

Mae West

The Scottish Government is currently consulting on reducing alcohol marketing to reduce the appeal of alcohol to young people and reduce risk to higher level drinkers and those in recovery.

For many of us who have severe alcohol use disorders, early recovery is tough. We are vulnerable. While recovering people might want not to drink, the alcohol industry is pretty indiscriminate in its approach. Like the addiction specialist in that restaurant all those years ago, their question is also, ‘Why are you not drinking?’. They then add, ‘You ought to be.’

We need to be supporting people on their recovery journeys and trying to help to reduce triggers. Limiting marketing is one of those ways. If you have any thoughts on this, take some time to participate in the consultation.

Continue the discussion on Twitter @DocDavidM 

Picture credit: Robert vt Hoenderdaal (istockphoto) under license

Across our nation, far too often patients are treated rudely or provided inferior care when their healthcare provider learns that they use drugs, have a history of using drugs or are in recovery. Stigma is often the primary barrier for people seeking help. To shift these negative perceptions and improve care within our healthcare systems, we first must develop insight into the scope of the problem. Then we must commit to changing it.

In April 2022, Elveyst and PRO-A released a report highlighting a large-scale survey of Americans’ opinions regarding perceived social stigma against People Who Use Drugs or are In Recovery (PWUD/IR). How Bad Is It, Really? Stigma Against Drug Use and Recovery in the United States examined differences in perceived societal stigma across a vast range of demographic factors, including age, race, and socioeconomic status. The key learning from that research endeavor was that, despite major efforts by governmental bodies and the nonprofit sector to combat stigma against PWUD/IR, perceived societal stigma remains highly prevalent. Consequently, it is a significant obstacle to improving the policies and practices that can reduce stigma, save lives, and help people thrive in recovery.

We just released a new report earlier this week, Opportunities for Change, An analysis of drug use and recovery stigma in the U.S. healthcare system. It is the largest research survey to date assessing endorsed and perceived substance use and recovery stigma expressed by U.S. healthcare workers, as compared to non-healthcare workers. The report includes key findings from health care workers from across the country, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, paramedics, and healthcare systems support staff.

We decided to examine stigma in medical care settings because improving care for PWUD/IR cannot effectively occur unless we understand the breath and scope of negative perceptions that exist in our healing institutions. The attitudes, perceptions, and biases that healthcare workers have in respect to drug use negatively impact patient care. This is a topic I have explored here many times, including in the May 2022 post on Algorithms of Medical Care Discrimination.

The totality of negativity surrounding drug use and recovery in the healthcare setting is vast, impacting views within the professional practice of many healthcare workers who care for PWUD/IR. It results in fewer people seeking help.

It is a case of “physician heal thyself” as the attitudes are killing those who hold them. 40% of healthcare professionals we surveyed use drugs, have an SUD, or are in recovery. The Ohio PHP Executive Report  Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Health and Well-being of Ohio’s Healthcare Workers, notes that substance use increased 25% during the pandemic. There was also a 375% increase in healthcare workers who report feeling hopeless and overwhelmed. Just like the rest of us, many used drugs to cope with the pain that came with the pandemic. When their use becomes problematic, healthcare workers don’t seek help because of the very attitudes held across their own professions.  

There is no time to change like the urgency created in a crisis. This crisis provides us an opportunity to change our attitudes about one of our biggest public health crisis. It is our hope that are work here contributes to changing the attitudes about substance misuse and addiction within our healthcare system. Changing these attitudes is paramount to improving SUD and other healthcare for PWUD/IR across our nation. In respect to our newest report, Opportunities for Change, our findings include:

We conducted this groundbreaking survey in order to improve the care of PWUD/IR receive within our healthcare systems. We cannot properly help people who experience issues with their substance use within a system of care with these pervasive attitudes. This is our opportunity for change and millions of Americans are depending on us to improve these attitudes and by extension the care provided to PWUD/IR.

Substance misuse and addiction and the corresponding stigma are complex issues which will require broad systemic changes to resolve. Addressing these issues will require leadership that brings together our healthcare systems and the communities impacted by the pervasive negative perceptions that exist within these systems. There is cause for hope, as we note that there are segments of care within these facets of this survey which suggest more open attitudes about us, but much more needs to be done. We envision processes that support dialogue to improve these perceptions and as a result, improve the healthcare of millions of Americans who use drugs or are in recovery.

Please feel free to circulate this report. Please also share your thoughts on our findings and on ways to improve the attitudes about substance use or to continue this much needed conversation.

Markita Renee is thriving. Now four-plus years in recovery, she runs OOAK Services LLC where she is a recovery coach, motivational speaker, and facilitator. In addition to that, Markita works part-time as an employment specialist for the state of Connecticut’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, facilitates two SMART Recovery meetings, and loves being a great mom to her daughter Si’miaya. And how all of this came together still amazes her.

It was just a few years ago that Markita’s life was a swirl of chaos and longing. In 2014 she lost all contact with her son after he was taken by his father, in 2015 she and her daughter became homeless, and during this time she was under court supervision for a felony charge. All these circumstances fueled her  opioid use disorder and compounded alcohol misuse going back to her college days. She managed to get a job, but continued to struggle with substances. At one point everything crystallized into a gut-wrenching realization, followed by a single question, “Either I’m going to kill myself from overdose…or am I going to face what is in front of me and fight?”

This brutally honest insight seemed to trigger positive motion. Markita seized an opportunity to relocate from Oklahoma after her legal issues were resolved and joined a family member in Connecticut. She was working but it wasn’t a good situation. Markita took a deep breath and decided to believe in herself enough to leave and look for something better, and that was when she started OOAK Services. Right after that the March 2020 pandemic lockdown happened.

At this critical point Markita’s resolve to face any and all circumstances and fight for a better life was fully in effect. She chose to go back to school and study psychology, “I decided that the pandemic was a blessing in disguise, took that energy, and applied it to my education.” Then, in what she sees as a sort of destiny, she found SMART Recovery.

The class assignment was to research an organization in the recovery field. Markita doesn’t know exactly how it happened, but SMART popped up on her computer and it was an instant, heart-felt connection. SMART’s focus on self-empowerment and practical tools resonated mightily. She liked that it wasn’t about being told what to do—something Markita had always resisted while growing up. She wanted to know more and go beyond that class assignment.

Markita decided to learn everything she could about SMART and that led her to take the meeting facilitator training. It felt natural and right, “With SMART [you have] so many tools, so many resources, but you create your own path, it’s up to you.” That is the primary message she reinforces for participants in her meetings, but there are other aspects of being involved in SMART that are important to her.

Markita agreed to join a SMART committee that is focused on increasing diversity and inclusion for the BIPOC community, and was a panelist at a recent webinar examining diversity issues. For her, it’s a matter of BIPOC individuals being able to see that there is a place in SMART for them, and that people who look like them are part of the organization.

Markita’s next goal is to get a master’s degree and become a therapist. She sees this as her calling, a way to, “Grow and elevate and serve my purpose of why I’m here as a human being.” From SMART’s perspective, Markita is already serving a great purpose by bringing her gifts and positive attitude to those in her meetings and the larger SMART community.

Around this time of year, love is in the air and people everywhere are ready to celebrate that love with the ones closest to them. Sounds perfect, right? Well, if you don’t have that special someone to share the holiday with this year, you may not be feeling like celebrating. On the other hand, maybe you do have a loved one you’d like to enjoy Valentine’s Day with, but you’re early in your recovery and worried that not being able to indulge in your past V-Day traditions – champagne, wine, cocktails – will prove to be too triggering or difficult and lead to relapse. Either way, February 14th may not seem like the stress-free day of love that it used to be.

Here are a few ideas to help you get out of your head and be able to enjoy the holiday of love with your partner, your family, or with your own company – which can be the best company there is!

 

However you end up spending your Valentine’s Day, remember: You are not alone. One of the most important recovery messages rings even truer on a holiday centered around love and deep, meaningful social interactions. No matter what your situation is, there are people out there who support you and are ready to show you and your recovery love whenever you are ready to receive it. Enjoy your holiday, and more importantly, enjoy those chocolates!

***

For more information, resources, and encouragement, “like” the Fellowship Hall Facebook page and follow us on Instagram at @FellowshipHallNC.

 

About Fellowship Hall

For 50 years, Fellowship Hall has been saving lives. We are a 99-bed, private, not-for-profit alcohol and drug treatment center located on 120 tranquil acres in Greensboro, N.C. We provide treatment and evidence-based programs built upon the Twelve-Step model of recovery. We have been accredited by The Joint Commission since 1974 as a specialty hospital and are a member of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers. We are committed to providing exceptional, compassionate care to every individual we serve.

The post Keeping Love Alive: Navigating Valentine’s Day in Recovery appeared first on Fellowship Hall.

Aaron Adkins loves everything about being in recovery. He lists the support he gets from his SMART Recovery peers, the practical tools he uses to address negative thinking, the understanding and insight he gains from being a meeting facilitator, and, perhaps most especially, being able to give back as a mentor to other facilitators. “It’s been a wonderful way for me to understand how I do what I do…being able to teach something just kind of takes me to the next level.”

Certainly, the level Aaron exists on today is much higher than when he was struggling with his addictions. There were two arrests for driving under the influence, job losses, financial ruin, visits to the emergency room and multiple mental health crises. It didn’t matter whether he lived in California or moved his troubles to Washington D.C.: what finally helped end the chaos was the discovery of SMART.

Aaron embraced SMART’s principles and practices starting in 2017, and began making better decisions about how he interacted with the world. He overcame his fear of making changes, and now celebrates developing new skills to confront distorted thinking using SMART’s ABC tool and others. He treasured the help he got from his meeting facilitator, and eventually took a suggestion to become a facilitator himself. From there, it was a natural choice to want to share his experience through SMART’s Facilitator Mentoring Program.

“Recovery is not going to be successful for me if I just take my sack of gold and walk away,” says Aaron. Instead, he finds teaching the tools to new facilitators not only helps them find their own strengths but energizes him. He says the essence of being a mentor is, “Being able to partner with someone on their journey, help them find their path, hold up that lantern…” In other words, he says, “Nobody has to go it alone when it comes to being a SMART facilitator.”

Aaron says the time and energy he devotes to mentoring is not a burden; instead, “It’s the gift I didn’t know I wanted.”  And it’s safe to say that those whom Aaron mentors and interacts with feel they are receiving a great gift themselves. 

For more information about the Facilitator Mentoring Program, visit here

Today is the 10 year anniversary of my organizational workplace making the switch to a tobacco-free campus.

Prior to the change I was involved in organizing and leading our attempts to address tobacco smoking. After we made the switch to a tobacco-free campus, I looked back and realized those earlier efforts were like our organization going through the stages of change.

Making the switch to a tobacco free campus was a total team effort and involved leadership from every part of the organization. It required input and support from every department. Here’s an article we published in 2014 about our change process. It’s a quick and accessible read that covers a lot of ground from rationale, to policy and procedures, obtaining staff buy-in, and more.

Looking back across the ten years, what are some main takeaways or points of learning? A few come to mind.

Sustaining a change is different from making a change.

I’ll close with a word of encouragement related to community. During the early years of our process I learned that other organizations were also making this change, or preparing to. And I learned there are people with career-length expertise on this topic working in academia, public health, policy, and diverse community settings. And I came to realize, as is so common in our work, that the vast majority of them are very ready, willing, and able to share what they know, give away what they have, and help others succeed. I learned, at the organizational-leadership level, we don’t have to do this alone and that allowing others to help us is a very good thing.

Related Reading

Our Unconscious Relationship with Tobacco. This challenging article encourages the reader to reflect on the topic from a relatively uncommon perspective.

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