African American Recovery Development
A Q&A with Dr. Jonathan Lofgren
This Q&A, facilitated by Jeremiah Gardner of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, was originally published for Hazelden Betty Ford’s monthly Recovery Advocacy Update. If you’d like to receive our advocacy emails, subscribe today.
In the world of recovery, Dr. Jonathan Lofgren has done it all. For 35 years, he has served people affected by substance use and mental health conditions as an educator and trainer, advocate, clinician, organizational leader, nonprofit founder and peer. Inspired by his own recovery, which began in 1987, he earned a doctorate in education from Capella University and a master’s degree in community counseling psychology from Springfield College. A licensed counselor and co-occurring disorders professional diplomate, he is now a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers and a fulltime faculty member at Minneapolis College, where he founded the collegiate recovery program in 2017.
Dr. Lofgren serves on the boards of the Association of Recovery in Higher Education and Twin Cities Recovery Project, a recovery community organization founded, led by and primarily serving African Americans. In 2021, he also co-founded the Center for African American Recovery Development (CAARD), where he still serves on the board. He has devoted much of his career to equitable access and culturally congruent services for African Americans and, in February 2023, was inducted into the Museum of African American Addictions, Treatment and Recovery Hall of Fame. After seeing Dr. Lofgren and learning about CAARD at the 2022 Faces & Voices of Recovery Annual Summit, it was great to catch up and learn more.
Q — Dr. Lofgren, thank you for your recovery advocacy and leadership over all these years. I want to start by asking a three-part question about your personal recovery: What was the most pivotal moment in your journey from addiction to recovery, what does recovery look like for you now, and how has it empowered the many aspects of your life?
Well, this answer might be a full article onto itself; big questions like this make me think too much. Following some early-life adverse experiences and trauma in adolescence, what truly sprung me toward recovery was the loss of my brother; he suffered from co-occurring substance use and mental health problems … to the point of suicide. Ten days after his untimely death, I found myself entering treatment.
I lived with my brother at the time. I received the call from the park police. I had to tell our parents. I felt the weight of his loss impacting my own substance use problems. And I had every intention of continuing to use after my 10 days of treatment. My counselor even told me I wasn’t going to make it because I was closed-off. However, something greater than myself moved me; I couldn’t use again despite my intentions.
Thankfully, I went to a halfway house and found an African American Men’s group at an amazing community treatment center (African American Family Services). That’s where I started to gain my recovery footing and found a sponsor and some amazing brothers working recovery programs. Today, recovery is literally everything. I attend a few All-Recovery meetings but not with the fever-pitch frequency I did during my first 10 years of recovery. My life remains centered on recovery — on trying to live a good and meaningful life, leveraging my privileges on behalf of my family, community, culture, students, service, and folx I have the good fortune to come in contact with.
Q — It was exciting to learn about the Center for African American Recovery Development and its mission of advancing the development and sustainability of African American recovery community organizations (RCOs). What influenced the founding of CAARD, who was involved with you, and what are the near-term goals and long-term vision?
I met historian and advocate William White in Washington, DC, around 1998 or so. We had lunch with a mutual friend. William asked us: “What do you think about starting a new peer-focused recovery movement?” We were like: “That sounds cool.” Over the course of the early 2000s, we saw this movement emerge, grow and take root in the landscape of addiction, treatment and recovery. What became glaringly clear, though, was that this new recovery revolution was not finding its way into communities of color; RCOs were not being set up in Black and Brown communities. I’m sure I’m not the only person to recognize this as a familiar pattern. Much too often, diverse communities are excluded when evidence-based innovations are implemented. So, I consulted with some colleagues and thought leaders on the subject, and then wrote: A Black Paper: Moving the Recovery Movement into the Black Community across the United States. I worked to get a few folx together and explore this critical issue, and about six years later re-convened people to get to work on bringing RCOs and recovery support to African Americans across our country. Eventually this amazing group of people formed CAARD, and now we are assisting multiple African American communities (Memphis; Minneapolis, Mobile, AL; New Orleans; and a rural community in South Carolina) to establish and develop RCOs. It’s amazing. I am so blessed to be a part of CAARD, and to have this growing network of people getting it done!
Q — Thinking broadly across the culture and our institutions, what are the major barriers to overcome and big opportunities to embrace in advancing health equity and healing justice? What progress are we making and needing to make?
Some recent data suggest large disparate gaps exist in access to mental health and substance use disorder treatment and recovery support — with 50% of Black and Brown people who need treatment and recovery support getting the help, compared to 70% of those in the sustaining majority (White). The good news is that 50% of diverse people in need are getting some services (although service quality disparities exist, too). The bad news is that service quality is diminished, funding for services is scarce, and service providers most often do not reflect the diversity of the populations served. Funding is most certainly at the center of these disparities, but there are other issues that need to be addressed. If we create services that people of color believe are for them — that will treat and support them through cultural lenses — we may see changes. I know we have to find pathways into diverse communities, assist with anti-stigma campaigns, and honor the cultural assets within those communities. I think we have to start with economic equity and justice.
Q — Late in 2022, you and three co-authors shared a new Recovery Definition And Principles for African Americans With Substance Use Disorders. What are some of the key elements you captured beyond other definitions, including SAMHSA’s, and how do you see the definition and principles best utilized or implemented across the prevention, treatment and recovery landscape?
We tried to get the language right. Too often, sustaining majority language is super-imposed onto diverse cultural groups, and those groups are expected to accept and adopt that language. I love SAMHSA and the definition of recovery they disseminated, but it didn’t include the language and syntax of African Americans; you feel me? If recovery is truly for everyone, then the language of recovery must be inclusive. We must adopt linguistic competency in our definitions to create cultural understanding of what recovery is for the people. For example, one of the principles in our paper is: “Cultural expression is a protective factor that can be manifested in cultural celebrations, cultural holidays, art, dance, movement, music, poetry, singing, spoken word, and theater.” These cultural traditions have been important to African American survival and can lead to enhanced recovery. It is our hope that the definition and principles will be used wherever appropriate and helpful as another prevention, treatment and recovery asset within the cannon of tools we have.
Q — Congratulations on your induction into the Online Museum of African American Addictions, Treatment and Recovery Hall of Fame — what a great and well-deserved recognition! That website is a treasure for all of us, and now that you’re officially in the recovery history books, I’m curious what you’d like others to know about the history of recovery in African American communities …
The legacy of recovery in the African American community is rich and critical to the culture. Amid today’s epidemic of suicide and overdose deaths impacting the African American community at heart-stopping rates, recovery needs to be recognized as a viable means to cultural health and well-being more than at any other time in our country’s sordid history. If Black Lives truly matter in America, then it’s time to put our money where our mouths are and devote resources to prevention, treatment and recovery in African American communities across the United States. Recovery is more than possible for Black people — we see it every day. Rising stars for recovery in the African American community are coming out, sharing their stories, leading movements, and bringing the hope and joy of recovery to their families and communities and to our whole country every single day. In the 1970s, there was only one treatment center in the country dedicated to treating and supporting African Americans, it was right here in Minneapolis. We have come a mighty long way since then, but not nearly as far as our sustaining majority counterparts have come. Today, we are working to alleviate that disparity through advocacy, through grassroots mobilization, and by “every means necessary.” There is a movement afoot, and it will take all of us to get us to the mountain top, but we will get there one day; I believe that with my whole heart.
Q — You’re a hope dealer and inspiration to many others in your various roles. What inspires you, and gives you hope, these days?
I love MN Hope Dealerzs — what an amazing organization. Our friend and colleague Jay Pee is an example of a shining African American star bringing recovery to the people. I am proud to be considered a Hope Dealer, and while I think I evoke more hope than I give, I love the notion that I might contribute to the recovery movement in some meaningful way. You Jeremiah Gardner give me hope; students give me hope; recovery peers give me hope; the God of My Understanding gives me hope — my family, my colleagues in this work, my culture, my ancestors (freed from Texas Enslavement two years after emancipation), and perhaps most importantly, my 35 years in long-term, abstinence-based recovery give me hope upon hope upon hope.
