New Year Comes Amid Growing Need for Addiction Care, Recovery Support
By William C. Moyers
NOTE: This was originally published for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation’s monthly Recovery Advocacy Update. If you’d like to receive our advocacy emails, subscribe today.
A couple weeks into this new year I am probably not telling you anything you don’t already know. But people are suffering like never before, and in numbers larger than anything I have ever encountered in early January of any year that I have worked for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. And I started in 1996.
In the first five days of the month alone, 16 people directly contacted me for help. From the Twin Cities to Seattle and Tennessee to Boston — and from one family in Beirut, Lebanon — I received phone calls, emails and social media messages from people desperate to overcome substance use and mental health issues.
A notable thread that seemed to run through all of my interactions was the dynamic of the holidays — post-COVID. It appears many families reunited for the first time in years and were able to get eyes on a loved one whose struggles were more evident in person.
Another thread I noted was the issue of anxiety and stress in nearly all of the cases, as described by family members.
Finally, and maybe this anecdote is simply coincidence, but alcohol appeared to be the primary substance affecting nearly all of these individuals and families. Many also were taking prescription medications for mental health issues and drinking on top of it.
All of this comports with what Hazelden Betty Ford’s clinicians have been reporting for some time, and underscores the importance of the work that addiction treatment and peer recovery professionals across the country will be tasked with in the new year.
William C. Moyers is vice president of public affairs and community relations for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.
