Recovery Advocacy News, Issues & Miscellaneous Musings
This was originally published for Hazelden Betty Ford’s monthly Recovery Advocacy Update. If you’d like to receive our advocacy emails, subscribe today.
Curation with occasional commentary by Jeremiah Gardner
🥽 EXPERIENCE: Have you heard about the virtual-reality universe known as the Metaverse? This new frontier will soon include recovery-oriented event spaces, meeting rooms, community centers, training worlds and social hangouts — thanks to the folks responsible for today’s launch of … The RecoveryVerse! What will come of this alternate or augmented reality — who knows? But it’s time to get your headsets and avatars ready, and learn more.
📕 READ: Dr. Rahul Gupta, the first physician to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, says stigma among doctors is a key culprit in the addiction crisis. We agree, and see it frequently through the lens of our immersive medical education programs, where participants experience profound shifts in their knowledge of addiction and recovery, their perceptions of people and families affected by the disease, and their eagerness to help them.
📕 READ: A trio of San Francisco supervisors revealed an ambitious citywide road map to tackle drug overdose deaths, addiction and open-air use and dealing, urging a coordinated response that uses millions from opioid lawsuit settlements to address an unprecedented crisis. Among the features in their 21-page “San Francisco Recovers” plan are a “Right to Recovery” program that would establish priority law enforcement areas near substance use treatment facilities and a “Sober New Deal” program that would offer job-training programs to people in recovery.
📺 WATCH: In one of his famously biting commentaries, HBO’s John Oliver recently took aim at insurance companies and ineffective “parity” policies that he says make it nearly impossible for most Americans to access the mental health care they need.
📺 WATCH: Tipping the Pain Scale is now available to watch on-demand. The feature documentary features Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and NFL Pro Bowl Player Darren Waller, among many others, highlighting systemic failures in treating addiction and innovative, sometimes controversial solutions. In a new blog, Producer Greg Williams discusses the film’s impetus and why it’s vital that people in recovery take leadership in shaping how opioid settlement funds are used in their community.
📺 WATCH: Yoga teacher Tommy Rosen, one of our favorite explorers of recovery wisdom, takes on the topic of psychedelics and recovery.
📕 READ: TODAY published a wonderful online feature about the relationship and upcoming marriage of our friends, Mobilize Recovery founder Ryan Hampton and Foundation for Recovery Executive Director Sean O’Donnell.
📕 READ: This month’s sign of the apocalypse: Japan’s tax agency is soliciting ideas from marketers on how to increase youth drinking.
📕 READ: Great opinion piece: To break down barriers to addiction care, modernize the rules for sharing those medical records. We participated in a Twitter chat — #42CFRPART2 — on the same topic.
📕 READ: One thing worse than the deadly opioid fentanyl: fentanyl made to look like candy.
📕 READ: Fentanyl is the latest illicit drug to spread across the U.S., but it won’t be the last.
📕 READ: The White House issued proclamations on Overdose Awareness Week and National Recovery Month.
📕 READ: The HHS Office of Civil Rights is celebrating National Recovery Month too. It’s great to see recovery, and access to care, framed in the context of health equity and civil rights.
📕 READ: The level of marijuana advertising emerging in the country, most of it fully visible to kids, cannot help but boost demand and increase use. That’s, after all, the entire point of advertising, and the inherent goal of every person and business making money on marijuana: get more people to use, and get those who already use to use more. Any public-health-oriented regulatory structure ought to put significant limits on advertising, starting with a ban on billboards.
📕 READ: Just as profits drove the ethically compromised marketing that caused Oxycontin sales to explode and set off a generation-long overdose epidemic, so too are profits driving dubious marijuana claims and sales, according to this opinion piece.
🔊 LISTEN: Jeopardy co-host and former Blossom and The Big Band Theory star Mayim Bialik, PhD, has a podcast, Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, that dispels myths and misunderstandings about mental health.
🔊 LISTEN: Another podcast discovery — SOUND, SOBRIETY and SUCCESS, hosted by DJ/TV host Matt Pinfield.
📕 READ: A deep, reflective dive into the “New Temperance Movement.”
📕 READ: Should my home state of South Dakota’s 24/7 sobriety program go national? The SOBER Act would help make that possible.
📕 READ: Overdoses remain partly responsible for continued declines in life expectancy at birth, a pattern that began seven years ago and accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
📕 READ: Look — a no-booze cruise.
📕 READ: Just what no one needs — ice cream that tastes like a hangover.
📕 READ: Rates of marijuana and hallucinogen use among young adults jumped to new records last year. Nicotine vaping and excessive alcohol consumption continued to climb too, after a previous pause. Increasing consumption of THC-infused alcohol is also a concerning trend shown in the latest Monitoring the Future survey. The good news is that opioid use is down, and smoking is too. Overall, though, the annual survey tells us the problem of substance use among young people appears to be worsening.
📕 READ: Inspiring historian, advocate and deep thinker William White celebrates recovery research progress.
Jeremiah Gardner is director of communications and public affairs for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.
