Recovery Advocacy News, Issues & Miscellaneous Musings (Jan 2023)
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.
Curation with occasional commentary by Jeremiah Gardner
📺 WATCH: In honor of MLK Day, learn more about the history of substance use disorder and recovery in the African American community in Hazelden Betty Ford’s interview with Mark Sanders, creator of the Online Museum of African American Addictions, Treatment, and Recovery.
📕 READ: The $1.7 trillion omnibus appropriations bill, which will fund the federal government through September 30, 2023, has been signed into law by President Biden. It includes the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act, which will dramatically expand the number of providers who can prescribe buprenorphine, and other provisions with significant implications for behavioral healthcare and addiction treatment. Learn more here and here.
📕 READ: When COVID-19 shut down the nation, policymakers loosened alcohol regulations to help boost business. Now, with alcohol-related harms on the rise nationally, is it time to reverse course?
📺 WATCH: See highlights from our special Betty Ford Center Awareness Hour event — a screening and discussion of the new film “Attention Must Be Paid: Women Lost in the Opioid Crisis.”
📕 READ: In a Washington Post story with fun tips for dating during Dry January, Hazelden Betty Ford’s own Sarah Weston says: “You have many wonderful attributes, including being sober. You deserve a partner who embraces you as a whole person.”
📺 WATCH: With the NFL playoffs starting this weekend, the TODAY show spotlighted alcohol-free sections and support stations now available in some stadiums, including Section Yellow at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, which we profiled last September.
📕 READ: Lady A’s Charles Kelley opens up about his journey to sobriety in a new song ‘As Far As You Could.’
📺 WATCH: Faces & Voices of Recovery has launched a powerful new documentary series called RE(dis)COVERED. The first episode, featuring the story of Krissi J. — premiered at an event last fall and is now available for online viewing.
📅 CALENDAR REMINDER: Every day in January, our friend Tommy Rosen is on his yoga mat at 6am PT, and you can join him for a morning practice that will be healthy in every way. No cost — a new year’s gift he’s calling Wake Up 2023. Watch him discuss it on KTLA TV.
📕 READ: As alcohol liver disease surges among younger people, some clinics and hospitals are taking a new approach that includes treating both the liver disease and alcohol use disorder simultaneously. Hazelden Betty Ford collaborates with health systems on this approach.
🎟️ GET TICKETS: Minnesota readers, please join us for the 5th Annual Minnesota Wild Recovery Night on Thursday, January 26. A pre-game meeting/event will be held at 5:30 p.m. in Ballroom A of the RiverCentre Ballroom adjacent to Xcel Energy Center, followed by the game at 7 p.m. Tickets available at www.wild.com/recovery.
📕 READ: CNN, whose New Year’s Eve broadcasts have become known for its journalists’ on-air drinking, decided to bar them from drinking this year.
📕 READ: A new national Gallup survey found that the 19% of workers who rated their mental health as fair or poor lost almost 12 days of unplanned absences in a year, costing the U.S. economy $47.6 billion in lost productivity.
📺 WATCH: Dr. Gabor Maté joins Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown to explain which groups of people tend to be most prone to chronic illness.
🔊 LISTEN: Freshly retired U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, one of the strongest supporters of addiction solutions in Congress, talks to a podcaster about fighting addiction and finding agreement in Washington.
📕 READ: Sir Anthony Hopkins celebrates 47 years of sobriety.
📕 READ: A Florida doctor who made $127 million by billing insurance companies for fraudulent tests and treatment for addiction patients was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
📺 WATCH: STAT produced a short new documentary — The Fourth Wave of the Opioid Crisis.
📺 WATCH: Our friend Dr. Lipi Roy talks about alcohol and Hollywood in a new episode of her YouTube series.
📕 READ: NIH invests in a new harm reduction research network.
📕 READ: A blogger reflects on the new NIAAA definition of recovery.
📕 READ: A new study finds that notifying doctors about a patient’s fatal opioid overdose reduced the number of opioid prescriptions they wrote for up to a year. The question not answered: is that good or bad?
📕 READ: The U.S. Justice Department is suing one of the nation’s largest corporations, drug wholesaler AmerisourceBergen, for allegedly fueling the nation’s deadly opioid crisis.
Jeremiah Gardner is director of communications and public affairs for the nonprofit Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.
