Insights & Resources
Filtered by: Society
Beyond Treating the Addiction
When only 10-20% of our health can be attributed to clinical care, it’s time to go beyond just treating the addiction. A whole-person addiction care approach includes assessing and addressing a person’s recovery capital to improve outcomes. Treatment alone does not produce the health outcomes we expect. It is incomplete. The above statistic is a call to treat beyond the addiction itself. In the addiction recovery field, it’s a call to address a person’s recovery capital.
Read More →By Patrick
3/21/23
Normalizing Failure
In the addiction and recovery field, we seldom talk about whether what we do works. When half of the people served go through treatment five or more times before it sticks, we say it’s time to rethink the approach.The statistic is sobering. Today, the average number of times someone with a drug or alcohol addiction goes through treatment is four. In other words, it takes five or more multi-week treatments for a person to overcome their addiction.Failure has been normalized.
Read More →By Patrick
3/2/23
Reflecting on independence
On this Independence holiday, please indulge a few personal reflections.17 years ago on this day (3 JUL 2005), I had my last alcoholic drinks.I don't typically write about or regularly celebrate this sober anniversary. That exercise lost its purpose long ago. But I feel compelled to offer some thoughts given some of the trends around wellbeing, stress, and alcohol consumption.
Read More →By David
7/3/22
Forgoing struggle
There are some struggles or suffering we do not have to endure. Addiction is one of them. There is enough suffering in the human experience, why invite more?
Read More →By David
3/24/22
What The West Wing Teaches Us about Recovery Capital
Recovery Capital is a proxy for Resilience.The more recovery capital we have, the better a person experiencing addiction will absorb and bounce back from a negative event.
Read More →By David
3/23/22
Wrong Side of the Road Remarks
The following remarks were prepared to be delivered on Tuesday, November 2, 2021 at the National Press Club for the launch of Wrong Side of the Road, a new national anti-driving impaired initiative from Responsibility.org.
Read More →By David
11/2/21
Safety as a conduit for solving addiction
In life and in business, errors disrupt potential and productivity. Errors can be the enemy of efficiency, especially if we do not learn from and eliminate them. Errors in life and the workplace can also result in injury and death. Humans are fallible and error prone. But, we can be very efficient and safe when we understand and apply good habit creation.Addiction is essentially a deeply trained habit. It’s a compulsive act that continues despite negative feedback.
Read More →By David
10/25/21
The unity of all substance
Marcus Aurelius wrote that we should often meditate on the “interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe.”Here was a guy — a stoic philosopher and Roman emperor — writing and living in the second century and fully understanding that everything is connected.Push on one element of society or nature and another element of society and nature reacts.Aurelius says, “[A]ll things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other — for one thing follows after another according to their tension of movement, their sympathetic stirrings, and the unity of all substance.”
Read More →By David
10/7/21
Everything is figureoutable
It has been a little while since I last wrote in this space. The reason is not for a lack of things to write about. The reason is that I have been sorting out the work of Commonly Well and the direction of the Recovery Capital Index. Starting a business and getting it out there is tough, even for seasoned veterans. Doing so in the middle of a global pandemic is doubling challenging. But, we are figuring it out.
Read More →By David
9/24/21
On embracing the power of the placebo effect
Care for addiction and the recovery supports that follow need more alchemy. More magic.What would happen if a little more creativity was applied? What if we better understood and more effectively applied psychological or placebo effects to attain desired outcomes?
Read More →By David
7/8/21
Experiencing the whole ecosystem of good
When is a haircut at a local barbershop more than just a haircut?The correct answer is: all the time.But especially when that haircut takes place a year after the beginning of a global pandemic that stopped most activities that connected us in our community.Our wellbeing does not live in a personal silo. Although we must think and act at a very individual level, deep and intense social connectivity help us transcend.
Read More →By David
3/28/21
On making up for lost time
We are a year removed since what we called normal life ceased. A full year. 12 months. 365 days. COVID has directly and indirectly changed the trajectory of 10s of millions of lives — all in the span of a single year. The announcement from the President last week that all Americans would have access to the vaccine staring May 1 resulted in an interesting tableau of reactions. Social timelines were soon filled with exuberant proclamations about making up for lost time. “Making up for lost time” is an interesting phrase. It’s a phrase and a mindset that plays into a false sense of pleasure and possibility.
Read More →By David
3/14/21