Supporting drug-free rehabilitation and education


The True Meaning of Recovery Month

Celebrating the end result of effective drug and alcohol rehabilitation

Drug and Alcohol Addiction Recovery MonthEach year some of our tax dollars go toward getting an assessment of the drug and alcohol problems in the United States. This National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, and the release of its findings has fallen in September of each year. September also marks National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, which is now in its 18th annual observance.

This year's theme, "Join the Voices for Recovery: Saving Lives, Saving Dollars," aims to raise awareness about the financial and human costs of substance abuse and highlights the benefits that investing in treatment can have on those who enter recovery, their families and the larger community.

The drug rehab and alcohol addiction treatment field is comprised of thousands of outpatient and residential programs across the country. There is a chunk of public funds that is spent on substance abuse treatment and prevention, but not enough. Even more importantly though, is that the dollars that are spent often go to ineffective treatment methods.

Most treatment programs in the country are centered on the 12 steps, which came from Alcoholics Anonymous. The problem is that the original text didn't talk about being "in recovery" for the rest of your life. In fact, author Bill W. said he had recovered from alcoholism. Some may say this is merely semantics, but let's look at the literal and implied meanings of those words.

According to Webster's online dictionary, "recover" means to bring back to a normal position or condition; and "recovery" means the process of combating a disorder or a real or perceived problem.

The difference is in the process or tense of it. Someone "in recovery" is given the idea that they must continue to fight because they're not yet there. Someone who is considered "recovered" has won - they've moved on with life and drugs or alcohol are no longer a problem.

Our tax dollars should be given to programs that focus on the product instead of the process. The product is a person no longer affected by drug or alcohol use and who has recovered from their addiction. By spending money on programs that expect relapse and write addiction off as an improvable "disease" that one is always in recovery from, then we're only throwing dollars at the process with no end result in sight.

This inverted theory has gotten so out of hand that the misinformed few have tried to change the name of one of our governmental agencies, from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to the National Institute on Diseases of Addiction, in an effort to further distort the process on the road to eventually making it all but impossible to recover.

Effective rehabilitation programs are ones that focus on getting people fully recovered, such as those supported by The New Face of Recovery. The rest are just temporary treatment centers, whether they're based on the 12 steps or not. Any program that can demonstrate the ability to get people off of drugs and make them productive members of society again at a high ratio should be given a lot of credit, because they embody the true meaning of Recovery Month.


© 2011 Drug-Free Alliance