The Recovery Chronicles: Recent Episodes
The Recovery Chronicles
A podcast telling stories of alcoholism and addiction treatment, policy, history and breaking news as it happens. I'm Jim Luce and each week I speak with the people who treat addiction, solve its problems, and make policy, here at home and around the world.
In today's episode, Jim Luce interviews Walter Hillabrant, a PhD psychologist and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma. He is a co-founder of NAC, where he coordinates and networks among Federal economic development programs that target Indian Country and tribal communities.
Dr. Hillabrant has had a private practice for decades, working together with his clients
to help improve their lives in areas including substance abuse, suicide, and mental health issues such as depression. Walter discusses his life growing up in a mining town in Utah with an alcoholic father and violence in his parents' marriage. Hillabrant discusses his father's eventual treatment and recovery and explains how the aspects of Family Systems Theory affected his life. Walter discusses his college years and how he started his journey working with American Indians, especially Potawatomi Nation.
In the final episode of this 3-part series, Jim Luce continues the conversation with Dr. Massimo Barra. Dr. Barra is founder of the National Agency of the Italian Red Cross for pathological addictions, Fondazione Villa Maraini. He is focusing on brining humanitarian solutions to Italy's current drug policies.
Jim Luce and Dr. Barra discuss humanitarian drug policy approaches that are transforming outcomes. There is still a long way to go with incorporating this fully within current government policies, but progress is being made. One staple of good treatment is an open-door policy. In his day-to-day clinical practice, he accepts anyone desiring treatment 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. He's involved in a wide variety of support services designed to meet drug users where they are.
For example, one services provides buses to assists users in treatment while also providing them a ride to work. Programs like these can revolutionize Italian drug treatment, as well as all over the world. These support programs hit the streets of Rome and operate at the point of greatest risk, and it's been paying off. One main understanding Dr. Barre wants to share is that creating trust with clear intentions and kindness between doctors, nurses, support staff and patients is essential.
Help us to spread the Rome Consensus 2.0 towards a #HumanitarianDrugPolicy by signing our declaration: www.romeconsensus.com.
Part 2 of this 3 part conversation continued with Dr. Massimo Barra, creator of the Rome Consensus and founder of Fondazione Villa Maraini, the National Agency of the Italian Red Cross for pathological addictions.
Dr. Barra helps us to understand there is not just one way to treat substance abuse. We must match the treatment to the person, and not force the person to fit the treatment. At the end of the day, the goal is about saving lives and adjusting our perspective to focus on effective substance abuse treatments. Dr. Barra discusses areas of industry scandal and corruption - currently only 8% of people in need receive the necessary and required treatment. Solutions such as better internal and external organizational communication, increased education within the industry, and a perspective shift from punishment to engagement are all discussed on this episode.
Help us to spread the Rome Consensus 2.0 towards a #HumanitarianDrugPolicy by signing our declaration: www.romeconsensus.com.
Dr. Massimo Barra, IFRC special envoy for health, is the founder of Fondazione Villa Maraini, the National Agency of the Italian Red Cross for pathological addictions and the creator of the Rome Consensus.
Rome Consensus 2.0 is a Humanitarian Drug Policy alliance, a call from professionals to governments to make urgent moves towards health and human rights-based approaches. The Humanitarian Drug Policy's primary objective is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity by fighting social, legal, and cultural criminalization of people who use drugs.
Help us to spread the Rome Consensus 2.0 towards a #HumanitarianDrugPolicy by signing our declaration: www.romeconsensus.com.
In Episode 5 of the Recovery Chronicles, Jim Luce continues his conversation with Andre Johnson, CEO of the Detroit Recovery Project. He is one of 10 people selected from among 920 nominations for the title “Champion of Change”, a program created by the Obama administration to recognize "individuals doing extraordinary things to empower and inspire members of their communities."
In part 2 of this 3 part discussion on drug and alcohol treatment in the inner city, Johnson continues his personal and professional story and highlights additional pieces of the Detroit Recovery Project. Over the last decade, Johnson’s organization has received more than $15 million dollars in federal, county, state and local grants to provide prevention, treatment and recovery services.
Johnson expands on drug addiction not only in Detroit but shares about his work in East Africa and the drug trafficking there as well, weaving in the synchronicities throughout his life and work, "Everything I’ve experienced, good, bad, and indifferent, always had a purpose on the other end”.
Episode 4 of Recovery Chronicles features Jim Luce in a conversation with Andre Johnson, resident and CEO of the Detroit Recovery Project. In 2016, in a ceremony at the White House, Andre Johnson, a 46-year-old native Detroiter was one of 10 people selected from among 920 nominations for the title “Champion of Change” The Obama administration created the Champions of Change program as a way to recognize "individuals doing extraordinary things to empower and inspire members of their communities."
On part 1 of a 3 part discussion of drug and alcohol treatment in the inner city, Johnson, who is a former drug and alcohol user himself, discusses his roots as a child and the beginning of his descent into addiction himself. Johnson has been sober in recovery for 3 decades now, and in 2005 he started the Detroit Recovery Project. Over the last decade, Johnson’s organization has received more than $15 million dollars in federal, county, state and local grants to provide prevention, treatment and recovery services.
According to Johnson, "its success is based in part on using people with drug experience themselves to help people with addiction problems....In a highly personal discussion with Jim Luce, Andre Johnson tells part one of his compelling story.
On Episode 3 of the Recovery Chronicles Jim Luce and Dr. David Greenfield expand the recent smartphone and internet addictions discussion to include porn, video games, social media, and artificial intelligence (AI).
Dr. Greenfield is the founder and medical director of The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction and former Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine where he taught Addiction Medicine, Sexual Medicine, and supervised residents in psychiatry.
Dr. Greenfield discusses the increased use of porn since Covid, with the industry now bringing in more annual profit than the National Football League (NFL). One-third of all internet searches are for porn, resulting in trillions of hits. People of all ages are affected with an increase in porn addiction. People in their 40s, 50s, and 60s are looking at more porn in 2022 than ever before. Sex and sexual desire are hardwired in all humans, just as the desire to eat, but when porn, or any addiction, start to have a negative impact on your life, it's time to take a closer look at why.
Dr. Greenfield takes a closer look at not only the problems that got us here but what he sees as viable solutions, including wanting to form a coalition to manage the healthy use of technology. There's a need to address the lack of connection in our societies and this is the job of all of us: parents, technology users, health professionals, government, and the industries themselves.
Episode 2 of the Recovery Chronicles deals with smartphone addiction and more in an interview with Dr. David Greenfield. Dr. Greenfield is the founder and medical director of The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction and former Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine where he taught Addiction Medicine, Sexual Medicine, and supervised residents in psychiatry.
Dr. Greenfield is also a Consulting Medical Director of The Greenfield Center @ Lifeskills, a residential treatment program for the treatment of video game and technology addictions. He is a leading authority on Internet and technology addiction and author of numerous articles/book chapters, including the book Virtual Addiction, which in 1999 rang an early warning regarding the world’s growing Internet Addiction problem. Dr. Greenfield’s recent work is focused on the neurobiology of compulsive Internet, smartphone, and screen use. He is credited with popularizing the variable reinforcement (slot machine model) of behavioral addictions and the dopamine-behavioral addiction connection.
Dr. Greenfield latest book, Overcoming Technology Addiction for Dummies was published in October 2021. Dr. Greenfield participates with the national and international psychiatric and addiction medicine community by sharing his expertise through lectures, research, and popular presentations. He holds advanced training and board certifications in Addiction Medicine, Clinical Psychology, and Psychopharmacology. Dr. Greenfield lectures throughout the world, and has appeared on TEDx Hartford, CNN, Dr. Oz, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Fox News, ESPN, NPR and HBO. He has been featured in U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, People, Time, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.
Welcome to the first episode of The Recovery Chronicles podcast. This teaser focuses on the growing and worldwide issue of problematic computer use and the social issues which surround it. Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) can ruin lives by causing psychological complications, neurological disturbances, and social problems. Our host, Jim Luce, talks with one of the leaders in the field of internet addiction today. Dr. David Greenfield has been in practice for almost 4 decades and specializes in the field of addiction medicine. Just having the thought occur to any addictive behavior caused dopamine to increase up to 100% in the brain instantly. This episode takes a deep dive into IAD and looks at the connections between the brain and addictive behaviors of smart phones, AI, and the internet.