Aaron's Lived Experience

By SMART Recovery USA on

Aaron Adkins loves everything about being in recovery. He lists the support he gets from his SMART Recovery peers, the practical tools he uses to address negative thinking, the understanding and insight he gains from being a meeting facilitator, and, perhaps most especially, being able to give back as a mentor to other facilitators. “It’s been a wonderful way for me to understand how I do what I do…being able to teach something just kind of takes me to the next level.”

Certainly, the level Aaron exists on today is much higher than when he was struggling with his addictions. There were two arrests for driving under the influence, job losses, financial ruin, visits to the emergency room and multiple mental health crises. It didn’t matter...

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Markita's Lived Experience

By SMART Recovery USA on

Markita Renee is thriving. Now four-plus years in recovery, she runs OOAK Services LLC where she is a recovery coach, motivational speaker, and facilitator. In addition to that, Markita works part-time as an employment specialist for the state of Connecticut’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, facilitates two SMART Recovery meetings, and loves being a great mom to her daughter Si’miaya. And how all of this came together still amazes her.


It was just a few years ago that Markita’s life was a swirl of chaos and longing. In 2014 she lost all contact with her son after he was taken by his father, in 2015 she and her daughter became homeless, and during this time she was under court supervision for a felony charge. All these...

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Kristal's Lived Experience

By SMART Recovery USA on

The drunk driver crossed the line and changed Kristal Field’s life forever. She was seriously injured and her best friend was killed. She required opiates for pain relief and struggled for the next ten years, crossing her own line at some point from taking opiates for pain management into full-blown abuse. Kristal lost herself in a cycle of misusing opiates and her life became focused on feeding the addiction. It all came to an end with her 2013 arrest for possession of narcotics. That’s when the rebuild started.

Because it was her first arrest, Kristal was put through a diversionary program that included being sent to Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings. Nobody mentioned other options like SMART. Kristal says she had trouble with the idea...

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Why opioid overdose prevention programs work as NYC leads nation with 1st center

By Kiara Alfonseca and Mary Kekatos on

It's been two months since New York City opened the first-ever overdose prevention center (OPC) in the United States, and public health experts said the clinic is already saving lives.

OPCs are a form of harm reduction, which is a set of strategies to minimize the negative effects and consequences linked to drug use, and "keeping people who use drugs alive and as healthy as possible," according to the U.S. government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

In this case, OPCs are place where people can use drugs in a setting with nurses or other clinical staff members present and who can help avert fatal overdoses.

As of Feb. 8, the center has served nearly 700 New Yorkers and intervened in 134 overdoses, according to...

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Suicides by drug overdose increased among young people, elderly people, and Black women, despite overall downward trend

By NIH on

A new study of intentional drug overdose deaths, or suicides by an overdose of a medication or drug, found an overall decline in recent years in the United States, but an increase in young people aged 15-24, older people aged 75-84, and non-Hispanic Black women. The study also found that women were consistently more likely than men to die from intentional drug overdoses, with the highest rates observed in women ages 45 to 64. In addition, factors such as time of year, length of day, and day of the week appeared to be associated with intentional overdose death rates. The study published today in the American Journal of Psychiatry and was led by investigators at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes...

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What Is Harm Reduction?

By Morgan Coulson, Melissa Hartman on

Harm reduction is exactly what it sounds like: reducing the harm associated with using drugs through a variety of public health interventions. But the concept relies on more than these tools and begins, at the most fundamental level, with recognizing that all people deserve safety and dignity. It does not treat drug use as a moral failing.

Harm reduction acknowledges that drugs are widely available in our society. It encompasses the understanding that traditional law enforcement approaches or those that require complete abstinence do not decrease demand, use, or negative health consequences of substance use.

WHAT PROBLEMS DOES HARM REDUCTION TRY TO SOLVE?

The primary goal of harm reduction is to save lives and protect the health of both...

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How photos used to illustrate articles about alcohol and other drugs may perpetuate stigma

By Dr. Stephen Parkin on

Dr. Stephen Parkin writes about some of the inadvertent consequences of using photos about substance use, and makes five recommendations for authors and publishers based on his own research.

Photographs of substances (and/or of people using substances) can be used to highlight, emphasise or draw attention to written text in media reports, news articles, social media posts, and blogs, and are increasingly being featured in informal academic and scholarly articles. The source of these photos is often a catalogue of ‘stock images’ of a wide range of objects and environments, which are available to purchase, and were produced by people other than the author of the text. This method of acquiring photos can benefit the author (who can access...

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Opinion: Facing a surge in overdose deaths, D.C. must decriminalize drugs

By Shane Sullivan on

The profit-driven underpinning of all of our systems — including our public health infrastructure — has become plainer than ever through this ongoing pandemic. Eclipsed by the coronavirus’s pervasive impact, however, is another ongoing public health emergency that has received even fewer resources to adequately address it: overdose fatalities.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, D.C. recorded 511 overdose deaths in 2020; preliminary 2021 estimates suggest a similar figure, both largely driven by the increasingly toxic street drug supply wherein fentanyl has largely replaced heroin and increasingly been found in cocaine and pills sold as opiates such as OxyContin and Vicodin. Though an imperfect...

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Life Beyond Addiction - Monica Forbes

By SMART Recovery USA on

Monica Forbes is a person in long term Recovery, a Nationally Certified Peer Recovery Support Specialist and an Idaho Certified Recovery Coach Supervisor, as well as a Certified SMART support group facilitator. She currently serves as the CEO of Recovery United, Inc. which operates and supports Recovery Community Centers, a Recovery Coach program and the Peer Supports Academy.


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