December 2011 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 21
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Profile |
William White
ES MAN
Was there a key moment early on that made you realise you wanted to make this
field your life’s work?
This is the kind of field that takes regular recommitment
to sustain one’s passion
and effectiveness, but I can vividly recall two early incidents that could have either
driven me from the field or cemented a lifelong commitment to it. Both involved
individuals who I had helped start a recovery process but who later relapsed, were
arrested and hung themselves in a jail cell. I was deeply wounded by these deaths
and vowed to eliminate the ‘drunk tanks’ and foul cells in which such deaths so
frequently occurred in those days.
I also felt I needed to find ways to give their lives meaning and to answer the
haunting question of what I and the field could have done differently that would
have made a difference in their lives. Experiencing such dramatic losses while also
witnessing so many wonderful stories of recovery transformation – those have
been my moments of commitment and recommitment.
You’ve said that you see people in recovery, recovery advocates and frontline workers
as the primary audience for your work, which is a huge influence on the UK recovery
movement. What parallels do you see with the way that movement is developing to
the way it developed in the states? Have you noticed any significant differences?
Recovery advocacy movements differ across cultural contexts
but they do seem to
need common ingredients for their germination and ignition – a critical mass of
people in long-term recovery, increased contact between people representing
different pathways of recovery, a treatment system that has become disconnected
from the larger and more enduring processes of personal and family recovery,
pervasive addiction-related social stigma and discrimination, and a series of
catalytic events that trigger organising efforts.
I think it’s too early to talk about major differences between the US and UK
recovery movements – those should and will clearly exist, but there will also be
many shared elements due to what we are learning from each other through our
growing face-to-face and internet connections.
What advice would you give to people involved in nascent recovery groups and
organisations in the UK? Are there traps they need to avoid?
Authentic recovery advocacy movements face twin risks
– the first is becoming a
closed incestuous system that implodes through the processes of isolation,
exclusiveness, scapegoating, and ideological schisms, while the second is
remaining such an open system that the movement gets hijacked from within – or
without – for personal, financial, ideological or institutional gain.
Those threats are not unique to the recovery advocacy arena – they are risks
faced by all social movements. Such vulnerabilities must be actively managed by
defining and maintaining fidelity to mission, goals, priorities and methods. There
are also certain core principles and values that distinguish the recovery advocacy
organisations/movements that survive and thrive – the primacy of personal
recovery, authenticity of recovery representation, mission fidelity, organisational
transparency and stewardship, and adherence to core recovery values such as
humility, simplicity, respect, tolerance, service.
Although the situation is starting to change, the UK drugs field has been very polarised
and a number of people have told us that they get very disillusioned with all the mud
slinging and name calling. Is it similarly sectarian in the US – have things moved on?
We’ve had our share of such mud slinging
on this side of the pond – the harm
reduction/abstinence and medication-assisted and drug-free dichotomies have
fuelled debates that have become stale, unproductive and too acrimonious. These
debates far too often mask concerns not about how to best serve wounded people
and wounded communities, but about personal and professional prestige and the
financial resources that accrue to those who successfully claim ownership of these
problems. That is why these discussions are in such need of authentic voices of
affected individuals, families and communities.
We as a professional field, and we as a growing worldwide recovery advocacy
movement, have to find ways to rise above such polarised rhetoric and our own
personal and institutional interests. This is not an either/or issue – the issue is the
right to have choices and the need for different types of services for different
people and different types of services for the same person at different stages of his
or her addiction and recovery careers.
Every person offered medication as an adjunct in the treatment of addiction
should have access to a full range of professional and peer-based recovery support
services, and every person offered professional and peer-based recovery support
services should have access to a broader menu of medical and psychiatric services,
including medication for those who could benefit from it. We as a treatment field
will either find a way to provide integrated, scientifically defensible and patient-
centered care or we will become marginalised therapeutic cults.
Do you think the gap between recovery mutual aid societies and professional
treatment could one day not exist?
I think there will always be tension
between addiction science, clinical treatment and
indigenous recovery support institutions. Connectors and interpreters will always be
needed to bridge these worlds because they represent different ways of knowing and
different value systems. The challenge at a policy level is how to bring representatives
from these worlds together to fashion a system of care that blends these perspectives.
‘Knowing what preceded them, I
have never taken for granted the
current treatment resources that
earlier generations fought to
create, no matter how imperfect
those treatments may be...’