Aug 30, 2017
Dear Hossein,
I am fine, though we have had heavy rains here and some flooding in recent days, but nothing compared to the disastrous flooding occurring in Texas at the moment. Many recovery advocacy groups are trying to help as best they can with the rescue efforts going on there.
Your distinction between giving medication to suppress withdrawal / stop patients from using drugs and using medicines to for neurobiological repair (and provide a platform for psychological, relational, and spiritual healing) seems to me a critical one. Very few so-called addiction experts emphasize the latter and I think this failure contributes to the failure of treatment and the stigma attached to medication-assisted treatment. I hope your forthcoming book will shed light on this and offer more positive directions for the future—based on the years of recovery experience within Congress 60.
Rita and I are still fixing some of the formatting errors in the file for the e-book of my memoir and then we will have to do formatting for the paperback version. When that is completed, I will ask the publisher about permission for translation of the book in all or part into Persian.
I am pleased to see how members of the legion that bears my name introduce themselves at the legion meetings. Please offer my deepest congratulations to the newest members who have achieved smoking cessation.
Time passes to quickly. It seems only a few months ago when I received the last photos of your summer camp. An international recovery celebration camp is wonderful idea. That is one I will dream about.
One of my interests at present is how to increase the “recovery space” or forge “recovery landscapes” in local communities. Or put another way, how do we create a physical, psychological, and social climate in which addiction recovery can flourish in local communities? I think what you have done through Congress 60 via your meetings, social events, camps, tree planting, sports, arts, professional education, collaboration with other organizations, etc., is create such space—a real world in which people’s recovery is welcomed and nurtured. That is the vision I have for every community in the world. What you have done and are doing is a remarkable accomplishment.
We are both fortunate to have lived long enough to witness this.
Friends and Brothers Forever,
Bill