November 25, 2023
Dear Hossein,
The past few days have been the traditional Thanksgiving holiday celebrations here in the United States. I take this opportunity to thank you once again for all our collaborations and continued communications over these many years. I have learned so much through these shared efforts and am honored to have been a part of the evolution of Congress 60. Our shared efforts have touched many lives and left a body of thought that is reaching addiction professional around the world. I am grateful for your fidelity to our shared mission of helping individuals and families initiate and sustain recovery and enhance quality of life and service in long-term recovery. I am delighted to hear of your continued progress on the research front and your successful efforts to disseminate your research findings in presentations and publications. The recent research that is underway on the DST method and the potential medical uses of Dsap is noteworthy. I am continuing to read the “Body Structure” book and will be pleased to write a preface for it when my review is completed. The English translation I have read so far is very well done. I will suggest any minor changes if I see any that are needed. This may take a few weeks as Rita and I are moving to a smaller home with all of the details such a transition entails. I look forward to your additions to the Congress 60 bibliography of publications and presentations. When we have completed work on it, we can post it in Farsi and English for universal access. There is no deadline on completing this so we can work on it at our convenience. You wrote in your last email, “The honor of knowledge is in its practice; in other words, knowledge must be helpful in action and not just on paper.” I could not agree more. So much has been written about addiction, but so few of those writings have made a real difference in the lives of individuals, families, and communities. Across the world, speculations abound on the potential causes of addiction. All the addiction-related pathologies have been catalogued. And an unending list of brief treatments have been proposed. But how much of this writing has actually transformed the lives of people seeking escape from addiction? The breakthrough in our work seems to me to be grounded in our shift in focus from the problem to the solution. What we are seeking is a body of actionable knowledge that can make a real difference—can provide not just a temporary fix but a permanent reprieve from all the suffering that flows from addiction. Turning our attention to the study of people who have achieved permanent recovery and gone on to live full and meaningful lives is the frontier chapter in the history of addiction. This synthesis of experiential knowledge and scientific knowledge grounded in the solution seems to me to be the pathway of hope for the future. Just imagine what the tens of thousands of Congress 60 members could teach the world about that solution. I have long been interested in how to help people initiate recovery at earlier stages of addiction. I have argued that recovery can be socially transmitted through contact between addicted individuals and “recovery carriers”—people who make recovery infectious by the quality of their character and their care and service to others. Over the years, have you seen an increase in the number of people coming to Congress 60 due to their contact and encouragement from past or existing members of Congress 60? Is such voluntary service expected from those who have established successful recovery in Congress 60? It seems to me that Congress 60 is impacting local communities in Iran by seeding those communities with visible role models of recovery and responsible citizenship. Addiction-related pain can serve as a push force toward recovery, but I think Congress 60 members through the lives they are living provide a pull force toward recovery—a powerful attraction based not on threat of more pain but on real hope (living proof) of the potential for a better life. I look forward to your thoughts about this.
Friends and Brothers Forever