December 9, 2025
Dear Hossein,
I was pleased to receive your last letter and to hear that you are doing well. I am doing well also as the health reports continue to be positive.
My deepest congratulations to you on the anniversary of the founding day of Congress 60 and your freedom from addiction. It is truly remarkable what that 28 years has brought to Iran and the world.
I continue to look for young researchers that may be interested in future collaborations with Congress 60. There is a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University that I will be meeting with after the holidays with whom I will discuss this possibility. I am not getting any younger and we need to find others who can fill the role I have played in educating others about the work of Congress 60.
I was not aware of Congress 60’s involvement in Soil Day activities and was pleased to see the photos and videos of the tree planting. Community service seems to be a growing theme within the life of Congress 60 and its members.
You raised the question of mission diversion of NGOs: “Is the priority truly treating people with addiction or discovering effective solutions for prevention and recovery, or is the priority obtaining and spending budgets?” I agree with you that many NGOs have lost their way and care more about prestige and profit that the quality and effects of their services.
Work on my paper, “Post Traumatic Growth and Flourishing in Addiction Recovery: A Scoping Review and Commentary” continues. Below is the abstract.
The potential for post traumatic growth and flourishing within the experience of addiction recovery has important implications for affected individuals and families, providers of addiction treatment and recovery support services, local communities, and drug policymakers. The authors conducted a review of relevant literature and explored our decades of experience interviewing, surveying, and observing individuals in recovery to identify potential principles and practices related to recovery flourishing. The review explores recovery flourishing definition and measurement, relevant research to date, the interaction between flourishing and substance use status, flourishing domains and dimensions of character, temporal influences on recovery flourishing, the role of family and community in recovery flourishing, and recovery support service implications. The exploration of human flourishing is a key element within an emerging recovery research agenda and tandem efforts to elevate the quality of addiction treatment and recovery support services.
This week I am writing about the potential for exponential growth in recovery—growth that compounds over time like interest paid on money. I think our whole field has set a low bar of expectations for people seeking and in recovery. My hope with the paper is to raise such expectations and convey how people can not only get well but get better than well—achieve a level of health, social functioning, community contribution, and meaning and purpose beyond what existed in their lives before the experience of addiction and the onset of recovery.
I still have not received final notice on acceptance of our article. This process with journals is taking so long these days. It’s frustrating!
Please extend my warmest regards to your family and to all members of Congress 60.
Friends and Brothers Forever,
Bill