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L
ike recovery, addiction is a social issue that cannot be divorced from
broader social, economic and political contexts. These are contexts that
concern us all and which, for us at Nurture Development, situate issues of
addiction and recovery firmly within the bounds of social justice.
I doubt many would disagree. It is rare to find a discussion about these
issues without looking to the families and networks that the individual is part of;
the economic prosperity of the communities they have come from; the emotional
or physical trauma they may have suffered; the opportunities they have for
education, training and employment; or an investigation of their wellbeing,
physical and mental health. And so on.
It is these issues that reveal the catalysts and journey to addiction for people
and will often suggest the likely trajectory of their recovery journey. But they are
also the same issues that are pertinent to all of our lives and it is through the
mapping of these issues over time that people like Bruce Alexander, as well as
our ABCD colleagues, John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann, tell a story of ‘the
globalisation of addiction’ in a post-modern society that promotes individualism,
free market economies, competition and professionalisation.
‘It is the people, caught in this web of counter-
productive systems, who must seek survival in the
hopeless spaces available. They react in many ways,
just as we would. They strike out in anger, as some of
us would. They create productive, phoenix-like new
ventures and initiatives, as some of us would. They
despair and retreat into addictions, as some of us
would. They are normal people in an abnormal world,
surrounded by expensive, costly helping systems that
are the walls that bound their lives. To defy those
walls, they must live abnormal lives – often productive
sometimes destructive, always creative.’
John McKnight, The Careless Society: Community
and its Counterfeits
This may seem like an odd way to start a discussion about Asset Based
Community Development (ABCD), which tends to err on the side of strength,
positivity, and abundance. But it is an important layer of context to what follows.
Because as we’re talking about addiction and recovery as issues of social
justice, we propose that we must stop focusing on addiction and recovery, in the
same way that we must stop focusing on mental health, rehabilitation of
prisoners, domestic violence, or tackling levels of obesity. We must move away
from siloed thinking, siloed budgets, siloed cultures and siloed practices and
start focusing on how we collectively address the weak communities in which
these social ills thrive and build the competencies of communities so that they
can reclaim their power in addressing them.
Recovery is only possible in healthy communities, but our communities need
to recover too. We need a whole community recovery agenda, not just a whole
12 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| April 2014
Recovery |
Community assets
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Recovery should mean
focusing on what is
strong, not what is
wrong – and that’s
where the ABCD
approach comes in,
says
Rebecca Daddow
A PLACE TO THRIVE