Establishing a safe and stable environment in and out of treatment helps increase community awareness for substance-free living. If a community can boost awareness on addiction recovery, it will improve the recovery journey for those who struggled through it and increase support for those who currently struggle with substance use disorders.
In addition, community awareness is a powerful layer of protection over emotional, physical, and mental growth to reignite people in recovery's value and purpose in life. It is time to take a shared vision for a brighter future for everyone.
Each year, the recovery community maintains a vision to increase the general community’s awareness of addiction and recovery. People who have been through addiction treatment recently know how vital that choice was and how much of a difference it made. The vision of addiction recovery centers is to provide engagement with every individual to develop solutions to addiction recovery and implement proper, individualized treatments. This requires trust-building, resources, and community awareness.
This is a wonderful goal, but it cannot be reached unless there is community participation and awareness. Therefore, the vision must expand so recovery centers can facilitate more development across the United States. This can start with recently or long-time sober individuals sharing their treatment experience as a local example of the effectiveness of addiction recovery.
Every alumni's journey through treatment holds high value in the addiction recovery industry because it gives insight into the process, battles and triumphs, and ultimate effectiveness of treatment. When an alumnus shares their journey, they help increase community awareness of treatment for themselves or loved ones. Addiction recovery centers nurture the community and those involved while providing a safe and stable environment to eliminate substance use.
When the community comes together and develops a shared vision, the result gets exponentially better year after year. Between treatment providers, alumni who can attest to the fact that treatment works, community members' support, and people who are ready to say yes to treatment, the vision of care and renewed life can be reached.
The best things alumni can do to further the vision are to get their stories out, encourage others to seek treatment, and help educate the community so they can understand the need for treatment options and be supportive of the vision.
One way the community can help with addiction recovery for those who need it is to identify influential community members—such as political officers, organizations who are hands-on in the community, and people with great social media presence—and reach out to them for help. Whether they can implement programs for education, support a local treatment center with volunteers or funds, or simply be an encouragement to people to seek help, these are all great places to start.
The more the community gets involved, the more local groups, businesses, and outside agencies can open up the door of opportunity for more solution-based programs and treatment options for those who struggle with substance use.
While these large-scale sources of community involvement are vital, they are not the only means to achieve the vision of addiction recovery. Individuals have an important role to play as well. This can include volunteer work through care facilities, educational institutions, youth organizations, even local businesses.
All these positions can help increase community awareness about addiction recovery or provide help to organizations that already uphold the vision. While it may be difficult at first, one's involvement and participation can help get the word out about addiction recovery.
Individuals who have completed treatment are in a unique position to inspire and educate their communities. They might consider assisting the community by finding potential sponsors and opportunities to speak at community events, or set up workshop proposals for conferences to increase awareness of addiction recovery. An individual who has recovered from substance use disorder can be an inspiration to people who need help, who can then give back by inspiring more people.
All of the tools and resources addiction recovery centers use help individuals in the community find the necessary support for treatment. There are materials accessible to all communities, but community awareness is still not at high as it should be in order to be most effective. A treatment alumnus' story and community involvement can have a massive impact on the community at large, and on individual people who need help.
There are many barriers that keep people from seeing treatment for substance use disorder. Those who struggle with addiction are often scared to reach out for help or may not even know that resources are available. At NorthStar Transitions, we want to increase the awareness of addiction recovery in the community to show how effective treatment can be, how there is no shame in getting help, and how the community at large can do better to support people who need treatment. We want to ensure widespread acceptance and increase community awareness of the crisis of substance use disorders. Our commitment is to the vision of addiction recovery. If you are an alumnus of addiction recovery treatment and want to get involved in increasing community awareness of addiction recovery, NorthStar Transitions would be happy to help. Call (303) 558-6400 to help get more people the help they need while destigmatizing addiction and treatment for the rest of the community.
