By Josephine E. Moore, The Register-Herald
BECKLEY, W.Va. — Organizations in Beckley that aid people in recovery from substance use disorder say they were stunned by the negative response coming from parts of the community to a new recovery initiative called Inclusive Recovery City.
Jay Phillips, the executive director of Seed Sower, a recovery housing program, said many of the opposing views were based on false assumptions influenced by the harmful stigmas surrounding addiction, treatment and recovery.
In looking to address these concerns, The Register-Herald sat down with Phillips, who championed bringing the Inclusive Recovery City concept to Beckley, and spoke via video conference with David Best, a psychologist in England who specializes in addiction recovery and helped conceive the model for the Inclusive Recovery City program.
Best is a professor of Addiction Recovery at Leeds Trinity University in the U.K. and president of the Recovery Research Institute in Florida. He has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, many of which involve substance use disorder and recovery, and has a master’s in criminology.
Best said the basis for Inclusive Recovery City came from the understanding that recovery does not occur in a vacuum.
“We know that when somebody goes into recovery, it has an effect on their partner, their parents, their children, and it was really important we captured that,” Best said. “So we started thinking about the long-term beneficial effects of recovery as a kind of group inclusive concept.”